Urban Fantasy Cover

This is a painted cover that I recently finished for an author. The commission was for a full cover, including a spine and back cover. Since the book isn't published yet I can only show the cropped version of the front cover. 

Click to view large image

Movement and flow and deconstruction is the big theme here so there's a lot going on. As usual, backgrounds give me a headache so I always save them for last. My big mantra when it comes to backgrounds is: avoid, avoid, avoid until I can't anymore and then after I've done it, I'm like: okay, that wasn't so bad -_-;

The author specifically wanted yellow and purple as the main color theme and to avoid making the cover look 'cold' I chose a warmer purple and gold-orange highlights, since she wanted the character to look tan. Personally, I find yellow to be a poor highlight color on its own so I added a warm coral, gold/yellow and orange to avoid making the skin look one-dimensional. 

I usually highlight the skin with a combination if icy blue or light turquoise, mixed with pink or peach tones to make the highlighted skin transluscent. Violet is also a good highlight color, but since purple was one of the dominant colors on the canvas it would have been too much of the same thing. 

That was probably all you wanted to know about highlighting the skin :p 

Comments welcome :) 

Posted by Doris | Follow me on Twitter