Gilles Rainville illustration

With my recent surprise book cover contract from Prise de Parole , I decided to register myself with Illustration Quebec .  After a few months of very little activity on my profile, I thought, maybe I need more examples of cover art illustrations. So I decided to challenge myself.  I am going to take my artwork, imagine a storyline relating to the idea behind the artwork, and illustrate a book cover for it. I chose my most recent finished piece, Can I Have It? ,   to be the guinea pig for this "experiment". When I took a step back from this piece, it gave me the idea of a pre-teen novel centered around a brother and sister going on a magical yet perilous  adventure after discovering a small magical planet. I started with some messy gestural sketching to help me decide the layout of the book cover. With the rule of three I drew the rough sketch. Added a 2-point perspective guide to fix any perspective mistakes. For the next steps, I started with the foreground a...

When COVID hit, I found myself spending all of my time at home, and contemplating where my passions lie. Thinking of what gave me inspiration as a child, I remembered choosing books from the library based solely on the illustrations on the cover and on the pages inside. I never read a single word from these books but spent hours staring at the beautiful drawings.  I've always known that being an illustrator is a dream of mine, but being a classically trained animator / artist I didn't have the digital knowledge or skill that the industry expects from its artists. So I took the plunge, bought a Wacom Cintiq drawing monitor, watched hundreds of YouTube videos from inspiring successful digital illustrators on how they use Photoshop, and taught myself how to use my classical training (through the Cintiq) to produce digital illustrations in Photoshop.  Last May I produced my first proffessional digital illustration. A book cover for a Sudbury publishing house, Prise de Parole....