Latest Cover Art – Becky Chambers’ Record of a Spaceborn Few

Latest Cover Art – Becky Chambers’ Record of a Spaceborn Few

As we welcome 2018 I am happy to share with you my latest cover art for Becky Chambers’ upcoming book, Record of a Spaceborn Few (HarperCollinsUS).

It’s set to be released this coming July but you can pre-order it now.

Record of a Spaceborn Few

This piece was made digitally. The spaceship, an Exodan Homesteader, was entirely hand-drawn in Photoshop with my Wacom Intuos tablet. These are old colony ships, and have spent hundreds of years in space and have gone through generations of renovations and improvements.

When I was first given the assignment, I had no description of the spacecraft but my art director definitely wanted a spacecraft in a nebula. My first sketches had a totally different spaceship but I was happy with the color scheme. After the first drafts were complete, I received a book excerpt with descriptions of these vast spacecraft, and her own sketches. Becky had even cobbled together a paper model of the ship as she envisioned it.

With all the new information at hand, I went back and re-drew the Exodan Homesteader in similar colors to work with the background.

I highly recommend Becky Chambers’ books. She’s doing fantastic work and I am thrilled to have been a small part of her commercial publications.

Closed and Common Orbit – Becky Chambers

A Closed and Common Orbit

And her debut novel, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

I have previously written about my work on the covers for Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. It has had several iterations before the final US release by HarperCollins.

3 comments on “Latest Cover Art – Becky Chambers’ Record of a Spaceborn FewAdd yours →

  1. Iā€™m a huge fan of covers which depict things actually in the book, especially when it comes to spaceships. I just hit the description of the Oxomoco and was delighted to see how your painting matches up. Excellent work! šŸ™‚

  2. That image of the Oxomoco is gorgeous! Completely different to how I imagined it in my mind (and makes a lot more sense, I won’t lie).

    1. Glad you enjoyed it! Becky Chambers had some drawings of the Oxomoco, and even made a paper model. I based the final image off of her shapes and proportions.
      But my first pass on the design was completely different. I’ve enjoyed both, to be honest.
      Cheers!
      Christopher Doll

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