Book cover Design for The Patron Thief of Bread

Last year, I was contacted by the U.S. independent publisher CandleWick Press about designing the book cover for Lindsay Eagar’s new title: The Patron Thief of Bread. The commission includes a full coloured flat jacket ( they would like to see 3 drafts first ) and four interregional boarder designs in black and white for each chapter. I finally received the book from the publisher this week and it looks amazing in hand! I so decided to share my design approach with anyone who is interested in the making.

Research & Sketches

In the very beginning I've been given the full manuscript from the author, which doesn’t always happen. Most of the time the agency or author will provide you a summary of the story but in this case it was really helpful for me to have a over all grasp of the mood, world setting and the plot.

The Patron Thief of Bread is a story about tale of love, self-discovery, and what it means to be rescued, through the difficult orphan life of an eight-year-old girl named Duck, who was raised by a roving band of street urchins, one day found herself unexpectedly had become a patron thief in the bakery. The story takes place in a little town with an abandoned cathedral ruin ( with gargoyles on the top) adjacent to a winding river in medieval-era rural France. The town is small but bustling, with marketplaces, stores, and the bakery where the story takes place.

The initial drawing is shown below. I started by experimenting with all the elements Lindsay asked me to include for the cover. I like the gargoyle on the back, but the composition of the front half just doesn't seem as intriguing as it could be.

For the 2nd draft, a birds-eye view of the town as seen from the top of the cathedral ruin, with Duck standing on top of it, I opened the image after moving the gargoyle portion to the front cover. This version immediately felt more dynamic and interesting. I nearly feel like the wind is blowing in the scene because of the slanted angel and the birds. Even while I liked this second draft, it still seemed like our eyes were simply following Duck into the book spine and stopping there. Readers typically only glance at the front cover at first, so I'll need something to help them lock the glazing.

The monologue of the gargoyle in the book was written in a beautiful style that gave me an enteral sense of sorrow. Years after years, it stood by itself, all by itself, watching the passing of the mortals and longing for the things that were no longer there for it. I really love this folklore story-telling style, I was wondering how can I convey this feeling with drawings.

So I did more research at this point, looking for a solution to make the book cover less straightforward about the content and more expressive of the feeling. Something that makes reader wonder. It happened to me a few days ago I saw a collection of movie poster designs by Olly Moss. The double exposure design, which combined the essential elements of a movie with iconic scenery within the shape, really inspired me.

So in the 3rd draft, instead of giving Duck a face, I drew a silhouette of her to frame the town and surroundings. I hope the suggestiveness will provide the young readers enough information on the protagonist while still leaving room for their imagination, making it easier for them to relate to her story.

A few years ago, while developing my indie game LUNA, I also grew to love the ancient / mediaeval manuscript border designs, apparently this illustration was seen by people from CandleWick Press and that’s why they contact me at the first place. So I thought it could be great to add a beautiful border to the cover to give it a hint of the mediaeval era. I also broke up the layers with the birds, keeping the back cover with simply a quiet morning image of the town and bakery, and used a more vibrant twilight colour palette for the front, when the sun was setting and the town, rivers, and gargoyle were illuminated. As a result, this is how the 3rd draft looked.

Finalize & Detailing

It was a relief that later, when the author and art director Matt Roeser both chose the third design, we all adored the style and, with more assistance from Lindsay, she gave me the pieces that might be used in the border. The same concept also guided the placement of seasonal objects and story-related items in the header of each chapter. The challenging part was over, and this was when the fun started!

A detailed illustration needs a lot of references, in this case, anything from gargoyle design to French medieval town architecture. It’s funny that I used to think that all illustrators just KNEW how to draw everything from memory and that using references was somehow cheating? But turns out I was an idiot and everybody uses reference. References are crucial if you want to improve your drawing skills. Here are some of the sources I consulted to finish the illustration.

The final cover was completed after some tweaking and adjusting. Even though they initially appear to be there only for decoration, I adore how each object on the border refers to a specific section of the story. I hope the reader will understand what each of them refers to when they close the book's cover after finishing it.

Overall I really enjoyed the whole process and appreciated having the opportunity to design for this wonderful book. I’d be really happy if you might find anything usefully in this blog. It’s out and you can find it where you usually shop books! Happy reading!

Window with a View

Image by Jim Higham

Image by Jim Higham

Last summer, I brought my friends to visit Canterbury, one of my favourite town in England. Sadly at that time due to the recent lock down, the whole town was still shrouded in the gloom of the epidemic. Also it was a shame that they didn’t get to see the magnificent Christchurch gate ( image left ) due to its construction work. In the town centre, some shops were been emptied, some were permanently closed down. The few that still open were clearly struggling because of the lacking of tourists. It was really quiet but not the peaceful kind, there’s an unsettle feeling lingering in the air.

