I’m beginning to think about the colour for the cover of Glimmerglass, and here’s the first exploration, a red and turquoise, almost embroidery-on-calico effect. Clearly this is a much simplified and some might say less dramatic version of the strongly marked maquette dragon I’ve previously posted here. (Having a black ground for the cover is still an option I favour.)
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Nevertheless I need to play with alternative options before coming to conclusions about how best to serve Marly’s beautiful text, and I can see this little bi-coloured collage on a neutral ground, has qualities that might yet be profitably explored. I worked it with commercially available coloured papers that I lightly stained with boot-polish, but I think it almost certain that I’d make my own coloured papers if I went down this route, and add frottage to them to bring in some of the patterned elements of the black and white image.
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Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
ah, the colors are really lovely, though it is a *very* different effect!
Clive,
I love seeing these but won’t say anything that might tip your thoughts one way or another… Love to see you throwing out images before going off like a rocket–each one of your book projects seems to lead to a little body of work, and I enjoy seeing the changes so much.
I can tell you that the above is a little byway that just needed looking at, though I won’t be going in this direction. You’ll have noticed that I’m holding back on showing any of the beasts save this dragon and the minotaur of a few posts back because I want to save lots of surprises. I’ll be putting up another study either later today or first thing tomorrow, and it’ll be a lot closer to the ‘character’ of image I’m looking for.
its interesting to see the work at this transitional stage.
The bright flat colours and abscence of surface texture seem to ‘pull’ my eye out to the edge of the image more, making the design more pronounced, or that could just be the brightness of the colour catching my eye?
I like the idea of combining the two techniques – the texture and colour combined could work very well.
All along I’ve been torn between the idea of a dark ground and a light one, and I’m still swinging between these two extremes. But I’ve something on the work-table at the moment that may well tip the balance of decision, and if so then I’ll be able to get on with creating the final artwork for the cover.