Here's the story with the cover. When I sent out the call for submissions, the text was so long that I had to break it up somehow. I settled for grabbing a random picture and slapping a title on it. It didn't take long for the rhino to grow on me, so I set out on a quest to find the artist of the picture and try to purchase the rights or commission her to draw a human head. I located the artist, but her blog was in Spanish. Luckily my wife was able to translate, but unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'm going to get a reply. Therefore I cannot use the rhino picture for the cover. Instead, I used the rhino as inspiration to draw my own cover. Here's how the process played out.
First I drafted this two-inch picture in pencil:
Next I blew the draft up to a full-page image:
I finished by using the draft as an outline as I drew the full-page image in pen:
The rest is simple Photoshop tweaks:
Barring a few tweaks, I'm leaning towards making this the official cover. Not only does it get the job done, but it's free!
In either case, I'd love to hear your thoughts/suggestions.
