MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH

This image was done for the cover of Move Heaven & Earth, by Christina Dodd. My model was the truly beautiful and talented actress,  Ewa Da Cruz. I wanted to get across the stormy determination hinted at by the title and I think the portrait here captures that kind of personality. I liked giving this a true Regency look, but with a twist from the historical portraits of the period, in that she is looking away. That is a distinctly modern approach and creates a feeling of being there as an observer. When I create a book cover, there is only one chance to get across the story. One image. Many different approaches to that problem have been tried over the ages, including incidental clues that help imply a context, having multiple scenes from the story meld together like movie stills fading into each other. But my favorite way is to let the eyes tell the story. The eyes and the body language. The stormy background helps support what we are seeing in her lovely and quite powerful expression
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SEVEN NIGHTS TO FOREVER

Seven Nights To Forever, by Evangeline Collins, Berkley Books. I created this cover fairly recently, but wanted to wait for the book to be published before it was posted. I have always enjoyed using pattern in my work, both for galleries and for illustrations. I don't always get the chance, so whenever possible I go for it. My interest in working with pattern goes way back my early days as an artist, experimenting with ways of reconciling realism and abstraction. I wanted them to coexist.  Often pattern gets incorporated into my work as an intentionally flat passage, that forces the eye to look at the whole composition in a different way than if it were a simple rendering of the "real" scene.  My use of pattern has been evolving though, and often finds itself worked into the real space of the image as if it were something actually in the picture, like in this case.  Here, the pattern looks as if it is some kind of fabric on the bed, as opposed to floating above the picture, as in many of my pictures. In another post, I'll show an example of that kind of image.
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