Book Cover Reveal: The Keeper of Songs

I’m excited to share the cover of Fiona Mountain’s new novel The Keeper of Songs, published 2nd July.

It was a pleasure to work with Fiona and cover designer Heike Schüssler AKA Judge By My Covers. I’ve long admired Heike’s beautiful covers and was thrilled to have the chance to work together.

I illustrated the iconic setting of Chatsworth House and the folk singer Molly Marrison, and Heike art directed, designed and illustrated the other elements of the cover.

The novel is ‘a modern day Downton Abbey’, ‘inspired by the work of folk singer Sam Lee’ and is based on real events - the murder of ‘The Runaway Lovers’ in the Peak District.

Thanks also to my lovely agents at The Artworks!

Book cover illustration of a woman playing the guitar and an image of Chatsworth House with decorative elements. Book cover for The Keeper of Songs, written by Fiona Mountain, design by Heike Schussler, illustration by Laura Barrett
Book cover illustration of a woman playing the guitar and an image of Chatsworth House with decorative elements. Book cover for The Keeper of Songs, written by Fiona Mountain, design by Heike Schussler, illustration by Laura Barrett

Marks & Spencer Christmas Gin Liqueur Snow Globes

I was absolutely delighted to be commissioned by Marks and Spencer to create two illustrated scenes to be printed around their Christmas gin liqueurs.

Photograph of Marks and Spencer Christmas gin bottles with a forest winter woodland scene with trees and deer and stag. A second bottle with a high street Christmassy shop scene

Copyright Marks and Spencer

The bottles themselves are snow globes- the gin contains edible gold leaf and feature an LED light in the base, so when shaken, they become snowy landscapes. I was tasked with illustrating a winter wonderland of animals and trees, and a festive high street scene, including a little M&S shopfront!

A gold and white illustration of a forest winter woodland scene with trees and deer and stag. Foxes, rabbits, hares and robins are standing in the trees. There are robins, sparrows and swallows are flying around.

Winter Woodland Illustration Scene

An illustration of a high street Christmassy shop scene. Several tall decorated buildings and windows with bunting and Christmas trees

High Street Christmassy Scene

The project was fairly straightforward and the exact type of natural and architectural based work that I particularly love to create. The brief itself contained some mocked up rough versions of the types of illustrations they’d like to see, created by the designer at M&S, Ian Robinson. It included some of my own existing work on similar themes. M&S are also releasing some beautiful biscuit tins in the shape of gable front houses, and I was asked to make sure that some of my buildings in the high street scene were reminiscent of these.

I started out by researching winter trees, birds and other animals that could be included in the woodland scene, and Amsterdam gabled houses for the high street, taking inspiration from a trip there a few years back. I then jumped straight into creating the illustrations; starting with sketches before moving on to drawing with a Wacom tablet in Illustrator and layering the elements together.

Photograph of Marks and Spencer Christmas gin bottles with a forest winter woodland scene with trees and deer and stag. A second bottle with a high street Christmassy shop scene. Decorations in the background
Photograph of Marks and Spencer Christmas gin bottles with a forest winter woodland scene with trees and deer and stag. A second bottle with a high street Christmassy shop scene. Decorations in the background

I needed to make sure that there was a good ‘flow’ to the illustrations as you twist the bottles around- making sure that the height of the buildings and trees waved up and down dynamically, and that you would be able to see taller ones in the background through the transparent glass. Once I’d drawn all of the elements I experimented a lot with moving the different pieces around; overlapping trees and joining buildings together in a way that was the most effective. The team at M&S were so helpful with feedback on this. The illustrations also had to be seamless where they joined in the middle of the glass, to form one continuous scene on each bottle.

Photograph of Marks and Spencer Christmas gin bottles with a forest winter woodland scene with trees and deer and stag. A second bottle with a high street Christmassy shop scene

Marks & Spencer have been a dream client of mine for a long time, and this was the perfect brief. It was a wonderful feeling walking into a branch of M&S and seeing my illustrations on the shelves, particularly on such a high end, well produced product. Thanks to my agents at The Artworks!

