My latest cover for the Arkham Horror series from Aconyte continues the Art Deco trend of the other books in this series while also recycling some of the art from the previous covers. In the Hands of Madmen is an omnibus collection of three previously-published novels for which I was given the tricky task of combining portions of three covers into a single design. This wouldn’t be so difficult in other cases but my Arkham Horror covers have been heavily structured, with borders within borders, background patterns and isolated details. I was fortunate that two of the books in the new volume had cover designs that were reflections of each other which could be welded together and laid over the third cover without too much trouble. The original covers are presented below for comparison.
My last Arkham Horror cover, Herald of Ruin, featured a drawing of a fantastic city which was mostly covered over in the final assembly. The new one does the same with a Deco grille design that I worked up from a photo of a grille in the Squibb Building in New York City.
The design is more visible on the back cover so the effort wasn’t entirely wasted. When I’m working on covers like these I prefer to copy (or adapt) authentic period designs when I can. You can find no end of Deco motifs in the form of clip-art but they tend to be Deco-ese, lacking the invention you find in the original designs. I like this grille, it reminds me of a printed circuit. I may use it again one day.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Herald of Ruin
• The Ravening Deep
• Diamonds
• The Devourer Below
• Litany of Dreams
• The Last Ritual