Sometimes the best cover ideas arrive right away; sometimes they take a little longer. There’s no shortage of great imagery in Dan Simmons’ Muse of Fire. It’s got the best elements of space opera – a mighty spaceship, fabulous aliens, emotional tension, Shakespearean drama, galactic wonder, and a band of humans struggling to survive in a barren universe. After reading the manuscript, I could see plenty of great solutions for the cover – a spaceship rocketing through the stars; actors on a spotlit stage; dramatic rock formations; bizarre aliens looming all around. Surefire stuff, but those ideas seemed somewhat…..lacking. Maybe too easy….too one-liner? Besides, the beauty of Dan’s story isn’t just the big questions he’s asking and the big ideas he’s exploring, but the way he poetically conjures them. It seemed to me the story demanded a cover that at least attempted to be as ambitious, even if it fell short while trying.

So I did lots of little thumbnail sketches of various ideas. Some of them exorcised the bad clichés out of my system. Some explored more promising abstractions. None of them said ‘eureka.’ Days went by. The deadline approached. And then finally, the tumblers in my head clicked into place. While sketching for Muse, I was finishing the cover for a terrific sf anthology called Fast Forward 2. Because of that cover, I’d been studying protest posters and revolutionary imagery. The best posters seemed stripped-down to their bare essence…iconic. Their impact lingered in my head. Another thing — I’ve long been a huge admirer of the brilliant Polish poster artist Wieslaw Walkuski. Every artist has their inspirational artist heroes, but Walkuski is the artist hero that all my other contemporary artist heroes worship. A strange thought occurred to me — I imagined what would happen if he would’ve been hired to do a cover for Muse of Fire. That image collided with the vapors of cosmic abstraction and icon already floating in my head and….eureka.

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I’d been doing some quick Photoshop concept studies of scrap photography, mixed media textures, and rough edges. The idea with these was just to get ideas down quickly and play with juxtapositions and associations. Then once I worked out the correct solution, I’d get a clean sheet of illustration board and draw and paint the idea from scratch with traditional pencil and paints.

Because time was of the essence, I did a quick junk comp to submit my ‘eureka’ idea to Subterranean Press publisher Bill Schafer. He and the author both gave it a big thumbs-up, and off I went. With my approved rough comp in hand, my first step was to draw the entire composition as a full value drawing on a clean sheet of illustration board. I generally use a FaberCastell 2H to work out the drawing, and then a 2B and an Ebony pencil to do the final rendering.

Usually I then do a greyscale oil underpainting, but because the deadline was imminent, I skipped the oil painting and jumped straight to color. I knew what color values I wanted for the final, so I painted separate pieces of illustration board with acrylic. These color paintings are abstract and free-flowing. Hue, value, and texture are the only things that are important here.

I then scanned in my greyscale pencil rendering as well as my pieces of colored abstract painting. In Photoshop, I overlaid the colored abstracts over my pencils. It’s lots of fun watching my colors react to the greyscale drawing in ways that surprise. The merging of the color with the greyscale is often dictated by what I imagine it to be. I can always force it that way, if needed, but it’s also fun to follow through on chance collisions. Just like painting on a traditional physical canvas, it’s the alchemy of planning and decision-making mixed with spontaneity and intuition that guides the color process here. It’s fun to bring the real-world into the virtual world, and the digital collaging of my traditional drawings and paintings continually surprises me in new ways every time.

It was an honor to illustrate this cover. Dan’s written a story for the ages. Bill generously gave me the time to do this cover. I was fortunate to have a little more time to go back and paint a greyscale underpainting to put underneath my colors and really make the final image sing. (Thanks, Bill!) And to Wieslaw Walkuski, wherever you are – this cover’s an homage to you, with much respect and admiration.

It’s been quite a ride. Enjoy Muse of Fire!

Happy reading,
John Picacio

p.s. More Dan Simmons goodness coming from Subterranean Press in the near future – right now, I’m reading Dan’s brand-new manuscript Drood and it’s amazing. I’ll be doing the cover illustration for Subterranean’s limited edition and I’ll also be doing the cover illo for their limited edition of Dan’s awesome arctic thriller, The Terror. Keep an eye on the Subterranean Press website for more details!

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