Book Cover Illustrations

I recently completed the three book covers for the Dark Slayer fantasy/science fiction series by author Craig Halloran (who added the distinctive lettering to the covers himself).

These presented two challenges: To get the “feel” for being both a somewhat barbaric culture and to give visual hints that the stories would be unfolding somewhere other than on Earth. To give “off world” hints, we used two suns on the first cover, and two moons on the second (with the assumption that after that readers would understand the setting for the stories since most would gravitate toward reading about the first two before moving on to the third in the series).

For the fantasy aspects of all three illustrations, I mixed clothing styles somewhat. On the first illustration I tried to avoid any historic period weapon in designing the battle ax; likewise the armor was somewhat of a cross between Viking and Gothic armor with non-historic decorative elements. On the second cover, I sprinkled some unusual animals here and there in the background. And the magic snake pretty well sets the fantasy stage on the third cover.

Book one in the series is show above. Here’s the cover artwork and lettering for book two. We took advantage of the night scene to let the moonlight glint off the two blades the character is holding:

And here’s book three which has an indoor, dimly lit environment to allow the sorceress’ magic snake to glow to its best advantage.

You can find out more about the Craig Halloran’s books at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

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Duncan Long is a freelance writer/illustrator. You can find more of his book cover artwork in his online portfolio: Duncan Long’s Book Illustration Portfolio.