Book Cover Illustrations

“Optimally, childhood ends, and adults develop a mature, tragic acceptance of limitations. They come to terms with differences of talent; some are more intelligent, better athletes, better mathematicians, more creative. Accepting this is, paradoxically, a necessary step toward real achievement because it allows discovery of one’s own unique talents.” — Stephen Rittenberg, MD

Childlike qualities are good, childishness, not so much. Unfortunately many would-be creative people confuse the two.

I was struck by how similar this “tragic acceptance of limitations” is to overcoming a traumatic experience in which you go through anger, denial, and so forth before (hopefully) becoming accepting of the damage and finally overcoming it by realizing how it has molded and changed you and then going from their to rebuild and perhaps even emerge scarred yet stronger than before. It’s interesting how the human spirit if it struggles long enough can triumph over what at first appears to be damage that can’t be overcome. Part of achievement is understanding limitations and working within these handicaps.

Recognizing shortcomings and handicaps can be important. I remember reading years ago about a composer working digitally who couldn’t afford to buy some good sound samples. His solution was simply to avoid writing anything that would need such samples, instead employing the quality sound samples he owned. The listener only heard wonderful sounds and great compositions, unaware that the composer didn’t own everything he would liked to have had at his fingertips. If you only have red and yellow paints in your inventory — paint red and yellow pictures. If you can’t write a good fight scene, write comedies and romances… on it goes. Work toward your strength knowing your handicaps of the moment (perhaps with an eye toward buying the materials you need and gaining new skills in the future).

As Dirty Harry noted, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

In the world of book cover illustrations, there’s one more important point to this if you’re hiring an artist to create a book cover for you: Let him work toward his strengths, not his weaknesses. Unfortunately some self-publishers pick out a book cover artist and then ask him to work in a different style, make changes to ideas that he feels aren’t the best, and so forth — basically causing the artist to leave what he does best to what he doesn’t do well. Sometimes the result can work — artists like everyone else need to grow and expand their abilities. But often the result is less satisfactory because the artist has left his strengths and has produced a second-best offering.

If you hire an artist to work for you, give him as free a hand as you can in how the work is designed and executed. Then your money will be well spent.