After revealing all 4 new covers for the Pacts Arcane and Otherwise series and the full art for the first two books in the series, By the Pact and Scars of Stone, today is the time to share art for book 3, Shadows Over Kaighal. As always, no AI has been used in the creation process.
In the case of this book, I had a good idea of what I wanted. What I loved about the old cover was how Jake, my designer, created ethereal demons. While most demons in the story are quite solid flesh and matter, there is an important scene, which I won’t spoil, in which there are some ethereal demons. Yet, I didn’t want to copy the concept I gave to the designer, especially that I didn’t feel it would match the previous covers. In this book, Kamira is dealing with the consequences of past decisions and actions, and that also means dealing with a particularly conniving demon… Both my husband and I liked the concept of a demon being behind her, looming and perhaps trying to manipulate… While he is not metaphorical at all, we liked the idea of making him ethereal, mostly because of the limitations of 3d models. I wouldn’t be able to find or kitbash a model that would reflect what the demons are in the world of Kinyal.
Because the demon would be altered in post-work a lot, I had to render the image in several layers again: the background, the demon, Kamira, even the flame got their separate layers, so that I could manipulate everything. I also opted out of doing subtle fog in the render itself, because it would be hard to separate it in the layer. Below, you can see some of them combined.
The biggest challenge, of course, was getting the demon right, and that meant a lot of smudging. I use the Affinity Suite for my digital art, and one of its features is that you can use almost any brush to smudge, which creates varying effects. I have an excellent set of nature brushes featuring fire, clouds, and water sprays, and they were my primary tool in trying to shape my demon…
But I still couldn’t get him perfect, at least according to my husband’s artistic side. So, in the end, I handed the tablet pen to him and he made adjustments to his heart’s content, showing what smudging and procedural brushes can do. This is also one of the reasons why, despite the covers being majorly my work, from concepts to their execution, I consider him a designer of these covers as much as I am, and I’m extremely happy how this image turned out.
I hope you enjoyed this quick insight into my art creation process and that you’ll come back for the reveal of the art for the final book in the series next week.
