Hayatım: A term of endearment, meaning my life.
This is so far the most maximalist drawing I’ve ever produced, beating out the previous, Tapestry, which is also a Carpet Merchant illustration.
I wanted the 10th Anniversary key art to be a very complete collection of the motifs and characters in the story. The goal was to make everything look lush, with details that contain meaning and easter eggs for readers familiar with the story, while compositionally being easy to navigate.
Hayatım‘s art direction is inspired by James Jean’s covers for Fables; Kerascoët’s key artwork for their graphic novel Beauty; Dutch floral still-lifes and as always, the decorative aesthetics of 18th century European art, Uşak carpets and tiles.
The colour palette is primarily blue with select areas of red and gold, which are the signatures of the story.
The florals are rendered more realistic visually (to evoke the Dutch/European still life look), and are overlaid by stylised Turkish-tiles golden lineart.
The 10th Anniversary aesthetic is a fusion of 17th century Ottoman and 18th century European, through the lens of contemporary cartooning. Back then while I was able to successfully do these styles separately (enough to make each a graphic novel), I wasn’t very good yet at nailing a way to blend the two together into a united aesthetic. The updated title lettering also reflects this vision/artistic improvement.
This is truly the most beautiful cover I’ve ever seen. As a person who can’t draw, I love reading your writeups about the art. Makes me appreciate it in details instead of seeing it as one big picture and move on from it in 5 seconds. Also love that you wrote thoughtful alt text in the transcript for this complicated picture. Will reread this comic slowly and every commentary as well.
Thank you so much!! Glad you’re also appreciating the written content as well!