Book covers I’ve created for publishers.
Well this has come a long way. It’s no longer a 3D render, but a more painted image. I still don’t have the painting effect down as well as I would like, but it’s getting there. Someday, I want to be able to just paint straight in Photoshop without having to rely on 3D programs for the basis of the image. I think things would go fast that way, in the long run. But for now, this is looking pretty good. We’ll see what the client says.
This is far from finished yet, but here’s what I’ve been working on this week, a book cover for a paranormal mystery. I need to refine the guy lurking in the background, plus I’d like to add some details to the woman’s dress, then change the lighting a bit to make this a nice sunset scene. Of course the biggest problem is the background image of the ocean. That horizon line doesn’t line up with the set or the characters at all! Once I’ve got a decent 3D rendering, I’ll be looking at converting the whole thing into a painted image via the wonders of Photoshop!
And that’s this week’s WIP 😉
I’m in the process of updating the art gallery with some of the cover art I’ve done this year. This was a book cover I did this summer for Best S&M Volume III, an anthology edited by the very talented writer M. Christian. When the publisher, Logical-Lust.com, and I tossed around ideas for this piece, we kept coming up with the standard images – a cropped photo of woman’s corsetted torso, a close up of handcuffs on a woman’s arm, etc. I hate the anonymous, cropped woman image. It makes it seem like BDSM is only for submissive women, specifically those who are too ashamed to show their faces and acknowledge what they enjoy. So I decided I wanted to do a fun piece of artwork, showing both a man and a woman laughing and having fun themselves, and maybe the woman is the one in charge here, or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter so long as all parties involved are having a good time. With all those elements in consideration, this is the cover I came up with.
The image was first rendered in DAZ Studio, then taken into Photoshop for postworking and effects.
Here’s the latest cover I’m working on – Pilgrim for Love by Anna Austen Leigh. The brief I got made me think of Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, the really racy ones, with a love story thrown in for good measure. The reference material the author sent made me think of wood cuts and prints, so I did some fancy fiddling with Photoshop to come up with a woodcut sort of look in black and white. Then I colored the individual pieces and added some aged paper texture to get the feel of an antique illustrated book.
This isn’t final yet, but I’m hoping it will be soon. The book comes out soon from Logical-Lust.
Love it when a book I did cover art for gets released. Evelyn Applegate’s Land of a Thousand Dances is now available in ebook format from Logical-Lust. Here’s the cover I did for it.
I’m very pleased with the way this one turned out, and I’m looking forward to reading Evelyn’s book.
I’m currently working on some cover art for Logical Lust. This time around I’m trying to avoid using the 3D models from DAZ except for reference purposes. So far, seems to be working okay. It may take me a little longer to do the cover, but the result looks far better than the airbrushed Poser images that are so common to ebook covers these days.
The background is a simple combination of gradients and photo textures, and will probably be reworked as this progresses, but for now I like it.
Will continue to post shots as I work.
I’m pretty proud of this piece. It’s a book cover for a client of mine. The author and I discussed doing a noir-style cover, sort of roughly painted, showing a dangerous woman looking into a mirror, with various mementoes of her life scattered on the dresser. This actually started out as a 3D render via DAZ Studio, and then went through a great deal of work in Photoshop to get the painted effect. Here’s the 3D render if you want to see the difference between the two.
One of these days, I’m going to learn how to straight up paint a cover like this. I did paint a few details in, here and there, and I collaged in a few pieces onto the dresser.
So, what do you think? Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Let me know!