As an author that became an artist to draw my characters, this one is a special piece for me as it’s a romance book cover for my novel, Where the Wind Blows.
I want the cover to feel like a scene that you can look at and feel at peace while the wind is blowing in your face. I used more muted earth colors, not just to give it a contemporary feel, but because the protagonist is an artist herself and she often create paintings that are more peaceful and uses muted colors.
This illustration is actually a canon event on the book itself, and the place is in Baguio, Philippines. Aside from gathering reference for the place, I also painted their outfits based on their personalities and who they really are from the novel.
One thing that I also did is come up with a different perspective that I don’t usually work on. I want to show imbalance in this piece; I want to highlight how big the world is and how smaller they are compared to it. Not just for composition but because the character themselves are struggling to find a place where they belong and they feel this huge world moving everytime while they just feel stuck.
I have never been prouder of creating a book cover than this one. It was a reminder to me of why I became an artist in the first place — to create illustrations for my books, to be myself’s greatest fan and draw the characters that once just live in my head.
