The folks at Fantasy Book Review invited artist Martin Springett to talk about the creative process behind the cover art for Guy Gavriel Kay's The Fionavar Tapestry. Here's an extract:
Creating images for book covers is one of the most enjoyable and challenging jobs I have as an Illustrator. No one does anything entirely on their own. There are many unseen connections in the creation of any work, but perhaps especially in the area of book illustration, where one is part of a team including publisher, editor, art director, illustrator, and, of course, author (I should add here that I haven’t had as much input from an author on subsequent cover projects as I had from Guy on these books). Generally the author does not choose the artist who will be creating the covers of his or her books, but will be consulted in the later stages, when the overall visual concept has been agreed on between artist and publisher. Some publishers will do this as a courtesy to the author, others will not. When reading the manuscript of a book I am to illustrate, I make notes on those visual aspects that appeal to me and that I feel give an overall sense of the story.
Follow this link for the full piece.
2 commentaires:
Thanks for this - I love those covers. They're as different from the generic sword-and-sorcery standard cover as the text is itself.
It's a shame more people haven't discovered Kay, but it's always a pleasure to steer a new reader his way.
That certainly is a lovely cover.
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