Atmosphæra Incognita

So I was thrilled to get the chance to work on another Neal Stephenson book package with Subterranean Press. Atmosphæra Incognita is a novella that takes place in a not so distant future and revolves around a massive construction project.

The concept that won out for the cover art was of a building under construction in a canyon of clouds high enough into the atmosphere to see the stars in the daytime.

Here’s the final sketch, with the building patched in and enhanced with some rendering in Photoshop.

Here’s the finished black and white scratchboard and pen/ink line work. I decided to render the building and cloudscape separately to give me more room to play with where the building would peek through the clouds.

This is the finished color cover with fully rendered color. I ended up separating several areas of the art as well as the building to allow the color to give more depth to the image.

The end pages of this project called for a wide illustration to cover both sides of the page. I loved the idea of figures inspecting the open center of this superstructure. Here’s the final sketch below with a perspective drawing (done in Photoshop) that was used to help me render the structure.

Here’s the finished product for the end pages — more pen and ink work than scratchboard. By the way, check out the Brad Pitt movie “Ad Astra.” The beginning has a fantastic scene with a similar sort of speculative fiction super building concept. It’s an intense scene!