Alvaro
Tapia

Alvaro Tapia is a Swedish illustrator. He was born in Växjö, Sweden after his parents moved there from Chile. He draws characters for computer games but never uses a computer. He loves dragons and monsters but finds role-playing games boring.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Alvaro Tapia was 21 years old and had only a few years at Konstfack behind him when his first illustrator assignment was to create the cover for the Swedish translation of a British children’s book about a young wizard.

Tapia attended Konstfack, had a past in the role-playing world, and now worked full-time as an illustrator for a computer game company. Perfect for the assignment, thought Cecilia Knutsson and Annika Seward Jensen, who had been tipped off about Alvaro Tapia by a colleague. Maybe a touch of gaming on the cover could entice boys to read the book? The illustrator himself was surprised to even be asked.

A publisher thought I was right for the job. I had never done covers before. While I was working at a games company, I figured out how to paint.

When they called from Rabén & Sjögren I thought: “Wow, that’s a publishing house!” So ​​I said yes. But then I realized that I couldn’t paint. Drawing was more my thing.

He got his hands on the English edition of Harry Potter and was a little disappointed that the cover looked like something that belonged in a children’s book.

Why couldn’t it look like all the fantasy that I like? My covers aren’t for any particular audience. I wanted to do something cool that reflects the content.

The only requirement the publisher has is that Harry Potter should be included, but that’s a limitation called “sufficient,” says Alvaro Tapia.

I wasn’t used to painting in color. So I felt, “I have to get started with this and learn.” So I took acrylic, because it dries quickly. But unfortunately it was also really hard to hold the palette, because it dries in. And I don’t have good color vision, so I got lost in the green, and had to find my way back every time, he says.

If you look closely at the cover of the first book, you might be able to see that it wasn’t really planned. I painted back and forth, left and right. I was really unsure, he says.

About the train’s chimney:

I thought: they are wizards and live in a parallel world. Then it is colored by completely different things than ours. They probably have a completely different time perspective, and maybe in terms of style they are a little more archaic. Like the 19th century. They don’t care about modernity, they can still do everything without machines. So if they make trains, they don’t look like our trains, but rather are powered by magic. I imagined a flashy train, like the ones in Russia in the 19th century. I saw in my mind that they had samovar-like chimneys.

Tapia says he focused on trying to get the magical steam engine right: 

Being given my first ever commission for a book cover I was blown away by the visual potential of the story. All the hidden layers of lore waiting to be expressed visually. My efforts all ended in trying to define the Hogwarts Express – the symbolic link between the mundane and the magical. What would a train made by wizards look like? Maybe like an eastern samovar, driven by magical aromatic herbs? A hint of the global presence of Wizardkind. In the end I had to put Harry in front – obscuring most of my efforts.’

Why it says 9 3/4 on the train:

It was a fun detail from the book that I wanted to include. But I didn’t want to have to paint the entire platform, so I made a kind of chalkboard on the train. I thought it would be self-writing and show which platform it was leaving from.

The red train emerged, the green sky and the smoke. And then in the middle of the illustration – Harry.

“The Swedish Harry Potter” is inspired by the younger brothers of one of Alvaro Tapia’s friends. Alvaro himself had the same glasses as Potter at that age.

At first I tried a bit of a big head and a narrow neck for Harry, because then it would be a bit cute, like a children’s book. But as an alternative I also sketched out a style that was more realistic.

I took note of what the book says about him being dressed sloppily. So the clothes are a little too big and the shirt hangs down outside the sweater.

Why Harry is floating:

It was a composition thing. You either paint a scene that happens, or you do it like American fantasy and throw in imagined scenes. I did something in between: there’s the train, there’s him, and then it’s magic.

Detail: Severus Snape - professor of Potions at Hogwarts with unidentified witch.

Detail: Trelawney-professor of divination and professor Dumbledore.

It works well. I was pleasantly surprised, it turned out better than I thought.

