The Madness of Light (Book Six) Cover Art
Book six. I'm really getting there. Before the first draft was even finished, I did the cover. I've been sitting on this post for a few months now because The Madness of Light is proving to be as complex and tricky as I knew it would. I also knew exactly what I wanted out of the cover for this work. Which was a far simpler task than actually writing the thing.
Like Expansion Expression, the cover is concrete. What is being represented is a stylistic interpretation of one of the Primordial Essences. This one is the Spider of Light. A representation of order. Maybe. It's all a blur.
The original artwork, before filters/text additions:
How I made it:
Very simple process. I took pastels, paint, and pencil to a piece of white paper, giving it that weathered background look that was unique to the Expansion Expression cover. Then I took another piece of paper or two and drew a sketch of a spider. After it looked about right, I cut the pieces out and then taped it onto the decorated paper.
And that was it. Done.
Spoiler alert. The seventh book is going to be basically the same except the spider is black (for dark).
It's not a complex cover, for sure, but it is direct and to the point. The typography was actually the most time-consuming aspect. The Spider was harder to work with in the step of where-to-put-the-actual-text. I tried diagonal between the legs and arms, above it all, and basically everything. I'm not a big fan of strange text orientations, so I went simple and bold. I liked making the 'madness' jagged to emphasize it. Maybe it's a bit corny, but yeah.
It's not my favorite cover art electronic wise, to be honest. I like it, but some of the other ones I'm more in love with, but it's really hard to choose among them. Electronic vs print is so different, though. This set of four is going to have a stronger effect when laid out as books. I haven't put together the print cover for this one yet as I don't have the final page count.
Basically: I'll have to wait and see how I feel about it really when the print is said and done. Which I'm working on...
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