Navigating the abyss (book cover illustration)

An illustration I made for a book about mental health called "Get Out of Your Head —Navigating the abyss of depression" (available for purchase on Amazon).

The concept for the book is that depression is like a spiral that's sucking you downwards into an abyss, so the imagery of a battered ship weathering out a storm trying to avoid the abyss fits the theme quite nicely. The full book cover is a full-bleed illustration that features a dominant spiral in the form of a whirlpool as the focal point of the illustration. This blog post contains additional mockups and a full design process breakdown that goes into detail about every stage of creating this illustration (as well as the illustration for the book in the series that precedes this one).

The illustration was made entirely in Figma. After almost a decade of purely relying on Adobe Illusrator for vector illustration, I wasn't quite sure if Figma would be the right choice this project, but it worked out really well. I'm pleased with how many of the simple effects I used for texturing and adding detail came out, especially on things like the tattered sails of the ship.