The Underground Man: Front Cover

This cover took longer to create than I'd like to admit. My first four ideas ended in tears, before I decided to use pieces of my background to 'build' a coffin. I started with a photo of some ground taken at home. I then copied pieces of this ground and pasted them onto different layers, and then made them darker or lighter by adjusting the colour levels. These pieces built up the coffin which has a light border (created as a vector shape in Illustrator and dropped into Photoshop as pixels. I also then used a textured brush to rub out patches of the line). The figure holding the shovel was 'cut out' of more photos of the ground and selectively darkened. The back cover has a close-up of the coffin, of which I was pretty chuffed.

The Underground Man: Back Cover

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the back cover

The Drowning Pool: Front Cover

The second in my series of covers is for The Drowning Pool. This was a great Archer novel that was made into a movie in 1975 starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

The tiled background and blood spatter were painted in Photoshop using textured brushes.

The Drowning Pool: Back Cover

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the back cover

The Zebra-Striped Hearse: Front cover

This is the first in a series I've set myself to re-imagine the covers of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series of detective novels. I think it's safe to say that with the exception of my dad, no one has taught me more about the important things in life than the ultra-cool Lew Archer. Where else could I have learnt how to track down missing persons, violent criminals and runaway spouses while all-the-while dispensing phlegmatic philosophies on the human condition? Nowhere I tell you. These covers are part design practice and part homage to the greatest detective novelist to ever pick up a pen.

The cover design is done in Illustrator, the elements are created in Photoshop.