For a while now I’ve been working on the cover to my book The Big Kahn. I’m not completely done with it, but I’m posting some of the preliminary work.

These are some of the concepts and ideas that the author and I had. Some are pretty bland. I get a kick out of the fifth one though, where the deck of cards has the characters as a design. In the end though, we went with the last idea, Roy standing in front of the synagogue and Eli playing Three-card Monte, for a wraparound cover. Here it is, in black and white, for a sampler we published.

When I started painting it in color, I did a lot of color tests. These are from the back cover, though I did a ton for the front cover too.

Finally, I colored some tests I was happy with.

And voila! The finished cover is similar to the last color test. It’s not a real wrap-around cover, but its close enough. Here it is.