Book Cover Illustrations

Here’s the finished book cover illustration and layout for R.S. Guthrie’s novel Black Beast.

This project allowed the creation of another “contrasts” illustration involving a priest (different novels, but both central characters are Roman Catholic priests). In this case the evil is pretty apparent, and obviously provides the main contrast to the priest who’s unaware of the demon like creature watching him.

However since the character is armed with a cross/dagger in the story, I used it for another good/evil contrast by placing the dagger on the table so it is upside down to the viewer (to my mind that represents evil – perhaps not to all viewing the illustration). The placement also allows it to “point” toward the fiend rising up out of the smoke drifting off the book page.

Finally a lot of contrasts with light and shadows, traditionally often representing good/evil in Western thought.

The figure of the priest is based on an earlier illustration I did (posting it on my web site where Guthrie saw it when searching for a book cover illustrator for his upcoming book) and also served as my FaceBook profile picture for a time (since it is somewhat of a self portrait) Basically the new illustration kept the original figure pretty much the same with a black jacket being painted over the original white shirt. From there I “tailored” things so the garb resembled that of a priest. A spike dagger and the Black Beast were then created and painted into place for the final layout.

Guthrie’s book is headed for Kindle distribution, so it should be available soon; I’ll likely create another post about it when it becomes available. Below is an earlier version of the picture (with the demon on the left rather than right of the picture, created during a test build of the book to see how the cover would look on the Kindle viewer).

(The original Black Beast cover sketch is in the next blog entry below.)

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Duncan Long is a book cover illustrator for ILEX, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Fort Ross, HarperCollins, and many, many self-published writers. See more of his book cover artwork and illustrations at: Book Cover Artwork and Illustrations
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