Book Cover Illustrations

The Hubble telescope continues to inspire artists, bringing new styles and skies to science fiction as well as astronomy. I tried my hand at duplicating (in a rough way) some of the shots from Hubble, and then went ahead and created a “world” where such a sky might exist, adding a tiny fire and character in a cave atop the strange rock formation.

I started the process by creating the “rocks” as OBJ files in CB Model Pro, then imported them into Vue where I added two textures (a tile of lichens that I created and a stone surface I’d collected from back somewhen). The Vue render was then imported into Photo-Paint where I added stars to the sky, reworked the clouds, and added the gas nebula.

In Photo-Paint, the surface of the rock got another layer of ink splatters for a little more randomized surface, I sprayed in grass and cat tails, and then shifted much of the picture (and painted in more sky) to get things balanced out. The water reflection was then added along with the little cave and occupant inside.

Finally, the whole picture received a gradient/color boost to unite the elements and make things a tad more colorful.

You can see other artwork like this, including magazine cover work for Asimov’s Science Fiction as well as science fiction book cover illustrations in my Science Fiction Illustration Gallery.