We challenge you to design (with Inkscape) a cover for a book you enjoy, and to post your finished artwork below. Everyone is invited to join in!

All entries to be submitted by 31 January 2022.

Please do spread the word!
#inkscapechallenge

Also, there are more challenges to come (next one starts 1st February 2022), so put it in your calendar.

Instructions/Information

• To submit your artwork, scroll to the bottom of the page and while logged in, click the paperclip (bottom-left) to upload your image, add a description in the text box (optional) and click "Submit Reply".
• If you'd like to post work-in-progress artwork, create a thread in the "Work in Progress" section of the forum, and post your images there, with the title "January 2022 Book Cover Challenge WIP - [your artwork title]" (you are welcome to ask for help there if you get stuck). When finished, post the final graphic to this thread.
• This challenge will run from 1 January 2022 - 31 January 2022. There are no winners. These challenges are intended to inspire, to encourage you to share your work and to build a supportive community.
• You're encouraged to discuss and offer feedback/constructive criticism to others, but please be respectful.
• Most importantly, be creative, give your best, and have fun!

We look forward to seeing your entries!

Challenge entries (so far)

Original cover

@osdotsystem Thank you for your entry. Is it a flower in the centre? Top points for a swift creation. Happy New Year!

@pacer Well, octagons are used in Islamic designs, added it at the center. The center is a subtle representation of (animal) cells, a reference to life. The overall does looks like a flower but it was not my intention XD. 

Else it's also my first time dabling in background shapes with those weird blue things.

@osdotsystem Ah OK. Did you create the background manually or did you use tiled clones?

Manual distribute as i remembered tiled clones too late. Just with tiled clones, if i put a shape at the begining top left and one at the bottom right and select. Will it fill in between with the shapes?

Else i found the submit instructions a bit hard. I had to find the attach button on the left at the same level of submit reply. Just a note in case someone is wondering how to submit pictures.

For creating seamless backgrounds with tiled clones, this video may be useful to you: https://youtu.be/Dgsm-aqKcVs (the section on tiled clones begins at 7:42)

I have modified the instructions at the top of the page to help people when submitting their designs.

I'm from the South, so I get to share this. Some of my hest times as a child was with my grandparents, just being ourselves.

ken10001000

Some of my hest times as a child was with my grandparents, just being ourselves.

I can relate to that, miss those days. Thank you for the entry :)

Hi. For this month's challenge, this is a tribute to one of my favorite books. The character is taken from a picture of the movie based on the book, which I used as a reference. 📘

@mrks9 Clean, clear and the contrast is relevant to the story. Thank you for another great entry!

@pacer Thank you very much. Atticus Finch is a reference for me, despite the posthumous publication of "Go Set a Watchman", which describes him to us in a completely different way. I'll stick with Scout's memories of him while growing up. 💙

@pacer By the way, your design is amazing!!

Marcos, this is a great book cover, work of art. Thank you!

@ken10001000 Thanks to you, that's very kind of you.

This cover is a celebration of my hometown that is about to celebrate its first 500 years since it was founded.

@damilsan That looks beautiful! You must be very proud to come from such a fantastic place! A lovely cover. Thank you for sharing!

@damilsan Nice cover, beautiful city. Thanks for sharing 🤙

A simple cover and very repeated in a thousand ways, but I like it because it reflects Sawyer's personality very well, if you have read the book. I wanted to get an "inside out" effect on the fence, but I didn't achieve it 😞😂

The pot of paint looks great!

Kernighan and Ritchie - C programming language

@mrks9 Another fun design. Could you elaborate on what effect you were looking for on the fence?

@samoppenheimmer Professional and appropriate. The topic of the book can be seen from a distance, and I believe the style of the cover would appeal to the reader. A book I could benefit from reading. Thank you for your entry.

@pacer Its a real book and WIP. The original by Kernighan - Ritchie has sold more than 2 million copies & remains a cornerstone of Computer Science

@pacer Thank you. Yes, of course. I wanted to give the visual sense that the fence could be part of the book and yet not. I think this image I made some time ago (Thomas Danthony fanArt) to which I added this kind of effect explains it best. Look at the bottom of the frame.😊

@mrks9 I understand perfectly now. What you could use to create such an illusion is some way to break the book away from the fence visually. I would use distance as your differentiation.

What you could do is introduce a man or woman painting the fence at reasonable proportion to the fence; then; to bring the book out of the shot, a hand, in proportion with the book, could be grasping the book. This gives the illusion that the book is being held in front of the fence, while the fence on the book is seemingly adjoined to the scene.

Apologies for the poor sketch (I used a blunt crayon) ;)

@pacer That is an excellent idea, thank you very much. Maybe I'll try it later, because it would take me time and I'm already engaged in another cover 😉 Thank you for taking the time to make the drawing 🤘

It's hardly noticeable, but I changed the stars on the flag for cotton flowers, it seemed relevant to the story. For the face I used Trace Bitmap. I don't know how to draw faces without taking forever 😊

@mrks9 Very Nice! I love how you incorporated so many features, yet the design still appears minimal.

