The Scholastic Bin: Rough, Rejected & Unfinished Work

Kicking off my series of rough/rejected/unfinished work samples is the following set of artwork from various Scholastic projects. 

|Some of my finished, published work for Scholastic can be seen here.|

The first few images are rejected covers for The Insect Boy, followed by rough as well as finished pages from The Mathematics of Twins. The Mathematics... was a really fun book that I couldn't complete work on, unfortunately, due to a scheduling clash with a photography exhibition that I was then helping set up. The book was subsequently taken up and completed by another illustrator, but the publishers ended up using my cover design (but I'm putting it under the rejects pile anyway, because the character illustrations on the cover have since been replaced with the other illustrator's work).

This one was "too scary for younger readers". I prefer it to the final design, though.

The final cover design was a variation on this design.

This was my little tribute to King Kong. I wasn't entirely happy with the end result.

Back cover for the King Kong variation.

A rough thumbnail for the King Kong concept. It was, appropriately, shot down.

The Mathematics of Twins, Scholastic India. Text by Sheila Dhir.

I like the pages below. They're quite possibly the cutest illustrations I've ever done. It's a shame they ended up in the bin. Oh well.

A few rough drawings and explorations for The Mathematics of Twins:

Variations on the cover design:

Cover design variation

Another variation