Late as usual! I’m here to show you guys my Top 5 Cover Art choices for the Top 5 Wednesday and BooktubeSFF Babbles cross over post. There is a video on the Youtube channel of course, but all images and sites are available here as well! Same as any other time I do a Top 5 these are in no particular order. You’re also just getting 5 I love. I’m not a fan of picking and ordering things I love. Once something reaches that point I don’t start playing the nit-picky game – so these are just 5 awesome ones I could look at over and over.
- Let’s start with any of the Incryptid novel covers by Aly Fell. These have an almost old school style that I love, they remind of the old Dragonlance or D&D covers that I read as a kid but more modern and in a newer style. And confession time, I love those hideous old covers from back in the day. There is just something about them that brings back so many memories.
- Coming as no surprise Binti’s cover is stunning to me. I adore spacey covers, always have, and the overlay of the stars with the imagery of her almost pulling the mud over her face is just great. Even before I read and loved this story I loved the artwork, done by David Palumbo. You can see the subtle nuances in her face and her clothing – it’s just lovely in every way.
- We’re going to hit another of Nnedi Okorafor’s series, this time two covers. The new Akata Witch cover and the Akata Warrior cover, both by Greg Ruth. These are kind of my current obsession. As much as I love that retro art, the stuff people can do digitally is just amazing. Plus these have bugs on them. I love bugs so much. I can’t wait for these releases, in fact I think one comes out close to my birthday so happy birthday to me!
- As much as I’ve talked about retro covers I can’t do this list without one. Dragonflight’s mass market cover is still probably my favorite cover, with acrylic art by Michael Whelan (and holy crap guys, his work is amazing! Stormlight Archives, Wheel of Time, you name it in fantasy there is a damn good chance he did it!). If you made me pick a cover, it’d probably be this one. There is something about the way she’s got her arms thrown open and free that used to appeal to me as a kid. This was one of my first fantasy/science fiction books as a kid so it’s just stuck with me. This is also how I picture all dragons, this or…
- This. Todd Lockwood’s dragons have been on a lot of covers but I really love his own novel’s cover, The Summer Dragon. This artist and his work is entirely to blame for my love of tabletop games and their novels growing up. I stumbled upon the artwork he did to design the dragon species and I was obsessed from then forward. I still have the post of the dragon species, I think specifically for Forgotten Realms, on my downstairs library wall.
That’s it! What are your favorite covers? I adore cover art on general and it can be a real sticky point for me. I went to school for studio art so a shoddy cover gets me all kinds of annoyed. But in general the work we see is great!
P.S. Sorry again for the delay, I made my video then spent a day deeeeep in these galleries just soaking up the amazing artwork. Mainly the dragons. So many dragons. Omfg.
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