Three illustrated book jackets

Book jackets are one of the first things people think about when you mention that you are an illustrator which usually follow the question "Children"s Books?" but my stock answer is generally that i do adult illustration followed up by 'of course not 'adult' illustration but illustration for grown up people'. So i am going to post three book jackets in different stages of completion that i have been working on recently.
Firstly, a book for Penguin Books that I posted about earlier and I am showing the final draft of the cover with some sample type. Secondly, two books for my favourite publisher CICO Books on the theme of Green Wiccan, the first book 'The Green Wiccan Year Book' published in September 2008 , here I show the final cover design and the last cover is for a new book called 'The Green Wiccan Herbal' by Stilja. The design is without the type. This cover follows the design of the first book in the series.
Hopefully my one follower will enjoy these as well as all book worms out there.

Illustrated Penguin Book Jacket

Illustration students are nearly always set the projects to design and illustrate a Penguin book jacket, this is always difficult as you not only have to do the illuststions but decide which book you would like to illustrate. A difficult decision for anyone!
Orange covered Penguin books have always taken pride of place on my book shelves supported by the green crime thrillers (and maybe some white Picadors). So after many years of waiting and illustrating for different parts of the Penguin group I will finally have a Penguin (image) on the illustrated book jacket I am working on at the moment for Penguin in New York( thanks to Penguin Art Director, Roseanne Serra). The book called ‘If the Buddha had kids’ and is by the author Charlotte Kasl and is part of a series of books but this is the first to be published by Penguin.

Illustrated Flower Faces

I was recently designing a repeat pattern for 'The Green Wiccan Herbal" and in the process layered the same image fliped on top of each other as you do. As I moved the images over each other the shapes created endless faces mainly of frogs and rabbits but Maddie Bee and I had a good 15 mins of fun playing with the two layers in photoshop. I am not sure how many different faces we found but if you have Photoshop or similar programme let me know and i will send you the image to play with. Have fun!

Book Illustrations

I have just finished illustrating two books for the publisher Cico Books. The first book, was a series of step by step illustrations about how to make children's clothes for the fantastic author and creator Emma Hardy. I was really pleased with these 'how to illustrations' which I feel were made special by the colours and fabrics chosen by the author.
The second book was called The Green Wiccan Herbal by the author Silja this is a follow upto the 'The Green Wiccan Year' which was also publiished by Cico books in Autumn 2008.
The Herbal shows over a hundred illustrations by Michael A Hill mainly showing different herbs and food types used within the art of Green Witchcraft.
In addition to these two books I also did a few illustrations for a new book ' The art of Letter- writing' which is being edited by Liz Dean at Cico.

Peugeot

Recently, I was asked to take part in a photo shoot for Peugeot cars, and talk about the differences between the French and the English. This was easy to talk about but less so the photo-shoot. On a very cold windy Friday i presented myself as a dapper Englishman dressed in Linen and Panama on westminster bridge, london to be photographed with Big Ben in the background and holding a blank canvas ( ????). for those interested enough look out for the Peugeot magazine produced by Specialist Magazines in Bristol. but in the meantime here is one of the pics. ( i have added one of my illustrations to the canvas.)

Michael Hill illustrates Qatar Inflight magazine-Oryx

Having recently produced maps for British Airways In flight magazine High Life, Michael Hill has been approached by a Dubai based publisher to illustrate a travel feature on Rural France. A double page map (above) and a series of spots accompanied the article by Alexandria Gouveia in the Oryx magazine for Qatar Airways.

illustrations for German Fashion Company Hakro

Last week I produced two maps for a very nice Fashion company based in a small town in southern Germany. The company called Hakro (www.hakro.com) produce a catalogue and wanted some lovely maps to fill the opening spreads to show the location of the shoots they had done in Berlin. The advertising agency and its director, Sven were also great to work for, very understanding and open to creative ideas from the illustrator. Hopefully we will all be able to work together again on another project?? but in the meantime Thanks Sven!