I was part of “the big bang” when it started. But I didn’t know how to paint properly, as I remember, but I figured it out when I did the first cover.

When the illustration started to become ready, he went to the publisher and scanned it in. That was lucky. Because shortly afterwards, the original disappeared forever.

The original drawing for the cover of the first Harry Potter book is still missing. Tapia left it on the bus in Nässjö when he proudly wanted to show it to his mother.

It had been scanned before for marketing purposes. I had to go through the humiliation of telling them that the original was gone. The book was printed with the scan of an unfinished image.

Not many people know this, but I lost the original for the first cover. I was going to show it to my mother in Lund and it got lost on the way there. But luckily it had been scanned, so it could be used. But the first cover is kind of unfinished, says Alvaro Tapia.  

I was going home to my mother in Lund and had the original in a folder in the luggage compartment of the bus. But when I changed buses, I forgot to bring the folder.

For me it wasn’t clear. He can’t wear a white shirt, after all.

He still hopes today, 20 years later, that the original is somewhere in Sweden.

Stressful! I did the covers in the evenings after work. But since I was young, I managed it. I didn’t have anything better to do anyway.

The publisher liked the drawings anyway because they offered Alvaro to do seven covers for a series of books about a guy called Harry Potter.

Alvaro Tapia has never had any contact with author JK Rowling. 

She supposedly said she liked the Swedish covers. But she probably says that about everyone.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Detail: Hidden homage to artists grandfather that passed away the same year the cover was comissioned. “En Memoria the Chen” - Spanish for “In memory of Chen”.

It’s my favorite. It syncs best with the book.

My personal favorite. I tried things that I knew were forbidden on covers: for example, having overflow images. Here the face is cut off, and you don’t see the whole Phoenix. But I thought it gave the feeling that the image continued outside the cover. It was a small personal victory that I managed to do it and that no one stopped me. And it is very decorative.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

And the English publisher didn’t exactly make it easier for Tiden to meet the Swedish fans’ longing. Before the release of the third book, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” Bloomsbury refused to send any manuscripts until it had been released on the British market.

Cecilia Knutsson: They only sent one copy by regular mail, the day it was released. So I had to go to Akademibokhandeln or Science Fiction Bokhandeln and buy one copy each for myself, the cover designer and one for the translator and then send them off straight away. It was very unusual... and of course difficult for us.

It was terribly hard to do. I painted over everything the day before it was due and made a new picture in the evening.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

It’s fun to vary it a bit and include Ron and Hermione too.

It was also a pain, where I repainted the entire front the night before leaving. Somewhere around 2:00 in the morning I painted all over and didn’t sleep until I had left it. And it didn’t turn out so well.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

A warm psychedelic background contrasts the black-winged thestral and Harry’s combative gaze.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Outlined in red is a secret message hidden in the cover design by the artist in 2005. Intended for the mother of his child.

I’m very happy with this one, mostly because it’s a tribute to Axel Gallen-Kallela, who made paintings from the Finnish national epic Kalevala. I had a little more confidence in that one.

All over the picture is my daughter’s mother’s name, Helena. The letters are in a row, blocked out, so if you find the first one, you’ll find the rest. But you have to look really hard to see it. I didn’t want it to be visible, because I thought it could cause problems, so I hid it very well. It was the most mischievous.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

But the seventh and final one? Alvaro Tapia did it in collaboration with his colleague Peter Bergting, after a late change from the publisher that required digital coloring. 

My lines were drawn and were to be printed against a black background – as a finale. But the weekend before it was due to be finished, the publisher decided that it should be in colour, and I didn’t have time for that in two days. So then Peter Bergting got my sketches and I described how the colours should be. He drew and coloured instead of painting the picture, as I had done. That’s why the style is different.

After Harry

It’s great that they’re still out there, but I’m not happy with them, it’s a bit painful.

What would you have done differently if you had to do them over again?

I had tinkered with the eyes and fingers and stuff. Changed the hair and stuff.