Banned Books

A series of 3 illustrated book covers including Catch-22, Slaughterhouse 5, and A Clockwork Orange.

To celebrate banned books week, I illustrated a series of banned book covers. I found common threads between the books in elements of a sort of sci-fi paranoia and violent intrigue. I based each cover off of an important symbol from each book, altering it in a way that referred to important plot developments. For Slaughterhouse 5, this was a horse, drawn on to imply a carousel, with one horse breaking free like Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time. For Catch-22, a wheel of toy soldiers, replacable cogs in the machine, with one soldier in white, falling through the air. For A Clockwork Orange, a bust of beethoven, Alex DeLarge’s favorite composer, with one broken, referring to the bust broken over Alex’s head during an attempted robbery, and his sanity destroyed in government treatment. In addition, I decorated the covers with additional, hand-drawn elements of small, important plot details, scattering them to reflect these convoluted narratives.