Penguin design award 2015

I decided to chose the title Oranges are not the only fruit out of the three selections Penguin had to offer for the competition, which is a novel by Jeanette Winterson about a lesbian girl raised in an adoptive Pentecostal christian family, who struggles between her sexuality and religion.  

I chose this book because the potential if the imagery is a lot stronger than the others on offer, in my opinion anyway. I like idea of exploring the sexuality of the main character while at the same time keeping some traditional religious themes and imagery.  Also as mot of the covers for this title are quite dated i'm interested in making something contemporary looking. 

This is one of my design sheets, at this point is was torn between wanting to draw something innocent and playful or something that was a little darker or more sexual. I looked at some other artists work for inspiration and i was drawn to Matisse and his cut outs, he has a very playful way of portraying the body, so i looked at ways to simplify the female form, again i started out with lino because i wanted to create some strong lines and bold colours. 

Here are my colour variants of the lino cut i scanned in and coloured on Photoshop, i used a gradient to make the colours in the image look more bohemian and psychedelic. I was quite pleased with these designs but still felt i had a lot of other ideas i wanted to explore.   

For my research i also looked at illumined books and bibles, thinking this would tie in well with the novels religious themes, i like the idea of angels and devils, because of the conflict experienced by the main character, i thought the angel and devil could represent Jess and her lover.

This is the final version of this design without text, i am keen to do hand drawn text for this cover, which might also mean painting this design traditionally so the styles and textures match, also i think painting this traditional would add to the idea of it being a page from an illuminated book.