The Cover of Exaltations from Achronal Press

Exaltations cover art by Alessandra Kelley

The Exaltations image shows Peter Refton, a very widely travelled biographer, and several of his allies: a knight/martial artist from a parallel Europe, a bureaucrat from a parallel China, and a muse, a frustrated and bored personification of Contemplation from an island outside of time and space.

The mosaic is an important plot element, as are the coins above.

This is an egg tempera painting. I made my own paints for it. Advance preparation and drawings took several weeks, but I painted the image itself in three very intense days.

Egg tempera is an ancient technique, used at least as far back as the classical Greeks and Romans (Pliny mentions it, and there are surviving egg tempera Egyptian portraits dating from the Greek Ptolemys). It's a simple medium, of pigments, egg yolk (which, contrary to common belief, does not color the paint yellow), and water. Complete instructions can be found at my teaching and art website.

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