Here are the final drafts for the ‘IX’ album cover, completed a few weeks ago now. I’m drawing towards the end of this project and getting quite excited about the end product. I’ll be starting work on the inlay very soon, and working on some Grindstone Art promotional material in between, such as a pretty web banner to replace the plain grey header up there.

Both of these images are rendered in black acrylic ink & white acrylic paint on corruguated cardboard. Cardboard takes ink & paint really well & provides a natural mid-tone, which makes it easy & pleasant to work with. It also has a distinct texture which can be used to add a certain dimension to the painting, such as to add drybrush effects. It’s also free, which is never something to complain about – these started off as an Ikea box left by the bins outside a pub nearby.

The only obvious drawback to corruguated card is the obvious distinctive lined texture which can be difficult to avoid in photographs, so I’ll need to be careful when I photograph the final illustration for the cover. Incidentally, that’s pretty much complete, but you’ll have to wait to see that.

Final Hell City draft:

Final Lucifer draft (note that the colours on the images above & below are the same, but I had to photograph them under different lighting conditions. I like the warm effect but it’s an inconvenient demonstration of how lighting can dramatically affect your images.

Finally, a title page mock-up using the Lucifer head draft: