Recently I worked on a comission - cover image for a Kazakh podcast "The Dog Is Gone".

And here is the whole process of it:

Cover specification were:

- Fit the name of the podcast 
- The cover needs images of a cat and a dog and the implicit presence of people - for example, through things, a shadow or something else

And task from the customer was: "What do we need? A cover for a podcast that we can use throughout the entire season and possibly future seasons.
We will make a podcast about people and animals - cats and dogs living side by side with people (on the street and at home). This is a narrative podcast, meaning we don't just discuss animal issues with experts, we primarily tell stories about animals and people. The episodes will be edited so that listeners can hear the voices of both animals and heroines/heroes. 
We also want to immerse listeners into the atmosphere, into the habitat of our heroes with the help of a sound landscape.

In general, our podcast is about problems, difficult stories and different endings, about help and empathy. We would like the cover to work in harmony with the idea of ​​the project, to complement the audio content."

The first sketches were:

We have decided to develop the idea with a dog and a cat.  

So I've drawn all the elements of the picture with watercolors and scanned them. The result was - these non-digital layers.

Then I worked with the elements in photoshop ( it was like watercolor collage)

And voila! The final image combines the warmth of a hand-drawn watercolor illustration with a subtle touch of photoshop.

This is how it looks in a podcast app:

Thanks for watching! 🖤