Vale of Hope
Cover Artwork for Grace Bourget’s novel
In 15th-century Spain, a reckless youth finds himself grounded with the worst punishment he can imagine: volunteering in a leper camp. Working amongst those the world has proclaimed as dead to society, Paul finds that there is more to life than his rebellion. Will the leper maiden Iria be his salvation, or will her suffering and that of Paul’s sister, Imelda, be his downfall? The Mother of the Forsaken is their only hope.
- from the back cover of Vale of Hope.
Vale of Hope is a Catholic semi-historical novel, a tale of love, conversion, and miracles. If you want to learn more about the story and the authoress, you can find an interview with the authoress below, and there’s an audio interview located at the book’s page, which you’ll find linked to at the bottom of this post.
This was the first cover artwork I created, for another novel by Grace Bourget. Depicting the leper camp around which the story revolves, it includes two of the novel’s symbols, the iris and the rainbow.
Both of these are echoed in the name of Iria, which means rainbow, or peace.
Irises themselves are connected to the rainbow through various legends which associate them with the Greek goddess Iris, who used rainbows as a means of travel.
Today, both blossoms and bow are considered symbols of hope, and in the case of irises, are associated with the Resurrection and the Virgin Mary, particularly in her title as Our Lady of Sorrows.
There were two versions of the cover artwork: in printing, the first came out blurry and darker than we liked, and I reworked the piece last year. The cover was recently updated to the piece you see here.
The main differences are the additions of background details, stronger highlights, and I swapped out Paul’s blue tunic for his favored green. I also started toning down my usual dark or black outlines, experimenting with a more muted color.
For me, my drawings never look complete without strong outlines. As much as I would like to be able to create something a little more realistic, I think it’s just part of the style I’m meant to have, so I’m content to stay in the realm of half-painted, half-illustration.
While this isn’t a usual thing for me to do, and nearly all of my work is entirely a combination of sketches and digital painting, I blended a photo into the drawing here as I did with the previous cover for Ad Maré. Specifically, I used a photo of a beautiful double rainbow I saw at sunset in early 2022. In person, the clouds misted over it like gold, and it was as if it was out of a fairytale painting! I edited it a bit, adding back the colors that the camera had taken out, and blended it into the drawing. Here is the original photo:
If you’ve enjoyed this post, consider reading the book itself or, if you like, prints and other products are available with the Vale of Hope image at the links below.
As a reminder, please avoid downloading or taking screenshots of Stella Maris artwork, as such images could be uploaded by individuals to make their own products, and won’t support my work, or that of the authors.
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