Elijah cover art

This is what Tom posted on his blog about the process of designing the cover for the Elijah book. I liked it so much -- he should be writing the books! -- that I am posting it here in its entirety.

Enjoy!

Elijah and the Ravens of Carith

The Elijah cover is coming along, as is Michael's book.

The book is, according to the title page, "A Twenty-First Century Reflection in a Medieval Carmelite Mode".

Michael wanted a Medieval icon modernized, capturing the mode and message of the book. So we started with an icon that Michael liked, and then went to work on it.

The icon presented several problems. The colors were faded and washed out, the raven was too small and would be overpowered by the cover's text, the icon needed to be simplified if it was to represent a "Twenty-First Century Reflection", and the icon had to be transformed into modern, more assertive colors.

I worked on the colors first, reducing the number of colors in the icon to eight, increasing the contrast, shifting the color balance to harmonize the icon internally, and simplifying the lines by creating color boundaries. Next, I added the text, and finally, a larger, starker, more modern image of the raven, weaving the raven in above "Elijah" and through "And the Ravens of Carith", attempting to capture something of the mystery of God's use of the ravens by using that simple motif.

The cover captures Elijah and the Ravens in standard motif, with three elements -- Elijah sitting among the rocks, turned upward, looking at a raven, shown in this more modern, early Renaissance painting by Girolamo Savoldo, "Elijah in the Desert".

Notice the richness of the colors in the Savoldo painting, in stark contrast to the more monochromatic coloration of the original icon. I tried, when working with the cover, to keep the Medieval monochromatic feel of the original icon, while increasing the contrast to capture something of more modern artistic motifs.

I was careful to keep the look on Elijah's face, which is wonderful.

I don't know who the original iconist was, but he was a genius, capturing a human mood almost perfectly in Elijah's expression.

Because the iconist broke away from Medieval convention by creating so complex and expression on Elijah's face, the icon itself is a mixture of Medieval convention and later Western artistic convention.

As I worked with the image, I realized that the icon was, for that reason, perfect for Michael's book.

The mix of Medieval and Modern in the icon itself, that original genius of the iconist, is what will make the cover successful, more than anything.