Cover qualms

I still have a long way to go on the editing for The Ashes of Home, but having completed some major scene additions last month I’m taking a breather from the words to focus back on the cover art.

I haven’t touched the artwork since I last posted about it in June. The main reasons were (a) summer, and (b) all my spare time was going into critiquing and editing.

But there was a third, unspoken reason lurking in the background that kept me from my brushes.

I had misgivings about how the artwork was turning out.

Worse still, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was worrying me, or what to do about it.

The initial draft has a spaceship being destroyed by a beam of energy. In expanding it to full size I didn’t like the acres of plain black in the background. Instead I had visions inspired by spectacular Hubble images of glowing nebulae cut through by billowing dust clouds. BTW - I regularly visit the NASA website for their Astronomy Picture of the Day.

This was where I got to before sensing things were slightly off track.

There’s nothing wrong with any specific part the painting itself, in isolation. I especially liked the stark contrasts in the lower section. But the upper and lower portions just didn’t belong together, and neither was quite right for the book cover I had in mind.

So this week I bit the bullet and got back to work.

Still some tweaking to do, but I think I’m getting back on track.