Do Judge a Book by Its Cover - final cover evaluation

I'm happy with my final cover as I think it works well to capture the exciting and dynamic themes I was trying to get across in my original roughs. I was considering using digital media for this but I decided against it because I wanted to explore more wet media after my use of gouache in the last brief, so I chose to ink the black areas with a fine brush. It was hard being meticulous with the brush around the electrical tendrils and the lettering as I'm not that used to working in confined spaces with a paintbrush but I think I did quite well to accentuate the white areas without going over any edges or inking the wrong area. I think the ink gets a bit splotchy in some areas which is something I can improve on in the future. 

I used a 0.4 electric blue fineliner for the electricity effect. I was considering gouache for the flat opaque effect but I couldn't work in that tiny a space with wet media without compromising the ink I'd already applied or messing up the designs I'd already drawn. I think I made the right choice as I've applied it sparingly on only the edges of the effect and it makes the white really stand out against the black in a stark contrast. 

I used smaller matrixes to draw my text, using the ones in my sketchbook as references, and I measured out a symmetrical grid on the cover for the allocation of each letter before I drew the actual design. I think this works to the benefit of the cover as the type is easy to read and fits well on the page alongside the drawing. To improve I would have further explored ways to fit on the subtitle and author name at the bottom of the cover, as I don't think they look quite as clean as the top, being as they're a lot smaller. 

Overall I'm happy with my cover as its allowed me to explore something that's more graphic design based rather than the character work I'm used to doing and have imbued in the other briefs. I'm glad that we got this brief as its given me another opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and work with a lot of factors that I've never really considered before (fine brushes, typography matrixes, symmetrical measurements etc) to make a piece that's very different from anything I would have assumed I could make a couple of weeks ago, but also I think, pretty effective.