BACKGROUND
I remember one of my first conversations with my now-wife was about her favorite book, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. When I eventually found my way into its pages at her suggestion, I was instantly enamored by the complex characters, themes of fate and chance, and hauntingly beautiful aesthetic. Morgenstern had only ever written the one book and wouldn’t write another book for almost a decade, so when The Starless Sea finally hit the shelves in 2019, Anna and I lapped it up greedily. A few months later, just when our enthusiasm had begun to calm somewhat, Morgenstern proposed a fan art contest, and well, we just couldn’t resist.
COLOR SCHEME 1 ("OWL KING"):
COLOR SCHEME 2 ("HONEY SEA"):
PROCESS & TECHNIQUE
Like The Night Circus before it, The Starless Sea is absolutely dripping with otherworldly atmosphere, its plot slowly dissolving into a surrealist day dream unlike anything I’ve ever read. We both decided early on to this project we would emulate the style of Art Nouveau movement, as hardly anything else would manage to capture the imagery Morgenstern had managed to conjure within those pages. Anna created some sketches, and I took them into Illustrator to work my magic with the pen tool. Although by no means a perfect representation, we were both thrilled by the final result.
