School Work!

So when I'm not being a Cover Artist - I'm a student - this is a piece I'm working on for Conceptual Drawing. This is done completely in 2B Mechanical Pencil.

First the big picture:

What I've been doing tonight is putting in the leaves and grass details - I zoomed in to show you. Grass is made of thousands of tiny little tick marks - the closer together the darker the shadow.

And finally a distance shot.

My Process Part 3

Okay - part 3. WHEW. Until I started doing this I didn't realize exactly how much I did with a cover.

Last adjustment for this image - just darkening and lightening specific points to up his muscles and lighten her skin. I am now ready to call the couple done and take them into the cover blank.

Well what fairy tale would be right without a castle. All I've done here is trimmed out a lot of unneeded sections - like the cliff it was hanging off of and the tourist that were on the railing at the bottom. Looks okay but still not a wow factor.

I duplicated the castle did a few adjustments on it and adjusted the blending mode. Now I'm happy with it.

What's next? Putting in the title and author's name. Every single title I do a cover for starts with a very basic text in white. This will not be the final placement or style of the text - but it's a good starting point. It allows me to go - What should I emphasis in the title? Where's a good spot for it? What type of font should I use?

Stay tuned - finalizing the type and finishing are the last thing.

My Process - Part 2

Okay back to work...

Here I did another Hue/Saturation filter just to give it a Tiny bit more depth and I liked how it darkened her hair. Why? Because our heroine is supposed to be a black haired beauty.

Here I played with color balance. I can't remember exactly what I did, but liked the effect.

Here I wanted to get rid of a really light strand of hair - so I painted over it with black and reduced the opacity to get it right.

Here I had to up the contrast because in making her hair darker I had made all the highlights in his hair go away.

Next time we add Muscle tone - not that he isn't already BUT a little retouching never hurt anyone. See ya next time.

My Process Part 1

For some reason folks are interested in my process for creating covers. So this will be pretty much a step by step of how the images turn into a cover - minus the boring tedious details. You can click on the images to see pretty much a full size.

First this cover is for A Christmas Sleeping Beauty by Lindsay Townsend. Will what you see here end up as the final cover? I don't know it's up to Lindsay. I'm just using it as an example.

First I select the image. I usually start with finding the people, because they take longer. For this one I needed a medieval feel to the couple. Thankfully I had bought this months before from Romance Novel Covers The hero needed to be wearing a jerkin so I lucked out! It's hard to find good period pictures of couples. But like all pictures of people it has a few problems - some bumps on the faces, freckles, a surgery scar on his elbow - those HAD to go.

I used the spot healing brush to get rid of those ugly scars, freckles and bumps. Much better. But there are still veins and minor imperfections on the skin. Well these are Romance Novel Characters! They have to be better than real life!! So next step

A little use of the dust filter in photoshop and voila no more veins! Now they look good.

Now I start playing with adjustments. These are very powerful tools in Photoshop so if you want to play with them tread lightly. This is a curve adjustment - where I adjusted the amount of light.

Now I'm playing with Hue and Saturation. This is the first of those levels. See how much deeper and richer the image is getting?

Okay that's it for this post. I'll be back soon with Part 2 - and I'm still working on this couple.

A Cover Artist's Confession

Yes, I'm a Cover Artist, I'm even an Art Director with 4 Cover Artist who report to me - well theoretically at least, but sometimes I see a cover and am WOW! How did they do that?

A lot of authors want that "WOW!" factor on their covers, and hey who can blame them. But here's the thing - the covers that WOW my socks off - I NEVER buy the book. I have no real reason I can put my finger on why I don't buy them - well now that's a bit of a lie - sometimes the author lets me down when I sample a few pages, so back onto the shelf it goes. But that CA REALLY did their job. They gave the author the couple seconds of my valuable time to look at their book. It's not the poor CA who fell down on the job. Some of the best books I've ever read had the most God-Aweful covers I've ever seen - but MAN could that author write.

So why does it seem some authors consistently great covers and others are hit an miss? (Come closer and I'll tell you a secret. No Closer. there you go.)

CAs do their best work for authors that let them.

What do I mean by that? Well if you give me good tools, straight wood and clear instructions and I could build a damn fine box. Give me crappy tools, warped wood, confusing instruction - and well you get what you get. Ever heard the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Covers are like that - too much author interference in the creative process and the artist is going "WTF do they WANT?" too little and you get the same question. But if the author gives the CA just the right amount of information, and just the right amount of freedom to create art - that's what you get - ART! A cover that will WOW you.

I work in the eBook industry, and frankly I'm beginning to wonder if eBook Publishers don't give authors too much say in their covers. The Big boys have a 30 minute conference call with the author, their agent, marketing person, and the Art Director. Then the author's input ENDS and they get what they get. I've seen covers for NYT best selling authors that do not fit the book at all. Someone was asleep in the meeting me thinks.

