Let’s be completely honest: we all judge books by their covers.
(I’m totally calling myself out here because I do this all the time.) But judging books by their covers isn’t an entirely bad thing to do, especially because humans are very visual people, and book covers can be absolutely stunning sometimes. It’s always fun to look at all the artwork featured and see how everything comes together!
So, if you haven’t guessed already, today’s post is going to be a collab with the lovely El @ Elated Books where we recreate our favorite book covers!! El is so sweet and funny and I’m so glad to have found her in the book blogging community. 🥰 Check out her wonderful blog and post here!
This post’s idea was inspired by May @ My 1st Chapter’s post recreating The Lunar Chronicles book covers. May did an absolutely amazing job, I’m obsessed with her art skills! You need to go check out her post asap as well!!
Since we did all the art by hand, El and I decided to recreate just 2 of our absolute favorite book covers, and we’re so thrilled to reveal them…
Before I get started, please use these resources to support everything going on in the world right now; remember to always show your support, even when social justice isn’t “trending.”
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Here is a masterlist of everything going on in the world and what you can do to help.
Book Cover 1:
THE HENNA WARS BY ADIBA JAIGIRDAR
(original cover on the left, my recreation on the right)
The moment El asked me what book covers I was thinking of doing, my mind instantly landed on The Henna Wars. It’s a gorgeous book both inside and out, and I love that two girls of color are featured on the cover! The medium I chose for this book cover was Prismacolor colored pencils (colored pencils that are very soft and easy to work with).
While it was definitely difficult to get the proportions of both girls and their skin tones right, the hardest part would probably be their henna / mehendi. Henna is truly beautiful (I have the fondest memories of eagerly awaiting to get henna on my hands when I was younger!!), but it was difficult to recreate the intricate designs on The Henna Wars’s book cover. 😅
I’m most happy with how the title and author text turned out, though! I added it digitally on my tablet using the app Paper.
Altogether, this book cover took me quite a while to create, as I worked on it during multiple sittings whenever I had time… but it was worth it in the end!
♡ You Might Also Like: My Review of The Henna Wars ♡
Book Cover 2:
BROWN GIRL DREAMING BY JACQUELINE WOODSON
(original cover on the left, my recreation on the right)
This is a recent book I read and enjoyed as well, and I absolutely adore how beautiful the cover is! Like I’ve talked about before, I’ve been loving watercolors lately, and thought it would be fun to take up this project with them.
I’m proud of myself for barely sketching out an outline and trusting myself to create the entire background—including the silhouettes and title—with watercolors: it was such a fun and therapeutic process!!
After the paint dried, I went on to add the author’s name on top of the silhouette with Prismacolors. (I did this without an outline, so the proportions ended up looking a bit off, haha!)
I also used gel pens to create the swirling butterflies at the top, as I thought the sparkles would add a magical touch. I had… quite a few issues with the gel pens smearing, though, but I think it came together in the end as well!I’m very critical of my art, but I’m happy with how these two turned out and hope you enjoyed reading about my creative process! I had so much fun working on these and doing this collab… just a reminder to go check out El’s post because she did an amazing job recreating the covers of Descendant of The Crane and The Enchanted Wood!
do you judge books by their covers? have you ever tried this? how do you think El and i did with our recreations??
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