Creative Process: Illustration Timelapse

Here’s a short timelapse video I created to show my illustration process in Adobe Illustrator.

I create silhouettes using a small Wacom tablet- starting with a pencil sketch, I’ll then draw all of the elements separately digitally- characters, background details, etc, before piecing them together and layering them up- almost like playing with the stage set of a shadow theatre. I love hiding really small details in my work and will often find that I’m working on an area of an illustration for ages, before zooming out and realising that it’s only the size of a postage stamp!

Creative Process Timelapse

This illustration was created for Kamila Shamsie’s Duckling, part of the Fairy Tale Revolution series published by Vintage Books.

Vintage Fairy Tale Book covers of Blueblood, Duckling and Hansel and Greta
Duckling picture book illustration of the ugly duckling swans and a crane in a river with water and ferns.

Vintage Books: A Fairy Tale Revolution

I was thrilled to be commissioned by Vintage Books to illustrate 3 fairy tales that have been given a feminist spin by 3 bestselling authors; Malorie Blackman, Kamila Shamsie and Jeanette Winterson. The tales were Blueblood, Duckling and Hansel and Greta- all modern takes on classic tales.

A photo of the book covers for the Fairy Tale Revolution series, Blueblood, Duckling and Hansel and Greta

I created the interior illustrations for the series to go alongside another title by Rebecca Solnit- Cinderella Liberator, which used original illustrations by Arthur Rackham- one of my illustration heroes. It was a real honour to illustrate stories by such well respected authors that I’ve long admired.

A fairy tale book illustration from Duckling by Kamila Shamsie of a duck sitting in her nest with her baby ducklings hatching around her
2 fairy tale book illustrations from Duckling by Kamila Shamsie of ducklings and the ugly duckling swimming in the water. A farmyard artwork scene with the duckling flying over fields with a barn and tree in silhouette by moonlight
A book illustration from Blueblood of a woman's portrait in silhouette inside a decorative frame border
Two book illustrations from Blueblood of a couple in several scenes. On the sofa, climbing up a set of stairs and in the kitchen
A fairy tale book illustration from Hansel and Greta of a cabin in the forest with portraits of Hansel, the woodcutter and the aunt
A fairy tale book illustration from Hansel and Greta of a cabin in the forest with portraits of Hansel, Great and the woodcutter planting seeds in the forest through the changing seasons.

Working with book designer Friederike Huber, there was a lot of freedom to work out which parts of the text to illustrate. After reading through the tales several times, along with their original counterpart tales, I noted what I thought were the key scenes and very loosely created sketches for them. Then Friederike created the layouts and, with the team at Vintage, decided which illustrations would fit best. For Duckling, I took a walk around the local lakes in my area for inspiration on the setting, and looked over old photos from trips to forests in the UK and Germany for Hansel and Greta. For Blueblood I looked at a lot of fashion and interior design magazines.

A book illustration from Blueblood of a man and a woman in a library or office. He is nervous. There are books, a desk, a lamp and tools in silhouette

I worked with a wonderful team at Vintage- senior designers Julia Connolly and Kris Potter, editor Charlotte Knight plus Friederike. It was one of those special projects where the working relationship was particularly creative and productive, with lots of ideas being bounced back and forth. The book covers were designed and illustrated by cover designer Anna Morrison- I was tasked with creating silhouette characters to be dropped into her beautiful designs.

The series is published today and available to buy from Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookshops.

The Little Mermaid Creative Process

As we continue to be under lockdown due to the Coronavirus crisis, we might not be able to visit any bookshops in person but the paperback edition of The Little Mermaid was published just last week, so I thought I’d share some behind the scenes sneak peeks of my illustration process.

The Little Mermaid is rewritten by the wonderful Geraldine McCaughrean, based on the original tale by Hans Christian Andersen and published by Orchard Books. With design by the fantastic Sarah Malley.

