Book Cover Illustration: "Prove It, Josh"

Jenny Watson, a good friend of mine and co-member of the Victoria children's writing group, had released her first book September of last year titled, "Prove it, Josh". The book was published by Sononis for young readers ages 8-12. More details could be found here:
http://www.sononis.com/our-books?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=157&category_id=2
Not only is the book quite inspiring, it also nicely captures the struggles of a young kid who is dyslexic (among other things). I also liked that the book is set in British Columbia, involves sailing and gives a glimpse of life near/on the water. I highly recommend her book. Jenny is a great writer. She is an inspiration to all of us who know her. Jenny's blog and tumblr account could be found in the links below. (She posts very nice pictures).
http://www.jennywatson.ca/
http://jenny-watson.tumblr.com/

My illustration this week is of her book cover. Her book cover uses an actual photo of a boy on a sailing boat. She wanted to have an illustrated version, with hard edges and waves similar to the waves in Japanese paintings. I found this to be a great exercise. It got me browsing at books covers for middle grade readers and was amazed to find them mostly awesomely illustrated, have attractive color palettes and packed with high action. I realized, doing book covers is one whole market segment for illustrations in a way and some artists specialize in this area. Quite interesting.

Below are my initial sketches and the resulting illustration. I used brush and ink for the base drawing to produce the hard edge and colored it in Photoshop.

Jenny Watson's "Prove it, Josh" book (published by Sononis, Sept. 2013)

My initial watercolor sketches

Inked Drawing

"Prove It, Josh" illustration