Thursday, April 5, 2012

Cover Snark: Facial Expressions

While many books do remove the heads on their covers, we still have plenty of others out there that let us see the faces in their full glory. And we wish there’d be less disembodiment just so we could see some of these classic facial expressions. 




 
Now these make me think that the cover artist is trying to provide commentary on the romance in the books. In Frostbite, the woman looks positively bored. Did the cover take a long time to make, is the model getting tired? She looks monumentally fed up - not exactly the hottest romance ever As for Shadow Kiss, that expression says to me that she’s not only fed up but seriously sick of the guy. Is it just me or does that expression say “this guy is a douchebag”? Sorry man, your smouldering look doesn’t seem to be working. 







 I think the cover artist may have saved some money here and not actually looked for models - statues would do. Or maybe they’ve hit women heavily on the back of the head. I can’t think of any other reason why they would be so devoid of facial expressions. The Nightmare Garden in particular looks like someone put make up (a lot of make up - was she attacked by a tube of eye-liner or was her make up artist a raccoon?) on a statue.

Taken by the Others couldn’t afford a statue, they went for a wax-work, or possibly a mannekin.







 Smouldering pouts unite! When you have a pattern that works you have to stick to it, I suppose. Though it is somewhat hard to tell one book from the other - there needs to be more different kinds of smouldering.

Personally I think they’re all giving me borderline serial killer looks. There’s an element of “I can kill you with my eyes” about those looks.