Cover art for the novel Paradise Passed, by Jerry Oltion, from Wheatland Press.
We see the two heroes watching aliens frolic by a bonfire.
For this assignment, I got to do a spaceship, which has a unique design, explored more on the back cover:
The engine is in front, and pulls the rest of the ship, which is attached via a tether. On the very back end of the ship are cargo pods and shuttles. In the middle is a tree, the physical and spiritual center of the ship.
Here's how the final book cover looks:
Interestingly, a couple months after this piece was done, a paper was published showing that real octopi sometimes "walked" on two or three legs, raising the others high up as they moved. They looked quite a bit like what I'd drawn, so that was pretty cool.