Another bit of cover art finished. Doing loads at the moment to get ahead for my impending Paternity Leave. This is for Blood Kin by Steve Tem. He was really keen for it to be a proper bit of overgrown, rotting, slightly psychedelic southern gothic. Below is the cover art without cropping/text design, which for once I didn't try and incorporate from the start.
As this cover has quite a lot of similar elements to Different Kingdom (trees/old houses/leaves) I was keen to make it as different as possible stylistically, so I inked most of the silhouettes by hand then put them all together afterwards in photoshop. For the Kudzu leaves in the foreground I made a some custom brushes in photoshop and built up layers of ever brighter/bigger leaves. Really helped to add some depth to what was quite a flat silhouetted picture. The skull in the bottom right was a last minute addition too. I loved doing this - the whole process/technique I used is something I'm keen to try again!
Scans of the ink drawings and my first mockup from a few months ago.
