I attended a workshop, and it was great!

Last weekend I joined a group of fellow illustrators and went to Studio Pilar for a workshop held by the talented and successful Gianluca Folì.
KABĀ: a Japanese word for shape that is used to indicate the dress of a book, in other words the book cover.
As you can see in my description above, my dream is to become a book cover illustrator. So this workshop was a must for me. And having followed Gianluca's works for a while, I had no doubts I had to go.

The workshop presentation was:
Work on the book cover project from the early stages: gather information, find keywords, use keywords, visual oppositions and final touches before creating the final image. During the workshop the participants will be challenged with real projects, requests and timelines. They will discover their own aptitude and method to cope with the work commissions.

So I spent 3 days at the studio and we worked on simulating real-life commissions and with Gianluca's help each of us found her way (we were 7 ladies) to produce a concept that would have worked and would have been approved by the art director.

the studio. picture by Studio Pilar.

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It's been an eye opening experience and I was so excited every day of the workshop that I wanted to come back over and over again, but, alas, the workshop was 3 days only.
It left me with the greatest sense of hope and a clearer vision of what I want my future to be.
And also the awareness that a lot of work and struggle and failure and more work are required to succeed. But I'd rather do all this instead of not even trying. That would be the real failure.

Below are 2 of Gianluca's sketches on the 2 covers I am working on.
Final images are yet to be created, so watch this space, I am currently working on them and will post them in the blog soon.

Can you guess the books?