Alejandria Fights Back- Cover process

 

What up? This is a bit of process behind the cover for "Alejandria Fights Back/ La Lucha de Alejandria". 

First let's start with the sketches. I usually do a bunch of sketches in my sketchbook or on paper. I think I did that too. But these are the first I presented to what was a huge team effort. Normally when you make a kids book you have 1-2 people to answer to. Thats either the author/creator or the art director. In this case I was working with a team of filmmakers and organizers called the "Rise home Stories Project" who initiated this project, writer Leticia Hernandez-Linares, and the team at Feminist Press (Lauren Rosemary Hook, Jisu Kim, and designer Drew Stevens. The book was translated by Dr Carla España.

The next round was refining these sketches a bit.

They picked the one at the podium and thats the one I really nailed down. 

After nailing it down I went straight into painting the cover because the team was pretty loose with the art direction even though it was BIG. Here's some of the painting process for the front cover. It was painted with watercolor. I start with an over all warm tone and focus where Ale (main character) was the focal point. Then I started to add color to the characters.

Here's the final front cover painting w/ text on another layer drawn with ink.

Here's a bit of the back cover sketches

They chose the one with a few things scattered around which was directly inspired by Dawud Anyabwile's "Brotherman Revelations" back cover. Here it is painted.

And add the back matter (synopsis, logo, isbn scan) and the front cover design w/ type.

Love this book like so many of my others. If you're not familiar with the storyline check out this video

You can get a copy of the book from your local bookstore, library, bookshop.org, or Feminist Press.

Did you like this? Check out my most recent book "Somos Yoga/ We are Yoga" written and published by Jill Guerra an author, teacher, and mindfulness/yoga instructor for kids.