Wind and the Willows

I am currently working on the latest project called 'Wind and the Willows' which is a competition based brief for Penguin Books.  The task is to create a book cover that sets the scene of the story, and draws readers from all ages to read the story.

I have not yet read the book, however it's en route to me via Amazon!.  Once I have read the book I will have more of a understanding about the story, characters, settings and senses from story.

As a starting point we have been asked to create a 'Sense of Place'.  The beauty of not knowing the story is the unknown and that's the approach I wanted to take initially.  In my 'Sense of Place' sketchbook I have been collecting images, mark makings characters and images that suggest or make me think of wind and the willows, I just want as much content as possible to play with and have made a start creating the characters from other images for more of a abstract feel/individuality.

Projects like this are the ones I love, I get carried away due to freedom and also the timescale is fairly long.  I just plan to play and explore in my sketch book,  I am due to attend a tutorial today which will give me more direction/feedback.