3 Book Cover Illustrations for Knights of the Chosen
filed in Book Cover Illustrations and Artwork on Jun.03, 2011
Knights of the Chosen -- final book cover illustration.
The illustration above is for one of the projects we’ve been working this week. As you can see, this is the book cover artwork (with lettering) created for Lawrence P. White’s Spirit of Empire. series, this one titled Knights of the Chosen..
Here’s one of the early sketches which established the sky/ground pattern that would become a part of the picture — but which had a figure that proved a little too Art Deco to work. And the picture also failed to convey the idea of a science fiction novel.
Early sketch for Knights of the Chosen book cover.
This progressed to this picture (below) — which would become the basic idea. However the dress of the character a bit too glamorous, and the character also didn’t wear jewelry in the book. So we lost the earrings and put her in a tank top with the logo for this series stenciled on it’s front. Then I added a gun to her side. And we pretty well had the cover wrapped up.
Book cover illustration version 5.
The last hitch was the spaceship which was needed to establish the science fiction feel (along with the typeface which helped considerably). Fortunately the author was willing to be flexible on this design so we finally ended with a spaceship that is interesting and different albeit not exactly like those in the book. Artistic license.
Put it all together and what have you got?
In this case the illustration at the top of this post. It was a wild ride getting to the finished cover, but a whole lot of fun as well, and doubly so given the pleasing result.
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Duncan Long is a book cover illustrator who loves his work. You can view more of his artwork at Duncan Long’s Book Cover Portfolio
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