Work Begins: PG6 Cover (Patreon)

In which I break out the water soluble oils (they are my compromise, since I don't have a properly ventilated studio for proper ones) to finish the final cover for Princes' Game. This is one of the few series where I feel like my covers are working as intended, so I don't feel much rush to replace them. And it's fun to finally "go home" to my very first love (oils!), even if it's not quite as perfect as the full-fatted version of the paint. :)

Anyway, we begin!

This one is the "Mostly Red" cover because it's ON FIRE. So I am filling in all the background bits, and paying attention to the rhythm of the color.

(You can see where the spine should go, about, in the middle of that stretched wing there.)

The really nice thing about doing my own cover art in this case is that I don't have to teach me stuff, like "don't make the back cover super high contrast, because it's going to have text on top of it." In this case, almost all the elements of the back cover are going to be suggested by the paint, not sharply delineated, because I don't want it to seize focus from the graphic design.

I paused here, because (an interesting problem I only have with oils) the light was fading and I can't use direct artificial light when working. The paint is too moist and too textured, and all I see are tons of tiny reflections, like sun on waves. Very annoying. >.>

Anyway. First build! This will probably need several days of work, spaced out because the paint needs to stiffen a little. If it's too moist it doesn't stay where I put it.

As I work, I put the photograph behind the cover mock-up, so I can get a sense for where I have to be careful with the values. As you can see I've got a lot of work to do yet!