Assignment 2: Water for elephants - a book by Sara Gruen

The book water for elephants was set in the great depression. I thought a great way to start my research would be to look at the styles of artwork that were around in this era.
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/artgallery.htm

I found the above website very useful as it contains many different images from the era. I particularly liked the works of Edward Hopper and Reginald Marsh. From this website I done further google image searches into these artists, and some other artists found on the above link.

I like how all of Edwards Hopper's characters seem to be deep in thought, and have a back story. And in all the images above although bright colours are used, they contain black and look drab.

I was thinking I could include the main character in the story (Jacob an old man aged 90) on my front cover, the book is all about the old man reminising, and flips between the past and present where he waits for his family to take him to the circus. And for the clothing of the character and room he is sitting him could contain elements from the images above.

Another part of the story is the circus life - I would definitely like to suggest the idea of a circus on the front cover on my book as it's such a major part of the storyline.

On google I managed to find some images of old circus banners and carriages:

http://www.circushistory.org/

The above posters could come in useful when looking at typography for my book cover. I could trace some letters in Illustrator.

The posters also contain show names/acts I could put on posters on the book cover. These images could be useful ideas for colour scheme and composition. I could try drawing some elements from these images, and others I have found and included in my sketchbook to see if they would work on my book cover.

I could relate these to an old man character reminising about the circus life.