Pride and Prejudice book cover

I was inspired to do a series of classic book cover illustrations after watching an episode of "Work of Art, The Next Great Artist" (http://www.bravotv.com/work-of-art) where the artists did just that, for Penguin classic books. The winning cover of "The Time Machine" done by artist John Parot was put into print by Penguin (http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143118411,00.html).

My first attempt is the Jane Austen classic, "Pride and Prejudice". I decided to put the iconic Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett on the cover in a very bold way, since they are both very bold characters. I wanted their profiles to be the focus of the cover, and to show their complicated relationship in the simplest way I could think of, which was to put them face to face. I've found in researching effective book covers that the majority are simple yet eye catching. A customer browsing a bookstore only has a second for a book to catch their interest on a shelf with hundreds of choices. So this is what I came up with. The hardest part for me was the color choice and type, because I'm still hesitant when it comes to graphic design. I'm currently doing other variations of this cover as well as coming up with ideas for other novels so check back!