At his home studio last year in Guelph, Ont., Nick Craine shows the final version of a cover he worked on with author Vanessa Westermann.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
For artist and illustrator Nick Craine, a job often comes with a mandate. A newspaper illustration has to convey the core idea of a feature story, or a portrait must depict the true nature of its subject. When it came to drawing the cover of Vanessa Westermann’s book Shudder Pulp, the job was less straightforward.
“My job is to get someone to want to open the cover,” Craine says. “You’re posing a question that needs to be answered, or wanting to compel the viewer to ask the question themselves, to pick it up.”
Books we're reading and loving this week
Craine prefers to do most of his work by hand.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
The image hints at the mystery within. On a dock sits a red Muskoka chair pointed away from the viewer; behind it is an easel, with the canvas facing into the woods beyond. Meanwhile, a large brown dog peers into the lake, where a solitary canoe paddle bobs in the water. Each image contains a clue about the story, the second in Westermann’s Charley Scott mystery series.
The Globe spoke with Craine at his Guelph, Ont., home last year about what it takes to pull off the perfect cover illustration.
Craine has designed several titles for Cormorant Books, Westermann’s publisher. They often use a distinctive “cigar wrap” motif – a large banner bearing the title – that poses an additional challenge for the illustrator. For Westermann’s first book, Cover Art, Craine read a synopsis ahead of starting his work. For Shudder Pulp, he started with Westermann’s input directly. “She gave me a list of what she wanted to see,” he says.
The publisher knew who they wanted their reader to be, Craine says: Cottage people.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
The rough sketches here eventually became an image that was sent to Cormorant for approval.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
The first mock-up for Shudder Pulp was a far cry from the final version: It featured a hand bursting out of the water at a far distance from the cottage dock. The original cover was a reflection of Westermann’s vision, Craine says, but once the pair showed it to Cormorant, the publisher had other ideas. “They said they’d like it to look more like the other book,” Craine says, referencing the aesthetic motifs – Muskoka chair, bold colour palette – he used for Cover Art.
“I think this is the most useful insight: They understand who they wanted their reader to be, which is cottage people.” Craine’s execution of that vision appears on both covers in ways that are more “subversive” than immediately obvious, he says. The line work and tiny canoe paddles that surround the titles are inspired by the garment design of Muskoka-ready brands such as Roots and L.L. Bean.
The cover is for the second book in Vanessa Westermann’s Charley Scott mystery series.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
Many of Craine’s drawings begin as small, loose thumbnails, “so you’re not committing,” he says. He knew that if he could get the posture of Shudder Pulp’s chocolate lab just right, the image could easily centre on the animal. The rough sketches here eventually became an image that was sent to Cormorant for approval. “In this case, I was quite heartbroken,” he says, “because they sent me back to the drawing board again and again when I thought I had totally nailed it.”
Craine’s final pencil illustration of the cover is a good example of how an image can lead the eye. “You are trapped in this roller coaster of dynamism, because it’s a static moment but it’s also a period of time,” he says. “So the dog, and the whole drawing, is trying to get your attention to this one point in space. And then there’s other stuff going on in the water that makes you think, oh, what’s going on there?”
The whole process took about a month from start to finish.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
After scanning this final drawing, Craine added colour and lighting effects in Photoshop. (He prefers to do much of his work by hand, when possible: “It’s the one tool that I think I actually possess, which is making marks that have intention or hold some sort of emotional weight, which is something that AI doesn’t have.”)
From start to finish, the entire process took about a month. The final version – a zoomed-out version of Craine’s penultimate illustration – also includes an ominous shadow on the boardwalk. While Craine says he preferred the close-up iteration, “when you work at the pace that I’ve been working at for 30 years, every once in a while, I’ll get everything just right. But it’s a fleeting thing.”
The final iteration of the book cover is a zoomed-out version of Craine’s illustration, with an ominous shadow on the boardwalk.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail