"Oceans" Book Cover
Illustrations for Karen Fulkerson's new seek-and-find book.
Illustrations for Karen Fulkerson's new seek-and-find book.
"Oceans" is a seek-and-find educational book written by Karen Fulkerson. The cover illustration and all illustrations inside the book were created by Gus Morais. It will be published in November and it's my first illustrated book to be published in the United States, by KayFul Books.
The book presents beautiful poems by Karen Fulkerson, illustrated with colorful scenarios full of different fishes, animals and sea flora. The author's idea is to encourage kids to learn more about sea life while playing and trying to find different animals, things and situations underwater.
You can see a bit of my working process below. Before sketching, I've made a big research about fishes from warm sea waters. I've studied the different details of whales anatomies, for example, and discovered which species could be found in the same place or water depth. After collecting lots of pictures and information, I've created my first sketch.
This first sketch brings the essential to start a good illustration: I just wanted to point out some species and funny situations I'd like to see in the final art, present a main composition and try some color palettes. All the working process for this book was very vivid and made close to the author, so many fishes had their position changed as the drawing was being made, and we created a lot of new funny situations together, as you can see in the evolution of the drawing process in next image:
In the end, I've made a little light/color balance to highlight different parts of the illustration. I wanted to be sure that the reader could take a look at any part of the illustration and find something curious to laugh or learn about!
The book will be available in Amazon online stores in November 2019, published by KayFul Books. The cover was just released and I'm very proud to share it with you:
