Natasha Cunningham
“I’m privileged to live and work in one of the most beautiful islands in the Caribbean,” says Cunningham, who hails from Jamaica. “I pull references from nature’s palettes and textures; you can always find plants and flora intertwined in my work.” That includes the cover for Kennedy Ryan’s Can’t Get Enough (Forever, May), third in her Skyland contemporary series. “Kennedy Ryan has a precise vision for her cover art, and the art director, Daniela Medina, plays a vital part in the process being flawless.”
Medina, who worked with Cunningham on all three covers, found her portfolio when she was looking for collage artists to work with. “Her style was a departure from what we’d seen for Forever,” Median says, “and while there was some initial concern that it might be a little too avant-garde to translate to a commercial book, I had a gut feeling she was the artist we were looking for.”
Jenifer Prince
Prince has an affinity for “romance comics and pulp novel covers from the 1940s to the 1960s,” she says. “I love the bold colors, the intense gazes, the moody lighting.” She’s also a fan of author Alexandria Bellefleur, so when Berkley/Ace art director Katie Anderson contacted her about The Devil She Knows (Berkley, Oct.), a paranormal sapphic romance, she was eager to get to work. “Katie shared what they envisioned, and it was exactly the kind of thing I love to illustrate. The pulpy vibe of the devil shadow and the sexual tension in an elevator clinch pose? Flawless. Since the concept already leaned into that vintage pulpy look, I focused on bringing out the romance.”
Prince says depicting intense feelings is what excites her most about romance cover illustration: “The chance to visually capture the spark between characters, the tension, the tenderness, the longing—especially when I get to do that through a sapphic lens. Their pose, eye contact, or even just the color palette can reveal so much about what’s going on between them.”
Liza Rusalskaya
“A good romance cover evokes an immediate emotional response,” Rusalskaya says. “It should feel like a doorway into the story.” For Katie Chandler’s debut, Backhanded Compliments (Atria, June), “I started with character exploration and emotional tone. The title suggested subtle friction and chemistry, so I worked with contrast—between warmth and wit, closeness and complexity.”
Like other illustrators PW spoke with, Rusalskaya says her cover artwork is primarily digital. “It always starts with inspirations, sketches, mood boards, and the client brief. But even in digital form, I want my illustrations to retain handmade art’s warmth and subtle imperfections.” Her cover for Left of Forever (Griffin), a spicy, second-chance romance by Tarah DeWitt, shows a couple in a passionate embrace. “Romance is such a rich emotional terrain—it gives the illustrator room to play with desire, vulnerability, connection, and joy. I love the challenge of capturing those sparks in a single image, and of balancing visual beauty with genuine feeling.”
