Book Covers

The last few weeks I have been putting my images together as book covers.
I am really happy with them now but it has been hard work getting all the measurements right
to fit the books I brought to cover them with.

But fingers crossed they work and I get good feed back for them.

 I have two book cover ideas for this book so i need to get some feed back on with one works best.

Once I have decided on which cover to go with my next job is to design the end papers.

For this I want to use a mixture of all the images arranged haphazard on the page.

Final front cover designs........maybe

I have decided on the front cover designs for the book covers. They may change again but at the moment I am sticking with these. I want the covers to look the same and look like they belong together as a set.

These six are my favourites so far. I may add more if I have time at the end of the project.
Now we have to start thinking about what we want up in the final show and how we will display our work.

These are some examples I have found but I think I like the idea of having the books mounted on the wall and stuck together so you cant open them ? And maybe larger images up also.

The yattering and Jack

This is my finished design for The story 'The Yattering and Jack'. It was made using ink and bleach and text added after on photoshop.
I am really really pleased with the way it looks now and my work is starting to surprise me. I am producing work that I never thought I could achieve and is taking on a really different look to what my past work has been like.

Pig Blood Blues

I have been working on an image for the story, Pig Blood Blues, again. I think I am now steering towards this new image? It is painted in water colour onto card board using photoshop.
After I have finalised my images I will put them into a book cover format to see how they would work if published.

Confessions of a (pornographers shroud)

For this short story a man soul takes possession of a hospital sheet and goes on a murderous rampage of the pornographers that wronged him and killed him. So I wanted to show the sheet man after his rampage with his sheet ripped and dirty and just damn right gross.

I am also in the process of making a death mask type thing to accompany the piece.

Scape -Goat

This was made using ink and bleach. The image illustrates the tale of Clive Barkers, Scape Goat.

The image will have a little more work done to it to finish it off.

And here is the final image.

Book Of Blood #2

This image is for the story Book Of Blood. This was an exciting image to make. It started with a photo shoot with a naked model which I needed so I could get as much skin on show as possible so I had a larger canvas to work on. I then wrote parts of the story on to his skin, which took quite a while down to it being surprisingly ticklish :)
The finishing touches where then pieced together on photoshop. I have a few versions to choose between.
What do you think works best ?

Personally I love them both but need to do a little work to them both to see how they look as book covers.
But all feed back would be greatly appreciated .

The Midnight Meat Train

The idea for this image has also changed.
As seen in an earlier blog I focused on the scene of the underground but I quickly went off that idea and looked at the tool of his trade instead - The Meat Cleaver.
I also wanted to try some lino printing which I have not tried in quite few years so this started off totally as an experiment but it soon started to transform into a finished looking piece.

The Lino plaque.

First Print (with added blood splatter )

Finished image.

Rawhead Rex

In the story 'Rawhead Rex' Clive Barker describes in great detail how the 10ft creature has these big detractable teeth and how he easily just bites peoples heads off. So I wanted to focus on the creatures mouth for this image.
This is just a quick sketch for the image idea.

The whole time I was reading this story the image of Goyas painting of Saturn kepted poppong in my head so I think this had a lot of influence on my image.

 This is my first attempt at the image.

The image went through quite a few changes.

But I think this one is nearly finished ?

Book of Blood

More sketches I have been working on today .

This one is for the prologue to the Book of Blood books.
I think this idea will look great using lino print?
So will hopefully have a go at that this week.

I am quite inspire by this image for this story. It was created by artist/photographer Marc Jaytin.
He created the image by actually carving the word art into his leg using a razor blade.
Very controversial but equally inspiring.
I will not go and engrave the story's into my skin for this image but I want it to look like it or have a hint of it.