The Night Gardener

This was the final rough for The Night Gardener cover, based on suggestions from our editor and art director, Christian Trimmer and Lizzy Bromley. In an earlier version we had the night gardener working on the tree, but Lizzy and Christian rightly pointed out that it was really William’s story and they chose a quiet moment of wonder to encapsulate the narrative.

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Having a solid rough to work from always makes the final art a lot easier. Lots of feedback from our editor and art director as well. Lizzy chose an absolutely beautiful typeface for the title.

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This image of the town is from our first rough dummy. The setting was originally going to be Victorian, but we ultimately decided to make the time period less specific. The charm of the houses and people in this image seemed to be pushing back against the general theme of the book as well.

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Here we really wanted to emphasize the idea of a glum and depressed neighborhood that undergoes transformation. The street is more ordinary, and we tried to make the people as sad and defeated-looking as possible.

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This was a rough of the cat tree from the same dummy. The Victorian lamppost is a holdover from that original setting. We weren’t sure quite where to put the tree still, hence the manicured grounds around it but the lack of any other specificity.

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Once we had moved away from the Victorian setting things started to fall into place. We decided the tree should be in an ordinary backyard and that the owner of the house should be a cat-lover who discovers the tree in the morning.

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