Book Cover

For my book cover I chose to redesign my favorite novel, the Pulitzer Prize winning Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. This is the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, and is an epic adventure and love story from the days of cowboys and indians. It follows two Texas Rangers and a group of cowboys as they travel from Texas to Montana.

I wanted to keep the concept simple. I used a sketch style drawing of two cowboys on horse back moving along a path towards a sunset as the primary visual.

A gradient overlay provides the appearance of the sun setting to the entire cover, letting the early evening sky and the dust of the trail provide the overall color scheme. I changed the gradient's layer style to multiply which allowed the primary image background color and my gradient's colors to blend together for a harmonious scheme.

Next, I added a sprinkle of stars and adjusted the layer style and opacity to give the appearance that the stars are more visible at high points in the sky and less visible closer to the setting sun.

I used a classic, serif typeface for the title and author information, with a slight touch of the dusty brown layered on top of the title which helps to tone down the white text the slightest bit. Here is the final image.