For the first project I decided to design a book cover for a novel that I am 'semi-completed' reading called the 'Sisters Brothers' by Patrick DeWitt. It is a 'southern gothic' story based on twin bothers that are hitmen with a comical twist to it. When I read it, it conjured up dry, dusty, gritty imagery.

I came up with some ideas for the preliminary sketches that came from sugar skulls and pistols, representing the overall theme to the book: the 'day of the dead' symbolism, hence the story taking place in California, and of and the twin brothers. 

I considered a variety of western symbols, like wagon wheels and plants like Sasparilla, desert cactus's and tumbleweeds. But in the end, I went with the sugar skull. I feel like it captures the kind of attitude of cynicism and playfulness while at the same time being a direct reference to death. Since it's a book cover, I am looking for something that will wrap around the spine either a desert landscape or some birds.As usual, I got ahead of myself and forgot to add the spine of the book as a separate artboard. Ended up spending quite a bit of time figuring out how to resolve this. I found it helpful to print out the unfinished piece and wrap it around an existing book to better see the size I was working with in real life.

After that I did some more detail work on the skull, the little circles and colorful flourishes really make it stand out. I added some smoke to the guns with ended up filling up my previous idea of something that will wrap around the spine.

Then, I added the text which was a hard choice. I felt that I had kind of a 'carnival theme' happening in the image, so I decided to go with the Rosewood text.

At the second stage of the project I was still a little unsure as to what to do with the background. I played around with different textures and other ideas like putting a desert scene behind the image until I got the idea to find a vintage map of California during the era that the story takes place, the early 1900's during the goldrush.

The color palette I chose was intended to be old fashioned 'Western Carnival' theme with the acid yellows, reds and blues.

The textures I used in Photoshop were 'gritty' textures that came from charcoal,  brick and concrete.

In the end, Ill admit that although I am satisfied with the main image, I should have chose a different font. I think the font is distracting and hard to read to the viewer. After class critique, I especially reconsidered the whole design concept together. There was a comment about how I could have incorporated the guns into the skull, and I agree that would have looked more interesting.