If you want to draw faces quickly. You can place a photo in GIMP. Go to Colours > Posterise  and set the posterise level very low (2).

You can use that as a reference image to help you figure out the shapes to draw in Inkscape.

@pacer Thank you, it was my intention to give information without overloading the image. And thank you very much for another excellent tip that I will certainly put into practice in the future 🤙💙

This "book idea" came to me today.

A book on "Inkscape Haiku" ... art and designs made by Inkscape users. The simple 5-7-5 form reminds me it is to okay to be "simple" and creative. Good stuff can come from that.

Here's my entry for the challenge. I made a cover of one of my favourite fantasy novels, Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay.

I considered creating a few different scenes from the book, but decided to go for a starry night sky that showed the two moons in the world (emphasising the 'fantasy' aspect of the novel.) The characters visit a castle in the highlands at one point, and that was my inspiration for including the castle silhouette to provide a point of interest. The little glass with blue wine at the bottom is something mentioned several times in the story and it symbolises remembrance, which tied in with the quote.

The text on the back is copied from Goodreads. I also added the publisher logo, just to make it look authentic, and - since Inkscape has a barcode generator - decided to include one of those too!

Had a lot of fun with this! 😄

@z3z This is excellent work. All done in Inkscape? Good use of light and perspective to show depth. You clearly have talent for these things.

Ah, you're too kind! Thank you. Yes, everything was done in Inkscape, though I traced a couple of elements from photos (the castle and the rough mountains shape - didn't trust my art skills to create these from scratch!) But there are no bitmaps used in the image at all. Everything's vector. I used the Spray tool along with the Stars and Polygons tool to create the approximately one gazillion stars that are included. Inkscape was starting to slow a little, but I use a lot of layers when making stuff like this and I hide anything that doesn't need to be visible at that particular moment. If you're using lots of gradients and blurs, hiding layers helps dramatically.

Tiagana is most awesome!

@z3z This is amazing, impressive work 🤯. Thanks for sharing 👋

osdotsystem

Tiagana is most awesome!

Agreed! I love all of Kay's work. He's my favourite fantasy author.

mrks9

This is amazing, impressive work 🤯. Thanks for sharing

Thank you so much. I'm happy you like it!

One more cover for the collection 😊

@mrks9 Very well illustrated (I like the subtle details). Text is on the small side, but your submissions do appear to be increasing in quality. Thanks for another great entry!

Thank you. Yes, it' s true, the text is small, I agree. I didn't like how it would look if I enlarged the typewriter and since there were few elements, I decided to compromise the size of the text 😞😊

mrks9

One more cover for the collection

I like this a lot! It's a great visual for the novel.

I understand what Pacer's saying about the small text, but I think it works really well. The blood is the initial eye-catching feature (red always demands attention) and from there your eye naturally goes to the axe which gives the author's name. Then you go down to the typewriter, where the piece of paper with the title is the brightest part, so again your eye is drawn to it. No need for large text when the author and title can be cleverly worked into the other elements on the cover, and these elements also give some clues about the story. The whole thing is really well done!

I'd have included a drop or two of blood on the axe. That's my only criticism. 😉

@z3z Thank you very much for the feddback, I'm glad you like the image. Regarding the blood on the axe, I thought about it, but I decided not to put it in red, but to stain it in a more subtle way, although it is hardly noticeable if you don't enlarge the image 🙂

Last cover. The match idea is not original, but I had to include it 😉

@mrks9 Brilliant in all areas. I'm drawn in immediately. Thanks for another great entry!

mrks9

Last cover. The match idea is not original, but I had to include it

I'll simply repeat what Pacer said. It's brilliant!

@pacer  @z3z Thanks a lot. Very much appreciated 😊

well, I have no idea how to design. I mean which software do I use. 

Given that this is an Inkscape forum... you'd use Inkscape, yes?

Suspect you are a spammer. I hope I'm wrong.

yes.

I'm not a spammer dear. 

@jhona As stated at the top of this post, "We challenge you to design (with Inkscape) a cover for a book you enjoy". Please read through the instructions in the first comment of the thread, and have a go at designing a book cover. I look forward to seeing your entry.

Here is my entry. A simple version of the book "The Long Earth" by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.

@mrks9 @doctormo @jhona @z3z @osdotsystem @ken10001000 @samoppenheimmer @damilsan

Thank you all for the participation in the challenge(s), for your terrific January entries, and for the support offered to each other. I love seeing your Inkscape Illustrations, and I hope to see each one of you in this months challenge: https://inkscape.org/forums/competitions/inkscape-challenge-1-february-2022-28-february-2022/

@pacer I will struggle to find inspiration for this month's topic. And I'm afraid that if I do, I'll come up with something quite cynical 😂

@mrks9 Cynical is fine, of course. Anti-Valentine's Day cards are more than welcome ;). Don't let us down lol.

@osdotsystem @damilsan  @samoppenheimmer @jhona @doctormo @z3z @ken10001000 @mikaeln @mondspeer @mrks9 @DG-RA

The March (Spring) challenge is live:

https://inkscape.org/forums/competitions/inkscape-challenge-1-march-2022-31-march-2022/

See you there!