Did you know that covers should pay out the designer at around $3,000 to $5,000? If you want to pay me that amount of cash to do the cover - I'll do whatever you WANT on it. But for my going rate of $50 for an ebook cover? Don't think so. I'll take your ideas into consideration but You ain't getting a special model shoot for exact duplication.

Cover Artist are a rare breed of artist. Yes, they are artist in the truest sense of the word - they create things of beauty out of stock photos and pre defined text. They create their art not for the "I made this! I had the concept, I had the inspiration and I created this." Sculptors do that, painters do that but the poor little CA is given their concept by the author. It's not like you can put an old west cowboy on the cover of a contemporary novel (well unless it's a time travel story).

Honesty time, I have authors I ADORE working with. They give me the information I need and then let me create. I have authors I literally CRINGE when I have to work with them, because they are never satisfied and tie my hands behind my back creatively. I'm also a bit of a bitch and can guaran-damn-tee you that if I've had a enough of an author I'll do EXACTLY what they want and not even half try to make it look good. That's what they wanted - that's what they got. (on a side note I can tell it by the sales too)

The CRAPPIEST cover I've ever done is my best selling cover! I'm ashamed of it! I can't even look at it. But, you know what the author has NEVER complained about that cover once and I've tried to make it up to her on every cover since then. (one of these days I'm going to redo that horrible thing for her)

And the worst thing a Cover Artist has to deal with - they rarely get any recognition for creating that awesome cover. Nope, the cover wins award 90% of the people congratulate the author on the award. And you want to know what? We CAs are Okay with that - really we are.

So next time you see a really great cover - hopefully somewhere it will say who the Cover Artist is - and when you mention how great the cover is - instead of Saying "Author Name's cover is gorgeous" You'll say "Cover Artist Name did a GREAT job on Author Name's cover." But even if you don't - it's Okay. Cause we see the results of our work every quarter on our royalty statements.

Anniversary Trip

And it wasn't our wedding anniversary! Nope, DH and I got married in June - but he proposed on Columbus Day Weekend. Yeah, that's next weekend, but I was on Spring Break from college.

Hubby booked a room at our favorite Biloxi Casino - Beau Rivage (Okay so he'd gotten a free night offer but he did upgrade it to a suite! We arrived around 4:30 went up to the room, relaxed, showered and got dressed for dinner. I'm looking in the vanity mirror then turned to hubby and said "Does this outfit need a necklace?" Now anyone that knows me - knows I'm not a jewelry person - but I do like the occasional necklace. He agreed and said why don't we go down to one of the shops and get you one. I'm thinking Yeah, I should be able to find something acceptable at the Everything $10 shop. We hop onto the elevator and ride down. My DH walks into the jewelry shop and says get what you want. So I'm looking finally find a Blue Topaz necklace that's very nice BUT it's (to me) a generic pendant on a chain - ie. It doesn't scream DEL! I'm trying it on when another necklace catches my eye - and it does a River Song "Hello, Sweetie" thing in my head. (Yes I'm a Doctor Who fan).

Isn't it BEAUTIFUL!!!

After I squeed, smiled, kissed and thanked DH - we went to dinner at Jia's. I had tuna sushi for an appetizer - YUMMY best sushi I've ever had. We were at the Hibachi - I had filet and shirmp. Okay I had a filet at the steakhouse BR Prime and it was excellent - but this hibachi filet was like BUTTER! After dinner we spent some time at the tables - didn't win anything, but if you can't afford to lose it don't go. As we told the dinners at the table with us - this was my "Thanks for saying yes 24 years ago" present. I think he did GREAT!

Speaking of River Song - I haven't introduced Congocoons Riversong of Jaguarcoons. So here she is giving her opinion on having her picture taken.

Date Night

Tonight was Date night for hubby and me.

We started at Carrabba's for dinner. Not only is it our favorite place, we've gotten to know the owner and manager, which makes each meal seem like going over to a friends for dinner. We got our favorite appetizer - Crab Cakes. Now I live on the Gulf Coast and every decent resturaunt in town has them - but Carrabba's has the BEST! Then we tried the Salmon for the first time. A nice and really light meal.

Then we went to the bookstore and I got three books to read - which hubby knows makes me smile.

We ended the Date Night going to the University of South Alabama Drama Department's play I Hate Hamlet. All the performances were great! But three stood out. Gray West as Gary Peter Lefkowitz, was wonderful. Your suppossed to hate his character and 1 minute on stage and I hated him! I completely believed him in the part, he played the smarmy, money hungry, hollywood director perfectly. The there was Jean Galloway as Lillian Troy. Now Ms. Galloway is not a college student but she has taught theater at the University of Mobile and was in the movies Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Back Roads, so I expected her performance to be good - but it was stellar. She shouldn't be wasting her time in this town, but in Hollywood playing sassy grandmothers! Finally was Andrew Willis as John Barrymore. He really commanded the stage with a quiet Presence, that made you look away from the main action just to see what he was doing. The best seen was when Ms. Galloway and Mr. Willis were on the stage, just the two of them. I leaned over to hubby when the scene was finished and actually used the word incandescent.

So how was your Saturday night?