New Assignment: Book Cover for "Holes"

This month, our assignment came from Susan M. Sherman from Charlesbridge Publishing. We have been asked to design a book cover for Louis Sachar's Holes. It should be fresh and graphically strong. I thought it was interesting that she selected a book that was vastly popular as was its movie adaptation.She really challenged us to stretch and think about how to illustrate this story differently.

I began with the lizards because I'm a reptile lover but just couldn't get anything to work right. I tried it with the holes "raining" down on Stanley with a hot desert sun blazing down on him. Didn't read clearly. About 1:00 am,  I started doodling after looking at some of the artists that inspire me and came up with this sketch.

Played around with some filters in PS to make him look sort of mirage-like. As an after thought I added the lizard (which I need to redo).