Monday, February 11, 2013

"Heart of Darkness" cover


Coming in October 2013 from my fine publisher Tin House Books, a new edition of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness with 100 full color illustrations by me. Above is the final cover, and I couldn't be more pleased. It captures everything I was trying to convey with my illustrations, and is just a brilliant piece of work. Many many thanks to Diane Chonette at Tin House for putting this together, and to Tin House in general for making this dream a reality.

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2 comments:

  1. Love it. You can practically hear an insectile, anxious sort of click and patter, the sound of uncontrolled growth.

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  2. RF, I was really really happy with this. I was trying for a very specific kind of feeling from the jungle illustrations that I did, and your comment nicely articulated it. That sensation of an awesome, powerful, alien and threatening presence, living and moving through the growth of the vines and leaves, the suss of the hot breeze, the constant song of the insects, the overpowering heat, the sickly yellow sky. There was a lot of discussion over which direction to go with the cover, and for a while it seemed like we would be doing something almost abstract...a simple pattern of leaves with the title superimposed or something similar. Then, out of the blue, Diane came up with this and she absolutely nailed it. I am happy for so many reasons, one of which is that I think this is an excellent representation of what is on the inside of the book as well. Very consistent with that.

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