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Artist insight Book cover<br />
© Subterranean Press<br />
Subterranean Press<br />
contacted me to create<br />
full-cover dust jackets for<br />
a new and limited edition<br />
of Robin Hobb’s Farseer<br />
trilogy. In reply to my query about<br />
a cover brief, the publisher replied<br />
that there was none: I had free rein<br />
to do as I wished.<br />
Naturally, this sounded like a<br />
dream commission, but of course it<br />
meant making many decisions above<br />
and beyond the actual subject matter:<br />
layout, placement of titles, fonts and<br />
more. I was intent on installing two<br />
things: a proximity to the characters,<br />
and a depiction of wide landscapes. I<br />
decided that the best way to avoid<br />
“posing” characters – equivalent to<br />
a modern-day snapshot taken in<br />
front of a tourist-friendly vista – was<br />
to make use of vignettes.<br />
I did all three sketches at once and<br />
sent them off. These were pencil<br />
scribbles, scanned and rendered in<br />
sepia with white highlights, which is<br />
an efficient way of adding focus and<br />
depth. I was also aware that hiding<br />
the dragon’s head behind the vignette<br />
was a bit risky, and considered trying<br />
to shift it, but in the end it stayed<br />
where it was. Approval came back<br />
from both publisher and author with<br />
no revisions, so I got going on the<br />
originals themselves straight away.<br />
The main image was done<br />
separately from the vignette. It’s never<br />
a good idea to paint one image over<br />
another unless there’s some purely<br />
pictorial or decorative reason for<br />
doing so. Should the smaller image<br />
need to be moved, it’s best to have it<br />
as a separate original. Equally, for<br />
sub-rights use, a third party just<br />
might want to licence the main image<br />
without the vignette.<br />
John is a full-time illustrator<br />
and concept artist, who<br />
helped shape the look of the<br />
Lord of the Rings and The<br />
Hobbit film trilogies. You can discover<br />
more of his art at www.john-howe.com.<br />
August 2017<br />
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