Gorgeous! These mixed media pieces {painting and paper-cutting} are the work of Canadian artist/illustrator Shelley Davies. I had to double check with her about these covers… were they real New Yorker covers? I know she’s created work for the cover of Uppercase Magazine before, and she had a long career in TV, film, and animation working with some very cool clients/people. Clearly I had to ask. Turns out they weren’t final covers, but the story of their creation is just as cool. This is a chunk of the email Shelley sent back to answer my question:

“My New Yorker covers were made a few years ago for New Yorker art editor Francoise Mouly’s site ‘Blown Covers’, which she started around the time her book of the same name was published. Her office was filled with art from all her illustrators (for any given cover, she sends out a theme and they all deliver an idea or five, she picks one for the cover and then finished art is produced), and she put all the rejects into a book, with anecdotes to go with. On her site, she asked the world at large to submit ideas for her chosen weekly themes, just as her own illustrators do. It was a privilege to get my work in front of the High Priestess of art direction, and she even chose a few of mine to highlight. Alas, no real cover came from it, but I had a ball, I got really good at creating their masthead (every week I cut out a new one, in paper and by hand, life-sized).

Love. Ok, so now the only thing left to do is get Shelley on the real cover… what do you think New Yorker?