A cover for Barking Rain Press. This is the sequel to Eine Kleine Murder by Kaye George. (Note that the publisher’s version of the cover is slightly different, and I modeled the sequel cover’s border around the main image after their version). For this cover, the publisher wanted to convey the dark mood of the book, along with a hint at the musical themes involved. They provided a couple possible background images and ideas, which I then put together in a rough comp. I also found the music sheets (part of one larger image of multiple music sheets, which I cut-and-pasted, and then used Photoshop CS6’s warp tool in order to place them in varying positions). I also added the conductor’s baton in the hand of the statue, made it look like the baton was the same material as the statue, and added the directional shadow. The goal was to have everything fit together smoothly.
Afterwards, the publisher asked about adding a church in the background, behind the woman’s statue. So I placed the church (careful to get the size and placement in the image right so that it looked like it was in the background), blurred the background around the statue a bit for a focal effect, added more now to the steeple, and also played with the darker sky from the church image.
This is the result:
Stock images from Shutterstock:
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=101040352 – musical background
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=22681549 – graveyard
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=15224833 – baton
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=22723609 – music sheets
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-22681552/stock-photo-village-church-in-snow-czech-republic.html – church
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 