Forsake All Hope - Book Cover Illustration by book cover illustrator Duncan Long

I recently had a student artist ask about the basic information needed to create a book cover illustration. The answer isn’t quite as simple as it might appear to be on the surface. There’s a lot that can go wrong in the process of creating a cover.

The basics I need to know: cover size, size of the area needed for the title, whether the picture will be “boxed” or bleed over the edges of the cover, and the dots per inch the press needs to work with.

The tricky part is properly reflecting the mood of the book, giving visual clues to what genre it falls into (action, horror, or what have you) and capturing the “vision” the publisher has for the book. Most importantly, the cover illustration must capture any potential reader’s attention so he’ll pick up the book and take a look at it (and hopefully buy it).

Usually the art director and/or author will have a scene in mind for the cover and I then bring it to life in the most artistic and interesting way possible.

The process of the publisher getting across what they have in mind for the cover usually starts with a “word picture.” I will often make suggestions and once we’ve settled on an idea for the cover, I then ask for the basics of character(s} appearance, buildings, skies, and so forth so they’ll be true to this word picture.

Once I have this information I create sketches of the various elements for the illustration and when these each meet with the client’s approval, I assemble the parts into the final whole for the completed picture. Hopefully synergy will propel the completed picture into something that looks natural, attractive, and attention-grabbing — no small trick in many cases.

That’s the basic process. The magic is the transformation of an idea into a cover that will help sell the title and bring additional enjoyment to the reader by setting the mood for the title.

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Duncan Long is a Freelance illustrator who has created cover illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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