Alternative Book Cover: Coram Boy

For a college assignment on the book 'Coram Boy' by Jamila Gavin, it was required to design an alternative cover for the book. The book tells the gripping story of Meshak, a son of travelling merchant that sells pots and pans. But the more sinister side to the story is that his father also bribes parents into selling him their babies claiming he will give them a better home. But in fact, he either sells the kids for money as slaves or prostitutes, or kills them.

I came up with the design below.


The explanation is pretty straightforward; the outside world knows nothing more than that their children are in good health and Meshak's father is a simple merchant, hence the daisy up top. The world likes the picturesque façade, and thinks nothing more of it than just that (the daisy seems nothing more than a simple daisy).
But the real truth is in fact that behind that façade, a gruesome, child-trading world corrupted by money is growing, hence the skull with dollar-signs as front teeth, and the fetus in place of the brain.

The Imperatör Designs

Some designs I did for my own band, Imperatör.

On the left is the bandlogo I did. Arrows pointing to all directions underscore the mild 'explosive' feel of the music.

Then there's the 8-pointed Star , with the 'I' of Imperatör in the middle. The North, South, East and West arrows all contain a small sword with a knot, to symbolize the saying 'To cut the knot with the sword'.

Then there's the the 6-pointed spearhead, with an elephant's head in the middle as a reference to the band's 'themesong'. Both the star and the spearhead were done in a few hours.

Lastly there's the Ring. Again there's the Elephant's head, this time mixed up with the symbol of Tanit; the patron goddess of Carthage. This also is a reference to the band's 'themesong'.
Furthermore, if you look at it from further away, a woman's body appears.

The Anthrax Mural

The first actual wallpainting, as a tribute to my all-time favorite band Anthrax. I used the techniques I learned from the earlier paintings, and this was the result:

Facing the wall dead-on

A shot with yours truly

It measures over 8 feet in width, 5 feet in height, and took over 30 workinghours (spread in the timespan of 2 months) to complete. There are 4 spraypainted colors in there, and lots of details.
Apart from the Anthrax logo and pentagram, I designed the entire thing myself.

Behemoth Mural

Once again, the logo of the Polish deathmetal band Behemoth.

The wall facing it straight up.

The entire piece is 3.5 feet wide and 5 feet high, and took 18 workinghours to complete. The drawing was a bit of a pain considering its a wall and such, but all in all I'm satisfied with the end result. I did the Behemothlogo from the A4-printout I also used for the Behemoth painting , and the twin eagle was done from a t-shirt.

The Doc Tribute

Because of the passing of long-time Vader drummer Krzysztof "Docent" Raczkowski I felt obliged to alter the Vader wall.

The final result.
From another angle.

It took just about 5 hours to complete.

The Probeersel Painting

This project is for the Comic Website Probeersel.com. It is to become a sign for their stand at the 2005 ClickBurg Webcomics Festival, the 1st of May later this week. Here's the final result.

An overview shot with its creator
An overview shot without its creator

A total of 18 working hours and alot of paint went into it. The final result measures 10 by 2.5 feet devided over 4 triplex panels of 2.5x2.5 feet each for good mobility. It's my first try on fresh, unmodified wood and once again, valuable lessons were learned. Among which the thing that the cans of primer contained primer for only 9 square feet instead of the 25 square feet they should've contained. The same day I found that out I sent the producers an email, to which they haven't responded yet.

Furthermore I tried doing a four-color gradient in the tailflame of the 'skullcomet'. The colors used are white, silver, steelblue (a lightish kind of metallic blue) and dark blue.

It was sold to the owner of Probeersel.com, René van Densen.

The Anthrax Painting

Yet another one with the logo of the American Thrashmetalband Anthrax.

The drawing of it was challenging, the cutting was even harder to do and took alot more time, the painting was also challenging with the planned colortransition but I'm still pleased with the endresult.

So, without any further adue, let me present to you: The Anthrax painting.

The door in place
The door whilst the final transparent coating is drying

The final result measures 8 feet in height, 2 feet in width and took 23 working hours to complete. I had to use this picture to do the skull from and because of its small size, I had to enhance it. The endresult was around 30 times as large as the enlarged picture I did it from.

It's the first one to actually have more than two colors or to have a colortransition. Personally I'm not that happy with the silver-black colortransition in the Anthrax logo, so that's something that needs a little more practicing.