The front cover is almost finished! You can see here the background is colored in. In my initial vision, the mountains were more classical, snow-capped, jagged peaks. In the painting, they’ve taken on a more mesa-like appearance. I asked the artist, Scott Christian Sava, about this. He said that he thought the colors worked better this way, and I have to agree. It lends a warmth to the snowy landscape that makes the scene appear less bleak, in my opinion. Furthermore, it got me thinking about the way I describe the planet’s environs and I have decided to update the descriptions to match this painting more closely. I think it lends a more alien air to Bestic; makes it more otherworldly to have terrain that isn’t quite like it would be on Earth.
So, in this case, seeing the artwork gave me ideas of ways I could improve the manuscript.