Making a Book Cover, Part 1

This is a little more fantastical than what I usually post here, but I want to give you guys a closer look under the hood of how I make my art.

My friend Alena is publishing a book of fantasy and imaginative poetry, Songs of My Imagination, through the CreateSpace system, and she asked me to do the cover.  I said yes, and we worked out a contract (taken from the free resources for artists provided by PACT–Professional Artist Client Toolkit) and I got to drawing.

Since this is a book about poetry and imagination, Alena wanted the cover image to evoke feelings and thoughts of wonder, curiosity, and of course fantastical creatures.  I drew up sketches incorporating kids reading stories, a phoenix, and a couple dragons.

Alena chose the one with the dragon reading in his "library lair".  She liked the concept of the dragon relaxing in an old library, reading through every book he had, learning about the mysteries and wonders of the world.  She wanted a visible spirit or fairy of inspiration as well, so I added a cheerful little fey creature leaping out of the book.

I would eventually execute the final image in ink and watercolor, but first I went to Photoshop to draw the color rough.

Early version of the digital rough.

Since the dragon was supposed to be learning about the world in peace and comfort, I painted the library warm colors, like someone's well-lit living room.  The dragon I chose to be blue, to contrast with the yellows and tans of the background.  To spice up the image a little, I added visible "mists" of inspiration, ancient knowledge, and magic emanating from the books themselves.

The image ended up darker than I wanted, it made the library look gloomy and spooky.  I lightened the entire image about 10%, which got rid of the unwanted darkness and made the picture cozy and comfortable.

I had been worried about the title, whether I could do it justice or not.  Since this was a fantasy-themed book, both Alena and I wanted it to be properly fantastic and exotic, not just Helvetica Neue.  We discussed the title and its look, and settled on vaguely Gothic lettering, rendered in brass and gold colors.  I drew it first with ink on smooth Bristol paper, and then scanned it.  From here, I would paint over it in Photoshop and give it the ancient-beveled-gold look I wanted.

Next up is Part 2, which will cover the watercolor painting and rendering the digital title.

Heracles and Telephus WIP, Part 2 - Finished!

Heracles and his son Telephus are done!  The scanner washed out the lightest grays, most of the white in the image is 10-20% shaded gray in the physical drawing.

Total time for this drawing was around 8 hours, over the course of two weeks.  The first couple hours consisted of laying down the outline, lightly pre-shading areas that would be heavy shadows later, and of course fixing any mistakes I had made.  The remainder of those 8 hours was taken up slowly, carefully shading in the drawing.  Everything, outlining, shading, erasing, was done with a light hand, so that I could easily rectify errors.

I like it.  I still see problems in it.  I have, however, declared it "finished", and that means I never put a pencil to it again and move on to the next piece.  In this way, I keep myself from worrying about "screwing up" and keep sharpening my drawing skills.