You win some you lose some

I entered the Floris, Kelpies competition this spring and was this time unsuccessful. The energy required to keep pushing and applying for competitions and opportunities is really intense especially when you are already in a professional job, but it is also good for me to keep my working practice current and keep that humbling experience of failure and sometimes success.
The same as it is good for me to be a student again and understand what that feels like once more.

When I recently visited an exhibition by illustrators for the publishing house Floris, I realised that my cover was not their usual style and also realised that I should have researched their house style before entering. A hard lesson, but good lesson learned, my initial paintings had been softer and possibly more acceptable.
I was happy with the cover design I produced it was strong and exactly what I had intended, my first cover design.
'The Hill Of The Red Fox' is a spy story set on Skye during the cold war. For the new edition the publishers wanted it to appeal to girls and boys and so I focused on the fox of the title. Because of the cold war element of the novel I wanted the cover to be very red to represent Russia. The rock formations on Skye, to me, resembled foxes tails and so these were included on the back cover. I look forward to seeing the short listed entries which will be exhibited later in the year it is always so interesting to see different interpretations of briefs, either my own in the classroom or in competitions/ exhibitions like this.