August 2020 - Cover Artist - WIPs

I haven't even been able to decide which is my favourite novel....

Looking good guys.
I took a stab at this last night but just couldn’t get anything down I liked.
I’ll take another look tonight but I have to say I’m doing 1984 too!
Going head to head with Hansnomad, great idea!

Tried to improve the linework on that door today with hilariously bad results. Tried again on my tablet with my fat finger. Then with a stylus, all with that lazy brush stabilizer and....

I'll try again another day.


Digital linework will forever be a mystery to me.

This is causing me sooooo much grief! I can’t seem to get anywhere near the look I want. I’m just going to keep throwing (digital) paint at it till either my stylus breaks or I run out of time.

I like the way he's hunched in the corner, both in the room and in the frame. It looks really awkward and uncomfortable in an appropriately haunted way.
A bit of texture in the walls might help you get the look you want so keep throwing that paint. And that's a fine likeness too.

O, linework!
Why are you so difficult for me?

It's not even a complicated thing. And not even original either. All I have to do is draw the pattern on that damn door that's on page 402 of my book!

And if that wasn't annoying enough for me, I spent several minutes trying to clean up those curves before realising that I'd turned the symmetry off!
I'll now have to try to copy and paste the "better" bits to the other side even though ArtRage layer transforms don't mirror very well. They always flip around the centre of the selection rather than the centre of the screen. I really don't know who thought THAT would be a good idea.

Valence: Good start. Framing Gandalf and Frodo in the portal gives it instant impact. The colors are great too.

Atto: John Hurt was so good in that movie. I initially wrestled with using his likeness then chose to go in an different direction. I remember him sitting in the corner writing in his journal. Great work.

This is from several days ago when I blocked out the foreground middle and background and started working on the face.

Hans, that’s looking so cool, I loved John Hurt in the movie too.

Really glad that sense of the uncomfortable tension is coming across too, that was my aim here as both the movie and book really hammered home that feeling to me.

For me they were both about the texture of concrete and steel, corrosion and the lack of warmth. Pretty lofty goals to achieve with my skill level but I’m trying to get that across in the details (most of which I’m still struggling to add) in the background.
I may have to rely on some photobashing of concrete textures to achieve it though with the deadline fast approaching.

Still, current progress......

Well once again I started an idea, but didn't carry it to a final work. Though for me some of the fun is just trying to get an idea and at least doing some sketching. Any "War of the Worlds was the first Sci-fi books I read and the images his writing evoked got me into other sci-fi books. Most works I have seen for this story always either looked clunky or to small. I always envisioned the tripods as more organic and insect like. So the scene of it towering over Big Ben is what I chose.
Comments welcome.

I think that's an excellent sketch and would have loved to see it finished!
(And no, I haven't decided on my own fav book, yet...)