Welcome back to Cover Awe!
Sarah: Border!
Stuff! Filigree! CAT
Amanda: That cat is definitely up to some mischief!
Lara: I love the lighting so much!
Sneezy: Me too!
Cover illustration by Deandra Scicluna
Elyse: I love the firelight in the background and the intimacy
Sneezy: I agree, this is lovely!
Carrie: I’m a sucker for a forehead bump
Sarah: Sorry I can’t hear you all over the incredible soothing sound of all the cozy vibes
Lara: Wow, that cover has me swooning
Amanda: It may be hard to see, but all the designs look to be embroidered and that’s so cool! It also reminds me of an old clothbound cover.
Sarah: Oh my gosh the embroidery is so gorgeous. I wonder if this was generated or if an artist stitched it for the cover. (Also I love embroidery Instagram so much. So soothing.)
Lara: The combination of the embroidery and those gorgeous colours is really working for me.
Sneezy: I really really hope the cover’s actually embroidered.
Cover illustration by Erion Makuo
Lara: That is stunning!
Amanda: This entire series has such great covers! This one has the most movement, I think.
Sarah: I love how the light glows over both of them, and yes the movement and their facial expressions!
Sneezy: Holy! The way the watery environment and magic is expressed is MMMM-MUAH!
That last book cover reminds me of the fantasy (and sometimes horror) anthologies that Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling did in the 90s. There were a bunch with fairy tale themes. My mom would snap them all up. They were all illustrated by Thomas Canty and they had this romantic 19th century vibe. I wanted to live in them.
A sample of his work at the link.
https://art.ofearna.us/canty.html
@Jill Q.: It reminds me too of all the covers Kinuko Craft did for Patricia McKillip. Lots of almost tapestry-like texture.
Not to veer into Cover Snark, but I am distracted with the last one by the purple and gold that seems to be shooting out behind the merman. Does he have an extra tail, or perhaps some leakage?
I’m in awe of the Manslaughter Park cover, and am now following the designer, because I could definitely turn some of those designs into pillows or borders for something. I think, though, the cover took the design and did extensive photoshopping to add the texture, replacing the background with appropriate cloth. As incredibly intensive as such work would be, I’d wager it was probably quicker than it would be to stitch the design. If there was generating, then it was likely to generate an image of embroidery stitches which could then be used as a texture and manipulated over the original image. It’s an impressive piece of work.
@Caro: Yes, it really is impressive. It reminds me a lot of the embroidery art that the Washington Post used to illustrate their 2019 Best Books coverage (note: NOT a WaPO link so you won’t use up a free click), all of which were created by Sarah K. Benning.
I would love to see more embroidery art on book covers but I recognize my interests are not the most widely accessible in terms of cover art! That’s why I Oooh and Aaah over good cover design but couldn’t produce similar work by a long shot.
@Caro and SB Sarah, there is a British design program I worked with for one of my freelance clients that uses actual photographs of individual stitches as one of the chart views. I would design the chart using symbols or plain blocks of color, then we could view the design as actual stitches so we could see what it would look like when stitched, and photograph it to stand in for an actual stitched piece. It saved a lot of time as we were doing so many designs (for a daily desk calendar) it would have been impossible to stitch them all in a timely manner. We could view it as cross stitch, needlepoint, duplicate stitch on knitting, and more. I would not be surprised if there was a similar program for embroidery that would create a cover like this without the need for it to be actually stitched.
That is really interesting! I had no idea that software existed. Makes a lot of sense!
Those are beautiful.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6esqitvbgU/
Canterbury Classics upcoming embroidered covers.