Covers
Pierre Smit
one of my personal favourites, i always felt, were my drawings for "The Block," back in um..SW#03..or the one for "Deadfellas" in SW#09.. but now it probably has to be 'ANNA NIEMAND" (to cite someone else's title for it), i did for the cover of SW#12..
i think she came out damn sexy.. (it's all her though, not me..:)
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Hendrik Gericke
I recently got turned down for a sci-fi concept art gig, because I didn't have enough of that kind of thing in my portfolio. It's annoying, because I love sci-fi, yet in concept art it's been done to death and I tend to go the opposite direction to the general norm. So I took this as the gauntlet that had been thrown down and jumped at the chance to get stuck in. A massive inspiration of mine is the painter John Harris, who has done a lot of covers for Tor Books (they have an amazing stable of artists), and I definitely took cues from him. I wanted to relate the sense of scale between the craft and the planet, giving it a telephoto feel.
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Vianne Venter
When we started thinking about cover images for this issue, I was keen to create a new image but the deadline was against us. Then Joe hauled this picture I did for Richard Kunzmann’s story ‘Lost In Recollection’ (from Issue 8), out of the archives of his brain – he thought it would work perfectly for ‘The Disposable Man’, by Thomas Carl Sweterlitsch..
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Vianne Venter
Joe has always loved this piece, so when he decided that come-hell-or-high-water he was going to use it for this cover, I attempted an overlay layer of butterfly images at short notice, though in the end we decided to go without it.
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Pierre Smit
one of my personal favourites, i always felt, were my drawings for "The Block," back in um..SW#03..or the one for "Deadfellas" in SW#09.. but now it probably has to be 'ANNA NIEMAND" (to cite someone else's title for it), i did for the cover of SW#12..
i think she came out damn sexy.. (it's all her though, not me..:)
Jesca Marisa
The biggest thing for any artist, musician or writer is to develop a style that's identifiable as one's own. My most obvious influence is manga and comic book art, but over the years all my references and inspirations have blended together to form a style that's uniquely my own - or at least that's the hope :). I am always thrilled when people are able to identify my work just based on style of drawing. By day I work for advertising, but by night I don tights and cape (read: fluffy duvet) to work on my graphic novels. I enjoy the freedom of writing and illustrating my own stories - it feeds a deep emotional need to create.
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Hendrik Gericke
First off, you have to do your prep work. It's easy to figure out the composition and general light balance in the early stages, so lots of thumbnail sketches are the order of the day. From the outset I work in photoshop, digital painting is a good tool as it allows a lot of freedom to change and rework without making a mess. From there you scale it up to the full resolution and begin refining it. The rest of it is basically round after round of tightening, making sure the eye flows across the space and to the correct points. It's essentially the same as an oil painting, but more premeditated.
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Vincent Sammy
I illustrate primarily in watercolours. I find it fast and effective. I usually add backgrounds in photoshop, as well as add effects and final visual optimisation. But the basic image is always done in watercolours. I like having an actual "original" artwork.
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Pierre Smit
just imagine a guy drawing it, loving it, doubting it, frustrated, finishing it, liking it, but eyeing it suspiciously for unseen errors and hindsights and for trees instead of forests..
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Vincent Sammy
Creating a cover-piece usually depends on whether I have a story to work from, or whether I am given free reign in deciding what content can go on the cover. Both are challenging in there own way as the one limits you to the subject matter and you need to try an establish the best possible visual angle from the story, while the other has the challenge of trying to come up with an image that is as new and fresh as possible.
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