A Clockwork Orange - Development

Been doing some paper-cut & pen drawings from my favourite bits of imagery. I'm quite fixated on this orange cross section as the eye as it includes an orange and  the eye links to one of the most recognisable / iconic scenes from A Clockwork Orange - where Alex has his eyes held open etc.


I'm enjoying the looks of these. I think the black linework works really well against the orange - it's striking, plus I got a lot of positive feedback in a peer crit about this. I'm sticking with an orange and black colour scheme because though it may be cliche, I think since the other imagery will be less so it helps identify the book in a way. Also orange is a pretty striking and youthful colour that fits the book and the target audience of younger adult readers.

 The paper-cut shapes especially when they're a little bit misaligned have quite a nice hand-crafted quality to them, which I like and would like to carry through to the final thing as I quite like the hand-drawn quality of one of the original book covers. I feel like doing something with a more modern style but still hand-crafted would pay homage to the books roots. I feel like this shouldn't be too polished, there should be something imperfect or unsettling about it to reflect the tone of the book itself.



Since I got a lot of positive feedback on one of my roughs that pictured the character of Alex on some orange stripes (intended to be prison bars) so I've done a bit of development on the character. In every drawing I have included the oranges as eyes as I just like the imagery, I think it's fun. When including more of the shoulders they're not really noticable either, so it's kind of just something extra to find on the cover.

I think the last drawing of Alex I did using black gouache is something I'll use on the cover. I'm pretty happy with it, the lines are smooth and the black is solid - I like the way the shadows look on it. The shade around the eyes definitely makes him look like a shady character, Not a nice man.