Lizy Del BustoBook cover illustration concept
The Secret Garden
An original square illustration expanded into a fictional book cover concept.
Project details
The Secret Garden began as a standalone square illustration. After finishing the artwork, I wanted to explore how the same visual world could work in a different format, so I expanded the composition and adapted it into a fictional book cover.
The original idea
There was no client or predefined brief. I started with a character and built an imaginary garden around her, combining oversized plants, tiny creatures and playful details into a dense square composition.
The focus was simple: keep the character clearly readable while making the surrounding world feel rich enough to reward a closer look.
Sketches & development
The early drawings focused on the character’s pose, silhouette and the relationship between her body and the surrounding garden.
I tested different compositions before building the denser final scene around the central figure.
Once the composition was working, I refined the character and developed an earthy palette built around greens, warm oranges, pinks and muted natural tones, with contrast and colour keeping her as the focal point while the smaller elements built the world around her.
From square to cover
The original artwork was designed as a square composition. Instead of cropping or stretching it into a book format, I expanded the illustrated world around it.
New botanical elements, characters and visual details were added to create the vertical composition while preserving the balance and personality of the original piece.
The expanded version keeps the character and visual language of the original illustration while opening the composition into a vertical book-cover format.
In context
I applied the finished cover to presentation mockups to test how the illustration works as a physical object and at a smaller scale.
The Secret Garden is a fictional concept, not a published book.