Guest Post: Simon Dickie

Our cover artist Simon graciously agreed to share his story of creating our cover art. He says that in a nutshell, it involves 'whisky, swearing and avalanches of scrunched up paper', but also provided a more detailed explanation. More of his work, including his webcomic, can be found here, and he is happy to take commissions for e-book covers.

The Forgotten Gods cover was a pretty hefty project for me, though I've done drawings for people before I'd never drawn a book cover before plus the subject matter was close to my heart.  Now an opinion I have when it comes to reading a book is that its not just the words themselves but how its presented as a whole can add to the experience of it. I realise there's the old adage  "don't judge a book by its cover" but I think back to when I was a kid reading the Hobbit for the first time.  I'd read an old version with Tolkien's own art on the cover and interspersed through out. The art and presentation really did give the impression I was encountering some thing old and age-worn making it stand out amongst other fantasy novels that all some to be presented much more garishly where the words 'chainmail bikinis ' always springs to mind for some reason!
That first memory of reading the Hobbit and experiences with fantasy art covers made me mindful to do justice to the story and make a drawing that suited its atmosphere. To begin with I read the book and did what I call warm up sketches. The final image was all done in Phostoshop but for this stage I prefer the ordinary pad and pencil which I find more conducive to quickly roughing out ideas.
For the warm up stage I sketched various Jacobites and daione sìdhe none of whom would necessarily be planned to be on the cover but by drawing them and researching various historical and mythological books helped me become comfortable with the books setting when it came to finally start the actual cover. I also alongside the sketches wrote a few word fragments on how the story made me feel as well as a few song lyrics and song titles to look up to listen to while drawing.
Incidentally I find music a really important aspect of the creative process for the sketching stage I listened to Idelwild's Scottish Fiction album especially the final track which includes a poem by Edwin Morgan and for the drawing proper I discovered this fantastic band called Albannach. (If you're inclined to give them a listen I think you'll appreciate how much they helped me get in the right mood for this story's setting!)
 By the end of the sketch stage I'd settled on a firm idea of what to do. The drawing would be loosely inspired by the painting 'An incident in the rebellion of 1746, by David Morier' only in my interpetation the daione sìdhe would be there to help turn the tide against the redcoats. I figured this would make the ideal cover since it would depict both the historical and fantasy aspects of the book. From there it was a matter of drawing my rough sketch in Photoshop then blocking it in with colours and adding the detail. This took a fair while since I was going for an old painting sort of style and making sure all the historical depictions were as accurate as they could be.