Cover Art: Dragon Bone

I’m a bit behind on my posts lately, so it’s time to catch up!

Recently I was challenged to create a cover for a truly wonderful fantasy/sci-fi book…along the lines of the Lord of The Rings, Dragon Bone. It’s the first book in The Battle for the Four Realms series by Aldrea Johnson; you will want to keep your eyes open for this book, it’s going to be a hit!

As I have mentioned previously when it comes to my cover creations for books, I like to read the books myself. Many graphic artists aren’t afforded this pleasure, they are simply given a synopsis and that’s it, but not me. Imzadi Publishing is very generous in giving me what I ask for regarding my creative process.

As I read, one of the main characters really popped out…her name is Aliedori; she wears a specific piece of jewelry that is mentioned frequently. It’s that piece of jewelry I decided to focus on for the cover. Truthfully, at first I completely expected I would be putting a golden dragon on the cover but my muse took another road; she focused on this pendant.

I found myself gravitating away from the dragon I was working on that just wasn’t quite coming together and as soon as I started designing the eye in the center of the pendant, everything fell into place. The author (thank you Aldrea) gave me plenty of direction with her description.

The eye itself is meant to be a dragon’s eye, some say it looks like a cat’s eye…I’m fine with that. The filigree and embellishments I took license with. All of it was created initially in Adobe Illustrator as vector line-art, then brought into PhotoShop where I applied filters to help bring the brooch forward to make it appear as though it’s floating on the cover.

I ended up liking this creation so well that my husband suggested we have a piece fabricated for me; so now we are actually looking into having this piece made, perhaps a few of them….I would truly love to wear this myself; I know a few others would as well.

What do you think of this cover? Does it say “fantasy” to you? Does it peak your interest? As always thoughts or comments are always welcome, I truly want to hear them…that’s how I grow as an artist.

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