It was very sad for me because I often think about the time I spend there. In July 2003, I arrived the U.K. all by myself, attending a summer language course in Canterbury before join in the University. 18 yrs old me was full of energy, curious and optimised about the future. Ironically, it was when the Chaos of SARS ( the more deadly version of Coivd) had just went away back in China, who would have possibly thought that the world will change forever this time.

I remembered the streets were always full of life, shop buzzing with business, people sitting outside the cafes and restaurants. Me and my classmates would explore the town almost everyday, running on the cobble stone road and finding secret path to sneak into the cathedral. We spoke broken English but were having the time of our life, now all these feels like a million years ago. To me, there’s just something magical about this place, it had put a charm on my since day one.

It was the 2nd day of my arrival, I woke up early due to the jet lag, the morning sun just raised, the whole accommodation was quiet. Having nothing to do, I went to the communal kitchen searching for food. Then suddenly I heard a sound quite unusual, it took me a few sec to realized it was a church bell ringing from not afar. Although I’ve never heard a real church bell rang before, it still brought me a sense of odd familiarly and comfort.

I looked out of the window, it was a bright summer day. The people of the town not yet awake, no cars on the street, a postman walked around the corner and there was a cat crouching in the shade of an oak tree. Parts of an ancient city wall weaving inside out among the town houses, tree branch’s gently dancing in the wind with seagulls hovering overhead, crying loudly. The bell continued to ring. Not far behind the rows of old red brick rooftops and chimneys, I saw, suddenly an magnificent gothic cathedral rises from the ground, it’s many spikes shot into the heaven, reflecting the golden sunshine.

It was the first time I had seen such grand architecture, together with the bell and the town, everything felt just like came straight from a fairy tale story. Although I've seen sceneries like this from films and cartoons, but when it was right in front of my eyes, the surreal-ness still took my breath away.

I wondered for how many centuries, this view has remained unchanged. I thought about all the travellers from the past, who had come from far and wide to make the pilgrimage here. They might had also heard the same church bell rang, looked out of the window of their inn, and gasped by the same glorious view of the cathedral. But they were long gone, so how strange we could be connected like this, crossed time and space, sharing the same awestruck moment of tranquillity.

In couple of decades, I too will be gone. My thoughts, my deeds and everything that once made me, will cease to exist. Finally when those who once remembered me also gradually passes away, my existence will be completely erased from this world. People came and went, again and again. But the cathedral will still stand, like the anchor of time, a witness of changes. As a foreigner alone in a foreign land, I don’t know why can this moment feel so nostalgic.

Until today, I still don’t have an answer to this question. I only know it’s a moment in my life that I can never forget. I painted it down because it carries more than what any words can say.

Pied Piper of Hamelin

Although most of the modern-day fairy tale is a mixture of old folklores, the original versions are much gloomy and darker than the Disney adaptation. Among all these fairy tales, Pied Piper of Hamelin is the one that kept me fascinated for decades.

Postcard "Gruss aus Hameln" featuring the Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1902

Postcard "Gruss aus Hameln" featuring the Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1902

For those who never heard of it, here’s a brief summary.

The story is set in 1284 in the town of Hamelin, Lower Saxony, Germany. The town was facing a rat infestation, a piper dressed in multicolored clothing appeared, promised to get rid of the rats in return for payment. The mayor of the town agreed to a sum of 1,000 guilders. The piper accepted and played his pipe to lure the rats into the Weser River, where they all drowned. However, the people of Hamelin then reneged on their promise. The furious piper stormed off, vowing revenge. Then on July 26 of that same year, while the adults were in church, the piper returned and played his pipe. In so doing, one hundred and thirty children followed him out of town and into a cave and were never seen again.

In many different versions of this tale, the location of the disappearing of those children was sometimes Koppelberg Hill or Koppelberg Mountain. In some versions, there’re a few numbers of children left behind and the reason was silty differ. Some early versions of the story didn’t even have rats or Piper in them. But what unusual about the story of Pied Piper is that the key element of those vairy versions remains the same, the exact date of the story and the precise number of missing children. It makes this tale far more likely to be based on a real historical event.

