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"The Hidden Dominion of Geordie James" cover reveal

🕑 Added 2025-10-20 18:44:52 +0000 UTC

Comments

Mike Dawson

Thanks Jude! I am glad you like the image. That is an interesting question and makes me think maybe it would make an interesting post one day. There's a lot of stuff happening in the woods and out in nature in this book, and I really wanted to make an effort to better represent plants and growth and the messiness we find out in actual forests than perhaps I did back in previous books that took place in similar locations, like Troop 142. I definitely was looking at artists like Wally Wood, as well as keeping a mood board anytime I saw an interesting image come across my various social media feeds, but the thing that I think helped me level up a little bit with this cover image was that I "built" it in InDesign. Instead of drawing it all in one go, I had the basic image of my main character in his little fort, and then I would draw different trees and leaves and branches, and pretty much layer them on top. It helped me generate a feeling of the way actual scenes in nature feel, with stuff all jumbled up and chaotic. My InDesign files became quite monstrous, with a million random layers, but it was a very fun and interesting, and I hope effective, way to try to make an image like this.

Jude Killory

Mike tell me about your tree drawing process. I’m really impressed with all the various details you put in this image. Who are some of your foliage influences?