Puffin Book Cover for "James and the Giant Peach"

Brief: produce a book cover for Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach that would not look out of place both on the shelf of an upmarket bookstore or at the local supermarket.

I explored many idea pathways for this brief, starting with:
The Characters:

The Peach:

 The seagulls and the sky:

Developing the Cover:

Further work:

After receiving feedback, I was asked to go back to my nighttime peach scene. I worked more on this and produced another, completely different cover: