In The News
Limited Editions of Harry Potter Cover Art by Mary GrandPre Now Available
Cover ArtLeslie: What part does J.K. Rowling play in all of this?
Mary: She looks over the sketches, and puts her ideas, her two cents in. She has always been such a pleasure, very easy to work with, always right on board with everything we've done.
Leslie: I'm sure lots of fans want to know, what was your favorite Harry Potter cover?
Mary: (pause) I'd have to say "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (book 7). It was the most mature. It had this dramatic explosive point. I did love them all, but the last one was definitely my favorite.
Leslie: I saw "The Devil Wears Prada", and was surprised they referenced you. What did you think of that? (in the movie, prepublication copies of the book are attained for Meryl Streep's kids to read, supposedly from the cover artist)
Mary: An art director friend of mine told me i had to see the movie. Definitely a work of fiction! It was funny, and surreal. In the real world that would never happen. i am absolutely sworn to secrecy. It did make me laugh, but the Potter thing is so exposed, I've become immune to it... I"ll be watching tv and see a shot of a poster or a piece of my art for the books. Or at the grocery store... People love Harry Potter so much, you see it everywhere!
Leslie: I know you love mermaids. You told me you used to draw them all the time as a child. How did you get started drawing, what got you interested, and when did you know you were an artist?
Mary: Growing up, we used to get National Geographic magazine and i loved looking at the women from all over the world. I loved the African women, they were so beautiful and so different from my experience--their faces, the beadwork and patterns in what they wore, it inspired me. i loved drawing things i wasn't familiar with firsthand--whether they were real or imaginary, they seemed more interesting.
Leslie: What about the magical element that seems the imbue much of your work?
Mary: I remember as a child, my favorites were Peter Pan and Snow White. The first characters i remember drawing were Mickey and Minnie Mouse and i got lots of praise and encouragement to continue drawing. i thought, "i must be good at this!"
Leslie: It must be great to have always been encouraged in your art. It doesn't always happen that way.
Mary: My parents always supported my love for art. I do remember later in life someone close to me, an artist, saying "You'll never amount to anything" which I'm glad to say just made me work harder! but now i only surround myself with positive people who support what Ilove to do.
Leslie: A lot of people are huge fans of your art. when did you know you were a success, that you'd made it?
Mary: I don't know if i feel like I'm there yet. To me success is something very personal. it isn't about how other people view me or my art, it's about how i feel about the work. i don't feel like I've done my best work yet. I do think it's coming into focus.
Leslie: That's really exciting. I look forward to seeing whatever you'll be doing next!
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I’m not going to lie… I like the print I bought for a quarter of the price much better. It is signed and there were only 200 of them. I feel like her Harry Potter works that were not used as book covers were better.
I can’t wait until the Half-Blood Prince one is released; that one’s my favorite cover.
Cool! I love Mary’s work, and you can see the artistry change as the books get progressively darker and more mature. I liked the interview, too, it’s interesting to find out about Jo’s involvement in the process and to hear DH is Mary’s favorite cover. These prints are the kind of thing that everyone wants but no one can afford because they’re SO EXPENSIVE!! I saved all their little mini pictures, though. It’s great to finally see the art as one expansive piece, uninterupted by text. We love you, Mary!
Actually, Nick, I would have to say that considering what it is—signed, 11×25, without the titles/text, $425 sounds pretty reasonable to me. Not that, as a teen, I have that money, but they could easily get away with charging quite a bit more.
Maybe I’ll drop some hints to my parents when the last three are released… those are my favorites. (Although, looking at it in full, POA looks quite nice.)
“Leslie: I saw “The Devil Wears Prada”, and was surprised they referenced you.” “Mary: Definitely a work of fiction! It was funny, and surreal. In the real world that would never happen.”
I don’t get why she’s surprised. It’s a great part of that story and it translated really well for the movie. I bet it does happen in real life maybe not in Harry Potter’s case with other book for sure. I wonder if the interviewer knew it was actually a book and it came out in 2003 before OotP.
She is an interesting artist from what I saw on her site but I really don’t like her Harry Potter covers. When I see them, they just don’t look right. It’s as if they are one of the translated versions.
