I’m delighted to wel­come illus­tra­tor Christo­pher Silas Neal to Turn the Page today!

As soon as I saw the beau­ti­ful cover for May B by Car­o­line Starr Rose I knew I sim­ply had to have it. After stalk­ing check­ing out his web­site I fell in love with his work and Christo­pher very kindly agreed to chat with me about cre­at­ing the image for Illus­tra­tion Corner.

Did you get to read the book before work­ing on the cover illustration?

In this case, I was lucky enough to read the man­u­script before start­ing work on the cover. For var­i­ous rea­sons mostly due to the sched­ule I often only read a por­tion of the book and in some instances only have a synopsis. Though, a sum­mary of the story and a few notes from the edi­tor are enough to inspire a good cover. When I do get a chance to read the com­pleted story I often become attached to the work and Murphy’s Law dic­tates that the more you love a book, the more likely your cover sketches will be killed and never see the light of day. Well, not really but it does hap­pen. That’s the worst, when you’ve invested a lot of time read­ing the mate­r­ial, falling in love with the char­ac­ters, sketch­ing and brain­storm­ing– only to have your cover rejected before you even make it to the final art stage. That’s just part of the busi­ness and when you do get a good cover through to final for a story that you love, it’s some­thing spe­cial.

How much input did the publishers/design team have? Were you given a strict guide­line to work to, or more or less free reign to go with your ideas?

I worked with Art Direc­tor, Rachael Cole which was a real plea­sure. We didn’t start with any pre­con­ceived ideas. It wasn’t until I did my first round of sketches that the pub­lisher had more spe­cific thoughts on the art.

How did you go about design­ing the typog­ra­phy for the book?

Since this is a period story, I new typog­ra­phy would help set the time and place. I spent a bit of time find­ing sam­ples of typog­ra­phy from reader books sim­i­lar to the ones that May B. reads in this novel. I found a type face in a Dover cat­a­logue that matched pretty well and used that for the basis of my let­ter­ing. Every­thing was let­tered by hand.

What idea or atmos­phere were you hop­ing to convey?

I mostly wanted to con­vey lone­li­ness. I like draw­ing soli­tary fig­ures, cre­at­ing visual empti­ness and using color to cre­ate a somber mood. Those ele­ments paired nicely with the nar­ra­tive in May B. and the ideas for the cover came from this line of think­ing. I gave my Art Direc­tor a lot of ideas in the ini­tial rounds and after review­ing my sketches and dis­cussing the book, we landed on the pro­file face with the sod house in the distance.

What media do you work in? How long did it take you to find a media that worked best for you/that you were com­fort­able with?

I use graphite, col­ored pen­cil, pen, acrylic, gouache, ink and cut paper, all of which gets scanned into the com­puter and assem­bled in pho­to­shop. I worked for roughly 4 years as a graphic designer before work­ing as an illus­tra­tor so uti­liz­ing the com­puter is sec­ond nature. It’s always been a part of my illus­tra­tion process.

Can you tell us a bit about your cre­ative process? How long does it take you to cre­ate a final piece of art work?

Brain­storm­ing and sketch­ing can hap­pen really quickly and intu­itively or require weeks of bang­ing my head against the draw­ing table. Same with the final art. It depends on the image and the com­plex­ity of the piece. Some­times, I spend hours upon hours find­ing the right col­ors or tweak­ing lit­tle details and tex­tures. In that case, it feels like a bat­tle with myself to pro­duce a good piece of art. I know there’s a good image wait­ing inside of me– I just need to wres­tle it out of my brain.

What inspires you?

Books, movies, artist talks, New York.

Have you always wanted to be an illus­tra­tor? Where did you study? 

I stud­ied music at the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado and wanted to play the drums pro­fes­sion­ally. Some­how along the way I ended up draw­ing pic­tures instead.

What kind of spe­cific chal­lenges come with design­ing a book cover com­pared to other illus­tra­tion? Do you give a lot of thought to the age the book is mar­keted for?

One of the biggest chal­lenges is arriv­ing at an idea that is liked by the edi­tor, art direc­tor, author, sale depart­ment, sale rep, Barnes and Noble book buyer, etc. . There’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen and in today’s eco­nomic envi­ron­ment, pub­lish­ers are often tepid about tak­ing risks with book jacket art. It’s the one down­side to book design– too much impor­tance rests upon con­ven­tional mar­ket­ing and fear that the wrong cover art can ruin sales. Fear is a hor­ri­ble moti­va­tor and cre­ativ­ity killer. For me, a cover is more about peak­ing the curios­ity of poten­tial read­ers and enhanc­ing the over­all expe­ri­ence. With a good jacket, a book becomes a pre­cious keep-sake. But it’s the merit of the writ­ing that will really sell the story. In terms of think­ing about the age of the intended reader, I do think about that but hope that any change in approach is subtle.

Are there any illus­trated book cov­ers out there you par­tic­u­larly love?

I love Art Direc­tor Peter Mendelsund’s Illus­trated Kafka cov­ers and his paper cut illus­tra­tion for the Flame Alpha­bet by Ben Mar­cus. Paul Buck­ley at Pen­guin hired a good friend of mine, Jil­lian Tamaki to hand embroi­der cover art for a series of clas­sic nov­els which are both amaz­ing and delight­ful. My stu­dio mate, Sam Weber illus­trated the cover and interior’s for Fahren­heit 451 pub­lished by the Folio Soci­ety. Stun­ning! I love Josh Cochran’s cover for Zombie’s vs. Uni­corns by Holly Black, pub­lished by Simon & Schus­ter. I’m also really keen on Brian Rae’s illus­tra­tions for Mal­colm Gladwell’s repack­aged books designed by Paul Sahre. Last but not least, my buddy Grady McFer­rin made a real beauty for The Van­ish­ing Act by Mette Jackobsen.

A few of my per­sonal favourites. Click the images to view slideshow.

A big thank you to Chris for tak­ing the time out to answer some ques­tions. If you’d like to know more about the cover of May B, I highly rec­om­mend check­ing out this great post that goes into the whole process of cre­at­ing the cover step by step, along with other projects.

Also, do check out Chris’s blog and web­site for some more great posts about ongo­ing projects and work­ing as an illustrator.