Many cover designers begin their work with stock photography. This presents a distinct problem when your cover requires, say, a dragon. They’re notoriously hard to photograph.
Now, I know it’s getting easier to ask software to generate an image, but I went another route when I recently recovered the Dragon Lords series. A wonderful designer who had helped me in the past (doing the original designs for this website and its predecessor) came back into my orbit at just the right time. I knew Rowan, the artist behind Windloft Workshop, to be an exceptional dragon portraitist, and put in my request tout de suite. These are rendered by hand, although done with digital tools.
For those curious about the process underlying this kind of illustration, I asked about the process. Here is Rowan’s answer:
I work entirely on the computer, sketching in my art program till I have a design and composition I like.
I then start blocking in main areas with solid greys, blacks and whites to define the darkest darks, lightest highlights, and midtones. Work is entirely in greyscale for this and the subsequent stage to ensure proper values are established for lighting, readability and impact. It’s an old technique that oil painters used, and any monochrome scheme works. I find it helpful to focus on tone and value in isolation like this before moving to colour. Also ensures great results if it needs to be converted back to greyscale later, and for accessibility for colour-blind folks.
Next comes the blending and modelling of the various shapes and forms of the beast to make them look 3D, usually using a soft tool to make nice smooth gradients. Hard edges are left in or reapplied as necessary to create sharper transitions, texture, etc. I generally take it very close to completion at this stage, adding airbrushed shadows and highlights overtop where needed, and adjusting contrast to push the values further if I went too conservatively with them.
Finally comes colour, applied in a way that mimics the way the old Masters laid down transparent glazes of oil paint over their underpainting to build up luminous colour. It’s honestly like magic, painting a single solid colour overtop and watching it automatically take on the underlying greyscale values to become darker and lighter as needed! I apply several glazes of different colours over the various areas (horns, eyes, nose tip and bridge, cheeks, belly plates, and so on). Additional soft shadows are applied to enhance depth. I also add additional coloured light sources as a “glow” layer. I’ll do this for the reflected aurora on his upper surfaces, for example. After that comes hard edged opaque details—brightest highlights, scratches, pits and other textures—as a final pass. Then he’s done!
Check out the Illusive Indies site for DIY book templates Rowan has designed.
If you’d like your own dragon illustration or custom cover, go here.
Many cover designers begin their work with stock photography. This presents a distinct problem when your cover requires, say, a dragon. They’re notoriously hard to photograph.
reapplied as necessary to create sharper transitions, texture, etc. I generally take it very close to completion at this stage, adding airbrushed shadows and highlights overtop where needed, and adjusting contrast to push the values further if I went too conservatively with them.