Sisters of the Sands Book Cover

I was hired by James B. Villinger to design a cover for his book called Sisters of the Sands.

He had a few different designs made for him previously to see which one works out best and he asked me to come up with another version that looks quite artistic, hand-drawn and clean.

I was asked to illustrate the two main characters Sacet and Eno both of whom have their own supernatural powers and James wanted me to capture this. Sacet has the ability to open portals and James’ vision of her side of the cover was a purple, swirly motif. Eno on the other hand has a telekinetic power and James asked me to make his side yellow and crumbley like sand.

First I wanted to draw their whole figure in a heroic pose but very soon I realised that the cover itself is too small and narrow to be able to fit two people on it without the details getting lost. So I quickly changed my mind and started to sketch down only their portraits in a way that their figures would somehow blend together in the middle.

Later on I married the purple side with an image of a city and added a desert scene to the yellow one to increase the contrast even more. I kept piling on the layers of different images, lines and textures including my own hand-drawn patterns until I achieved this final version of the Sisters of the Sands Book Cover.