Cover Art (Day 6)

 Today I wanted to play with backgrounds...

The book involves hiking, so at first I thought about using some sort of outdoorsy background. I licensed this photo, but that doesn't really work.

I can make them sort of blend by using "soft light" mode, but now it looks like my book is a religious book about dog angels, which isn't quite the genre I'm aiming for.

Okay, but if I watercolorize the background and then mess with the colors, it's kind of interesting... Still not what I need, but interesting.

Back to the drawing board.

This one has just a simple generated background and then a "hard light" mode combining the layers, which modifies the colors of the painting a bit, but also makes them come together better.

(I'm guessing this is the point when I should admit I don't understand the different ways of combining layers, so I'm just a monkey pressing keys when I change things. Maybe I should look that up.)

This is boring, but it's an idea.

The black background it started with is really looking good at this point, isn't it?

I need to learn some things about combining layers next, I think...