I've been heavily immersed in a project of illustrating a children's book as of late, a sprawling fantasy adventure from author Rita Auricchio called Angel Castle. This project has left me a lot of room to get creative with character designs and things of that nature. While I'm obviously not going to share all of the illustrations I've completed for the forthcoming book, I am really excited about the work I've put into it and so I've decided to share 3 of the 10 illustrations here.
Today, I'll be sharing the first of the 3 illustrations, this one depicting the character of Justina, a chauffeur butterfly who assists the fairies of Angel Castle during their time on Earth. Justina is often described for her beauty and I tried to capture that elegance in a way that children and adults could both understand while at the same time capturing in her an alien quality that would maybe distance her from the humans yet make her perfectly acceptable to the fairies. The design of Justina came to me as a creature so cosmically beautiful and graceful that a human rooted in our world might have trouble comprehending her gorgeousness...or possibly even find her unnerving.