Today I thought I’d give you a look into the messy sketches and scribbles of my cover design process for the The Wind Mage and the Wolf, the seventh story in the Legends of Cirena series.
I don’t always make sketches like these, but in this case, I had a few ideas I wanted to jot down so I wouldn’t forget.
Note: the scribbles are barely readable in person. Unforunately, that means they’re even less readable here.
As you can see, these are really rough sketches, meant to give me a general idea of where I might place key elements.
I’ve tried to make a note of possible titles, variant backgrounds, and things I’d need to take into consideration when I went to create the proof.
All of this was on one sheet of paper, and covered multiple stories, but I cut the page in Photoshop to make it easier to view in an email, where I originally sent out this preview in 2019.
Fast forward to the finished version of the cover, which I designed in Daz 3D Studio:
Here we have Livena and Nuaka (currently in an altered wolf form) as they head down the streets of Ashan. Though Livena’s magic wouldn’t normally be visible to the naked eye (she can’t see it, either), I was aiming to convey the magic/fantasy genre.
This was the first of the covers for the crossover portion of the Legends of Cirena series, each of which are novellas (or a novel, in the case of the upcoming The Dark Forest of Aneth) instead of short stories.
Eventually I decided on the title: The Wind Mage and the Wolf
(Notice in the sketch it’s “The Wolves of Maijev” which… didn’t really work for me)
My logic was that “The Wind Mage and the Wolf” crosses the title conventions of the two previous stories (“The Wind Mage of Maijev” and “The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear”), where Livena was the wind mage, and the cover art focuses on the style of her cover, whereas the title style is closer to Nuaka’s story (previously she was the mountain bear, and now she’s the wolf).
I was concerned it might sound too silly (or be too close to the first title), but ultimately, it stuck. 😄
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A wind mage and a shapeshifting thief start with their own adventures… and then end up working together:
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Happy reading and writing!
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 