I’m glad to hear that her favorite cover was Deathly Hallows. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and have never changed my mind. My second favorite was Order of the Phoenix. My least favorite was Goblet of Fire. I just think that Harry has a stupid expression on his face that doesn’t reflect the darker turn the series took starting with that book.
LOL at the ‘blurb’ for PoA: they’ve spelt ‘impoverished’ with an ‘e’ instead of an ‘i’!! They’re quite expensive, particularly if one wanted the whole set.
I’d really like someone to bring out whole sets of the art works of various different country’s covers – preferably not signed and very limited editions, so that they’re at an affordable price for most people – I’ve long had a desire to make myself a set of pictures, each one composed from all the covers of one set.
Last Summer I bought a complete set of 7 Color Prints of the Harry Potter Book Covers as one of the perks that Books of Wonder did for their customers who bought either 2 copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, or the Deluxe Edition.. Unfortunately, due to the large demand I did not get Mary GrandPre’s signature in the Deluxe version, but a Book Sticker with her signature on it. that I could place in the book if I wanted to.
So if you can’t afford the prices for the prints – there are 1,000 customers who bought the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with the extra addition of the Limited Edition full color prints the approximate size of what is mentioned in this Article. Possibly someone will sell theirs on EBAY – but use caution. The Prints feature no written words on them, except the name of the Book in the Art, and in small print on the lower white boarder with more information about the print.
This is one way you can get to see the full complete Art of the Covers. Worth the headache and trouble that I went through to get them. Books of Wonder no longer sells these print sets – It was just for customers who ordered before July 21, 2007.
What would be great to have come out is an Art Book Featuring all the various covers and Illustrations around the World, and one specific Art Book focused on Mary GrandPre’s Work. Even if it’s a limited edition, it would give people a chance to see her Harry Potter work in full. Possibly this book would show part of her Art process and sketching of ideas, alternative versions of Illustrations, even Art that did not make it into the final versions of the released Harry Potter Books.
I hope they do some limited edition prints of the UK book covers too. I’ve always perfered them.
I don’t have the U.S. Edition of the seventh book so I haven’t seen it up close. But, I keep wondering which exact scene Mary GrandPre is portraying on the cover. The background, atleast, just doesn’t fit into any scene in the book. Is it supposed to be the Great Hall? With the curtains and the wood logs in front of them?
What are your thoughts?
VERY cool…!
I just ordered my set and was even able to get my favorite number of the 100. Thanks so much for posting.
If i only had 500 dollars…............................ oh but i love her work she is amazing and reading the intervies makes me like her even better. She seems very down to earth and i love what she says about success i agree completly. oh and i love mermaids to!! she should do a seen with the mermaids from Goblet.
I’m thrilled at the amount of response we’ve (artinsights) gotten for Mary GrandPre’s cover art limited editions. There is no world like the Harry Potter world for fans. Just to let you know the limited editions are color checked by Mary herself and signed by her, and the images are taken directly from the originals used to make the covers, in response to those who say they don’t look right, i’d say there’s a great deal of inconsistency when they print a gazillion books, these are what MGP intended them to look like, colorwise. as to the content, JKR has to have enthusiastic thumbs up for them to be a “GO”—so it’s definitely her vision on the cover. also, yes, MGP is totally down to earth and seriously one of the nicest people i’ve ever met. and she loves JKR so she must be pretty great too!
I fell so in love with the DH widescope book cover spread that I ordered the US version of Deathly hallows from UK (hated our UK cover). It is definitely Mary’s best Potter work by far. Epic and very biblical. It had tones of a michaelangelo painting (compare the posture of harry and Michaelangelo’s godly subjects for instance – they’re similar). I hope I will have enough saved to buy Mary’s DH poster when it is released.
$425 U.S. says they’re all bought by now. laughs
Cool! Me want badly ;-) I loved looking at the entire cover art for the first two books. Those are the two I have in paperback, so I never realized that there was so much more to the cover. Especially CoS. Who knew Ginny and Ron where hanging on the end?
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