'The nerve': illustration inspiration

I am looking at creating an illustration for the front cover of an international journal focusing on women's writing up to the end of the nineteenth century. The journal contains various short stories all written by women, for women. Some of the stories preset the usual sensuality that you would expect to find within women’s writing however there are some pieces that present disturbing for example; ‘Bald Eva whose eyebrows and palm-prints were seared off in the fire’.

I think the imagery of this quote is a good place to start my research. I intend to look at fire / flames to represent the dangerous edge that some of the story’s within the book contain.

The ordinary flames can look quite bland and boring. Changing the colours of the flames however, in my opinion, can create a much more interesting, charismatic effect.

The stories within this book are sensual yet disturbing, delightful yet disgusting, tender yet bitter. There is an obvious contrast within this book. It is this contrast that I wish to portray on the illustration.

The opposite of fire is water. I believe using these two opposites within my illustration can help create the contrasting effect I am looking for. When placed together, the two contradictories help portray the good vs evil, the light vs dark, the sensual vs disturbing differentiations that I am looking for.

I think it is important to indicate that the book is written for women, by women. Silhouettes are a simple yet effective way of illustrating this. The silhouettes should however represent various women and not just the stereotypical ‘model’ sized silhouette.

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The below images provide me with ideas of how I could link together both the fire vs. water effect and the silhouettes into one unique and tremendously eye-catching design.