Book Cover Illustrations

I got word a few days ago that Joan C. Wrenn’s Young Lords of Siyah Chan: A Novel of the Ancient Maya is now in print (and available from Amazon).

I painted the cover illustration for this book, and it was a unique challenge. The author wanted a picture that reflected a Mayan mythological story, and that part of the project was pretty straight forward. The challenge came in capturing the look of ancient Mayan art while giving it some depth and realism.

The author supplied me with a photo of the depiction of the original mythological story in a Mayan hieroglyphic/relief sculpture from Yaxchilan. It showed a stylized scene of a woman burning blood-soaked bark with the smoke rising from the flame to form first a serpent and then an ancestor who appears from the mouth of the creature.

Yes, it took a number of tries for me to get this to work to everyone’s satisfaction.

The final cover version has (to me at least) sort of an Art Deco feel coupled with the colors that were likely used in Mayan artwork (sadly most of the examples of this people’s art has lost its bright paint so the colors often have to be guessed at).

I was waiting to see what sort of lettering would be used on the book. It is often tempting to choose a typeface that mimics ancient script with a historic novel. Sometimes that works — but often it does not. Fortunately a sans type was chosen and I think it works perfectly by being “invisible” and not calling attention to itself, allowing the reader to quickly grasp the title and also the book cover with any distractions from the typeface itself.
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Duncan Long is a freelance illustrator who has done book cover illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers — and self-publishing authors. See his book cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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