The Making of the Craggle Hill Cover

When I first started writing Craggle Hill I knew exactly how I wanted the cover to look. I knew how I wanted the witches house to look, I knew I wanted purple smoke escaping from the chimney and I knew I wanted Jack (the main character) to be in the bottom left-hand corner looking up at Eartha's house. The only problem was, I had no idea how I was going to get what I saw in my head down on paper?

After a little search on the internet and a couple of posts in some author and illustrator groups on Facebook, I found Yappy Arts and instantly fell in love with Yana's style.

After contacting her and discussing what I wanted etc, she then got to work on the Craggle Hill cover while I sat waiting anxiously for correspondence.

The first thing I saw of the Craggle Hill cover was this sketch Yana had made in her sketch pad, along with a second sketch that was slightly different. There was no competition for me, this one was more of what I saw in my head compared to the second sketch I received.

At first I couldn't work out the background of this. But later, when I recieved the grayscale, the witches hand pulling the curtain up revealed itself to me. See below.

After recieving the inital sketch (above) I told Yana to remove the pathway completely. If you've read the book you'll understand why. Our Eartha isn't exactly a welcoming witch. And as well as the path, the trees to the left were erased as well.

Then came the grayscale digital sketch. And this is where the hand came alive and everything started to take shape.

From here we removed a cloud and added the moon. The moon plays a huge part in the book, so it was only right that it went on the cover. And then from here, Yana added the colour.

When this came through in my inbox I nearly squealed. It was perfect! The purple smoke, the green hand, the stars, the house... everything looked amazing. And the way Yana illuminated the roof of the house and the edge of the ditch like it was lit by the moon just set the whole cover off.

Needless to say I thanked Yana for all her hard work and told her not to change a thing! This was it! The Craggle Hill cover. And isn't it just wonderfully wicked?

To view more work by Yana Popova, please visite her website.

Cover illustration by Yana Popova at Yappy Arts