A reconstruction of the window by Hans Dobbertin

A reconstruction of the window by Hans Dobbertin

Written Record

According to my research from the internet, the earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a stained-glass window placed in the Church of Hamelin c. 1300. The window was destroyed in 1660 but based on the surviving descriptions, a modern reconstruction of the window has been created by historian Hans Dobbertin. It features the colorful figure of the Pied Piper and several figures of children dressed in white. ( img left)

This window is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the town. Hamelin town records apparently start with this event. The earliest written record is from the town chronicles in an entry from 1384 which reportedly states:

"It is 100 years since our children left."

The Pied Piper's House in 1990.

The Pied Piper's House in 1990.

Also, on the stone facade of the so-called Pied Piper house in Hamelin, a half-timbered private residence dating to 1602 – similar to an even earlier one etched on the building’s window – bears explicit witness to the mystery. The inscription reads:

“A.D. 1284 – on the 26th of June – the day of St John and St Paul – 130 children – born in Hamelin – were led out of the town by a piper wearing multicoloured clothes. After passing the Calvary near the Koppenberg they disappeared forever.”

Although the stone façade dates from 1602, the building itself is much older. The façade was built for Mayor Hermann Arendes by the architects Johann Hundertossen and/or Eberhard Wilkening in the style of the Renaissance. The picture dated 1900 shows the adjacent legendary "Street without Music" with a view of buildings that no longer stand today. The stone structure pictured to the left of the Pied Piper's House is also no longer in existence.

Theories and hypothesis

There’re many theories and hypothesis behind the story, from the rat representing the black death or plague; to the children who were sold to a recruiter from the Baltic region of Eastern Europe, a practice that was not uncommon at the time; to the Pied Piper been likened to Nicholas of Cologne, who in 1212 led thousands of German children on the ill-fated Children’s Crusade; to the pagan midsummer celebrations Shaman hypothesis, due to the date of the children disappeared is also the date of pagan midsummer celebrations, some suggested it might be a cover story of a bloody massacred caused by local religion conflict between Christianity and Paganism.

As a kid, I was fascinated by the magical power of the Piper and wondered what kind of tune he played. Then when I grew up a little, I took the perspective of the missing children, I kinda envy them and thinking they’re better off from this town to some magical land, away from the adults who can’t keep a simple promise. But now, after had some understanding of how twisted our so-called real history could be, which mostly were written by the successors and some of the truth can never be found or forever lost, I started having an unsettling feeling in my stomach toward this fairy tale.

First of all, why the records of the event are so vague? If it was caused by war, plague, or natural disaster, there’s no reason to hide, plus I can’t think of any of these causes that will only affect children.

Secondly, children don't just leave home voluntarily, children can only be lead / sent away. 130 children is also not a small number, in order to let go of this many children, the parents must be given a good reason or force by an extremely strong force. From Hameln's town records, 'It is 100 years since our children left.' sounds like written by people who‘re still in deep mourning, but at the same time unable to be completely open about what exactly happened, as if the children just took off by themselves, which is very unlikely.

Among all the hypotheses, I’m very much lean toward the child emigration theory. It could be a remaining trace of a traumatized event in which the adults in the town of Hamelin, willing or not, decided to do to let go of their 130 children in a desperate situation ( could be famine, war, or plague ) in return for temporary stability. It was not rare in history that children and the old were first to be sacrificed during a famine. Or, it could be some financial exchange was provided by a third party - represented by the piper, in return for recruiting the man power they require. It can be the adults were actually believed that the children were off to a good land but only learned by the escaped few that all the children end up in slavery or dead during the war. This kind of explained in some versions, why there’re some lame children left behind, that only the healthy ones would be capable of human labor.

I believe the people of Hamelin were traumatized by this tragic event, however, the truth then forever removed from the official record by the authorities ( what the mayor represents) for a political and moral reason. People were also bound by this collective sin, they would like to moring for the kids but forbid by authority and inner guilt to speak about it. Maybe that’s why only a few vague oral records remain. The fact that the Hamelin street named Bungelosenstrasse ("street without drums") is believed to be the last place that the children were seen, ever since music or dancing is not allowed on this street can support my guess in some way. But we all know how the detail can be lost, interpreted, and tangles with other elements throughout history. Hundreds of years later, it becomes the tale of Pied Piper of Hamelin as we have known it today.

I started this drawing inspired by the Pied Piper of Hamelin last year. I was experimenting with some new illustration styles, so I studied the style of the Russian Art Nouveau illustrator, Ivan Bilibin. It has got so many details in it, I’ve been working on and off on this drawing for a few months can never finish it till last week. The children and piper were addressed as a shadowy ghost reflection in the river outside the town of Hemline, as grim as my thought on the tale of Pied Piper of Hamelin.