This is the first mockup for the cover of my novel, SEEING THINGS, which will be epublished later this summer. To start with, I used the painted background which I made using acrylic, stamps, and layers of black gesso. After photographing it, I scanned it and then played with the color to get a brighter red (since my acrylics are cheap and have more of a red-iron-oxide hue.)
I knew I wanted some textural background, so I wrote out a note from the novel in copperplate script on a piece of parchment with a dip pen. I also drew some images from an old book on witchcraft I have. I combined both of them with the photograph I did of titan buff and gesso on watercolor paper.
I think that if I were to do it again, I’d skip the titan buff colored texture. I wanted to have something close to the model’s skin color to mesh together so that her skin had a texture to it, but the problem is that I had a hard time not making it lighten up the red background I’d spent so long making. Once I’m more proficient in Gimp, I think I’ll be able to figure it out. Somehow I managed to do the cool masking/transparency thing with the text so that where I’d written in black, it showed up clearer and lighter. I’m not sure how I did that, but I’m keeping it.
To get the model’s skin to look like that, I moved the image to Microsoft Photo editor and used their effects tab “watercolor” feature twice. I think I’d rather just do it once, but microsoft photo editor doesn’t have the same depth of “undo” that gimp has.
What kind of book do you think this cover is for?
