Book IV Cover Art...Again

 I've been holding back...and redoing stuff. I took a look at the cover art for Book IV of Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Key that I created a few years ago, and decided I wasn't satisfied with it, and there's a few reasons for that. I compared it to the previous 3 cover pieces, and it looked too clean. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I wanted to go with a slightly grittier look.

Another reason is I wasn't satisfied with Sabra's look. I loved the idea of doing the scene of her dripping with fire, and perhaps redoing the same scene would have been great, but I decided on a different scene from the book, one that's just as heartbreaking. (You'll have to read it to find out why!) Let's just say it involves a dream with a certain someone that has appeared in every book of the series so far.

New art.

Old art.

Oldest art.

As you can see, this cover has evolved quite a bit!

Like the other pieces, I went with a single color palette (black, or black and white), focusing on sharp shadows and lighting. I first drew this as a pencil piece, and then scanned it onto the computer and went over it in black lines. Before I made it grayscale, I filled in the base colors for Sabra: brown for her hair, skin color, and red for her dress. I did this to make sure the color scale transferred correctly to the grayscale. I did the same for the background, which involved reds and whites. Sabra's dress is supposed to be feathery in nature, and if you've read the books, you'll know why she would appear rather feathery to a certain someone. I'm not trying to get anyone reading this blog to read my books, am I?

I am currently on the third revision of Book IV, and it should be in print by the end of the year. If you haven't read the other ones, check them out before reading Incarnate Key!