Back to the Drawing Board
/Literally, I’m back to the drawing board, which is my iPad. I’ve been working on my cover image for about six weeks. Though I’m not close to completing it, I have gained a great respect for the great cover images I see on my favorite books, such as this old Viking Press copy of The Portable Thoreau. I’ve had this book in my hands a hundred times and never once glanced more than a second at the cover, except maybe to think that it was unexceptional, or even ugly.
Now that I’m trying to create cover art that captures the flavor of my book, I understand that creating a graphic interpretation of a feeling, and in the case of Thoreau, a deeply compelling approach to living a life free of constraints, I see great beauty in the rough pen sketch of a handmade cabin standing alone in the woods. What impresses me most about this image is that some long gone artist had a free mind, one free enough to understand and conjure a rough sketch that a dull reader could eventually find deeply moving twenty years after first seeing it.
VIking Press, The Portable Thoreau, edited by Carl Bode
