Bloomsbury's illustrated edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince picks up the series after Jim Kay, with new artwork by Levi Pinfold.
Levi avoided anything resembling the films, working instead from the descriptions in the text and imagining the characters in his head - many ended up resembling friends and family, including a pair of house elves who look remarkably like his own children. He kept every detail true to the text, from who sits where to how the architecture of Hogwarts works inside and out. 'The greatest challenge,' he says, 'was designing Hogwarts where all the towers were placed correctly, and getting the windows just right in the hospital wing so it made sense from inside and out.'
His influences include John Howe, Alan Lee, medieval painting, Dutch genre painting, the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites - a self-confessed painting nerd whose love of unsettling books suits the darker subject matter here.
See more of Levi Pinfold's work at arenaillustration.com.
