Summer of the Apocalypse

Below is an essay I wrote for the above image which was done for a book cover.  Though somewhat technical, I hope you find it interesting as I reveal the process I went through to create the image.

Illustration for:

Summer of the Apocalypse

A Photoshop Diary

By Paul Swenson

I was asked to create a cover illustration for the science fiction novel Summer of the Apocalypse by James Van Pelt.  The story presents a dual narrative.  An old man living in a post-apocalyptic future, looks back on the summer the world ended when he was a teenage boy and he lost everything, including his mother, and father, the latter of which with whom he shared a tempestuous relationship.  As he reflects back on his past, he decides to journey out from the small primitive community in which he lives in hopes of finding something that he can bring back to his “village” that can lift them from the technological dark ages they now find themselves in.  The past, present and future are revealed to us in equal parts as the story unravels.

My hope was to create an image that captured many of the fascinating aspects of the story.  The narrator as young and old at once.  The cold, dark aged, present and how it was shaped/ influenced by the explosive and destructive past.  And finally I wanted the illustration to reflect the importance of books and the written word, which in the story symbolizes knowledge, hope and the destruction of the same.  So the main image presents the old man in his present life, in a Colorado landscape, his gaze directly confronts the viewer.  The color is cold and saturated.  Burning through the present, as though the cover of the book itself has been scorched, is a symbol from the past, himself as a young man.

The picture is comprised of 5 main elements, The old man, the young man, the foreground landscape, the sky, and the burn mark. 

COLLECTING

After doing some preliminary pencil sketches and working out general composition issues I set out to collect the images.  Pictures were taken of the old man- a family member, the young man- a neighbor kid, the Colorado valley setting was local farmland, and local eastern sky just past sunset served as the sky in the picture.  All pictures were taken as RAW files with a digital camera and downloaded into Photoshop.

THE OLD MAN

Much of the initial color temperature, saturation, contrast and exposure were set in the raw file converter before it was opened into Photoshop.  From there the image was further processed, shadows and highlights shaped and modeled by many successive curves layers, my favorite type of adjustment layer.  Occasionally a hue/saturation layer was applied to further intensify color. Typically areas, like the old man’s eye, are lassoed, feathered and then the layer is applied.  In all, about ten layers were applied to model and intensify the old mans face.  Further, to give the image a more dreamlike and painterly feel, the paint daubs filter was used and then adjusted down using the fade command in the edit menu.  Finally, the old man’s ears, shirt and back edges of his head were lassoed, feathered, and then a small amount of Gaussian blur applied to shift further emphasis onto the faces.

GROUND AND SKY

The same general methods employed in the processing of the old man’s face were used to get the proper, near dusk, feel and dramatic tone.

Note: the top area of the illustration was left open intentionally to leave room for the book title and author's name.

INITIAL CUT AND PASTE

Once these three elements were completed, man, foreground and sky, they were pasted one on top of another, beginning with the sky as the bottom layer.  The sky from the foreground image was carefully cut away using the magic wand and magnetic lasso tool in concert, then the selection feathered ever so lightly to soften the transition edge.  The foreground was then pasted on top of the sky.  Finally the image of the old man was cut free of his original image taken in his back yard and pasted onto the foreground.  In each instance of cutting and pasting, the transform tool was used to properly size and scale each image.

THE BURN

After wrestling with ideas on how to render the illusion of the page being burned away to reveal the image of the young man beneath, I decided the easiest way, or the way that best suited my sensibility was to actually burn the image and photograph it.  Several high quality prints were made on matte paper.  Then one at a time I painted accelerant onto the area I wanted burned, set up my camera and lit the picture on fire.  Through trial and error I was finally able to achieve a burnt area that simulated the shape that I wanted.

NOW THE TRICKY PART

The photograph of the burnt print was opened into Photoshop and everything but the area that had been burned away was selected and pasted onto a blank canvas so that subsequent layers, such as the image of the boy could be slipped underneath.  The image of the boy was turned, and transformed with slight skewing and warping so that the shape of the eye and the boy’s resemblance seemed to be a credible match to the old man.  Some slight motion blur was applied to the boy’s face to add a more dynamic element to the image. Further images of the burn were pasted and cut onto the image to give the onion peel, papery layer feel to the edges.  Then the burn was further processed, edges painted black and brown, and shadows added to give the illusion of depth beneath the surface of the page.