The Cover

Book cover and back cover for The Little Mermaid Picture Book. A Mermaid illustration swimming in amongst a coraf reef and an underwater palace with fish and a seahorse.

The very first thing I set about doing was deciding what our protagonist, the Little Mermaid would actually look like. I was excited to be able to draw lots of swirling hair and to create lots of fish scale details for her tail- one of my favourite things is adding lots and lots of detailing. I also started to create her underwater sea palace and coral reef setting.

I tend to sketch some things in pencil and then move on to drawing digitally in Adobe Illustrator using a Wacom tablet. I draw a very rough shape before working back in to this to add more detail. I’ll draw all of the elements; characters and background scenery and then start playing around with layering them, figuring out what works best.

Rough illustration of a mermaid and a palace under the sea
The Little Mermaid Picture Book rough sketches of an underwater palace or castle and coral plants

Once I was happy with her general look, I redrew her to fit the cover better, and started to try to frame the title with seaweed. I sketched out a basic seaweed shape, drew this digitally and then thickened the seaweed up, trying to make it look more organic. I then filled the rest of the cover with decorative coral, shells and bubbles.

Rough version of a book cover for The Little Mermaid. A mermaid illustration swimming with fish and a seahorse.

Cover work inprogress

Work in progress sketches and images of The Little Mermaid book cover coming together

Cover sketch, more work in progress and final cover

Inside the book

Here are a few initial sketches and progress images from the interior illustrations, all the way up to final artwork.

Rough sketches and development artwork for The Little Mermaid

Sketch and work in progress

Picture book spread of mermaids swimming in front of a castle under the sea

Final illustration

Sketches from the Little Mermaid picture book. Fireworks on a ship and a mermaid looks on

Sketch and work in progress

Picture book spread of the Little Mermaid and the prince and his ship with fireworks in the sky

Final illustration

Sketches of stormy waters

Sketch and work in progress

Picture book spread of a ship caught in a storm with waves rolling and boat sinking

Final illustration

Thanks for reading! You can see more of my books and other work at https://www.laurabarrett.co.uk/books.

An Inspiring School Visit

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of visiting Milbourne Lodge Prep School in Surrey.

Mrs Bawden, Head of Art invited me to come and talk with the children about the botanical illustration I created for Silent Pool Gin a few years ago, and also about life as an illustrator.

Now, you may be wondering why I was discussing gin with primary school children, so do read on to find out…

Illustrator Laura Barrett giving a school visit and talk to primary school children. Laura is showing them her illustration process and her artwork, including book covers, packaging and picture books

All term, the Year 6 classes had been working on a project called ‘Money Can’t Buy’ within their Art and Music lessons- looking at encouraging the pupils to reuse, recycle and be resourceful and creative.

Silent Pool Distillers, who are local to the school had kindly donated lots of empty bottles for them to reuse & work with. The children had been exploring the legend of the actual Silent Pool in Surrey- the 13th Century tale of a young maiden who fell into the lake, scared by the evil King John, riding on horseback.

In Art, they made paintings and got creative with the pattern I illustrated for the Silent Pool Gin bottle. In Music, they used the empty bottles, glasses, household objects and even an old piano to make wonderfully inventive and decorated instruments! They then composed a piece of music to capture the Silent Pool legend.

During my talk the pupils were such a wonderful and bright audience, and it was so rewarding to talk to such engaging young minds.

Due to the success of the project, the children then performed their musical composition beside the scenic Silent Pool in Surrey.

It was an absolute joy to hear them perform their beautiful piece of music! Here are a few shots from the distillery- it’s always an honour to see my illustrations in the wild.

School visit photos by Mrs Tiggy Bawden & Mrs Rachel Bowen-Perkins.
Thank you to Milbourne Lodge School for having me.

If you are an educator and would like me to come and speak at your school, college or university just get in touch.