rowyn | Entries tagged with cover art

I created more color images in 2022 than perhaps at any other point in my life. This was mostly the product of CuratorPrompts combined with my decision to start doing full-color sketches. Prior to 2022, my process went:

Draw some sketches
If motivated, start to shade and/or color the sketch
Probably give up at the above step
In the event that I didn’t give up, I would spend hours over the course of days/weeks/months completing the image, depending on the complexity. Digital sketches have carefully-labeled layers.

The Demon’s Alliance cover followed this process. I sketched it first, then did grayscale shading using ArtRage’s ‘pastel’ tool. Next, I used ArtRage’s colorization option to add color to the layers, and did final touch-ups in color. I started the image in January and finished it in April.

cover for Demon’s Alliance. January-April 2022.

In May of 2022, I started doing mastodon.art’s CuratorPrompts. At first, I only did 2 minute sketches. But from the outset, I sketched in full color. Almost always, I was trying to capture the sense of the composition of the photograph rather than render the proportions or details of the image accurately.

my favorite 2-minute sketch, May 2022.

The two-minute sketches were digital, on a single layer -- with so little time, it wasn’t worth adding layers.

After several days, I started spending more time on the prompts. I’d do one long study and the other three prompts would be 2-5 minutes as warm-up.

an 85-minute sketch. June 2022

The “long studies” were more like paintings than sketches, but still comparatively quick. One of the advantages to intending each picture to be (a) quick and (b) practice was that I didn’t have much investment in any one painting. When I got bored or frustrated or thought ‘eh, it’s not getting any better than this’, I’d declare it done, post it, and move on to a new painting the next day.

I seldom used pencil sketches with these pictures. I’d start off in color, and my initial brushstrokes were generally part of the final picture. I added layers freely and didn’t bother labeling them, because I didn’t plan on working on the picture for long. If I needed to edit a layer, I could usually tell which one via the preview. Often, adding a new layer worked just as well for finishing the picture as making sure all of [whatever] was on the same layer. I also started using the oil paint tool more, although my trees were generally rendered with the ‘leaf’ tool, and I used the fur and hair tools for some images.

66 minute sketch from June 23. I used the same photo reference later, when painting the cover for Angel’s Grace

Mastodon.art’s Curator posted some fabric and hand images for studies as well, and I did some of those in late June and July. These were not quick. I spent a few hours on each, trying to make them realistic, and they had pencil sketches before I did coloring.

at small size, this looks pretty convincing. June 2022

I tried to paint this photo three different times. On the last attempt, I resorted to a grid to get the perspective right. July 2022.

A twitter prompt in January to draw “The Mind Horse” reminded me how much I enjoy drawing horses. I did a number of horse and unicorn pictures during the year. This one, from July, is my favorite of the lot.

based on a reference image from Pixabay.com. July 2022.

By mid-July, I was bored of just painting references. I started to add fantasy elements to my renditions of reference images.

the fearsome Hummingbird Warrior. August 2022

In August, I stopped doing CuratorPrompts pictures every day, although I would continue to paint a few every month for the rest of the year. I continued to paint from references. The photo reference for the image below came from a search on Pexels.com for Niagara Falls, although amusingly it is not a photo of Niagara Falls. One of my two favorite paintings of the year.

emergency responder dragons are here to help. August 2022

The next painting was also from August 2022, and combined reference photos by Adorkastock with images from Pexels and Pixabay of the ocean and of butterfly wings. My other favorite of the year.

Whispers Rain, from The Moon Etherium and The Twilight Etherium. August 2022.

In September, I spent 10+ hours working on an ambitious painting of the Crow Lord from my work-in-progress, A Dragonling’s Family.

The Crow Lord painting relied more on my old techniques. I started with a pencil-tool sketch, then used the ink and airbrush tools heavily for coloring it. I kept working and working on it, rather than spending a few hours total and calling it good enough.

Crow Lord and frens. September 2022

One of my Fediverse friends, Veo Corva, commented that they enjoyed my CuratorPrompts + dragons pictures, so I did an Oops All Dragons edition for them in October:

spent two and a half hours on the dragon-in-forest for this one, and an hour on each of the other three. October 2022

From October through December, I worked on the cover for Angel’s Grace.

Angel’s Grace wrap cover. Right half used a photograph of Mexico City from Pexels.com as inspiration. October-December 2022

I did a few other pictures in December, but my focus that month was on editing and publishing Angel’s Grace.

I made a retrospective-by-month image with a few of the same pictures as above, but mostly different ones, because “what I worked on during this specific month” didn’t correspond all that well with “what were my favorite pictures this year?”

I am pleased by the amount of time I devoted to painting in 2022: 159 hours. Moreover, it’s the most time I’ve devoted in the last 30 years to practicing illustration -- studying references and trying new things and attempting to improve. I spent a lot of time in 2016 drawing, too, but those were “churn out specific illustration for A Rational Arrangement” rather than “get better at illustrating.”

I am not sure how much I really did improve. I used photo references for both the Demon’s Alliance and Angel’s Grace covers, and I like the latter illustration much better than the former. So that’s one data point suggesting Actual Improvement happened? But it’s hard for me to compare. Maybe at some point I will try re-doing one of my older pictures and see if I can make a fair comparison. The challenge there is that I don’t have many full-color pictures from when I was younger, and I can’t think of anything I still have that I like enough to try to do again.

Sunday's poll was overwhelmingly in favor of the silhouette-style cover, on both LJ and Twitter. I got some good suggestions on the theme of "make it more fantasy"*, however, so I poked at a couple of new versions. Which means it's time for POLL PART 2.

I will probably tweak whichever one I go with.

I am doing both best/worst questions because I can easily see a three-way tie for "which do you find most compelling" and still have a clear "this one is least compelling".

Lettering is still a placeholder! Final layout will be different.
[Poll #2054202]

* Special thanks to

terrycloth and

archangelbeth for suggestions!

I set a release date for The Moon Etherium, my magic-rich fantasy romance: September 26!

That means it's time to freak out about the cover some more!

So I spent like 20 hours working on a painting for the cover several weeks ago. I have become increasingly less happy with it. I tweaked a few things about it that particularly bothered me, and I'm okay with it now. But I'm not sure it's the best possible choice.

I fiddled with some alternates a couple of weeks ago, and while my quick Twitter poll favored one of them, I kind of hated it. I decided to do some more variants on the same general theme. I actually did five total, but I'm only showing the one I like best here. And a poll, of course. Because poll.

The lettering is a placeholder, so don't worry about that part.

alinsa will be doing the actual text layout. I just threw some words on so it would look cover-ish.

[Poll #2054073]

gnibbles did a cover for me!

I'M NOT A RABID FANGIRL YOU'RE A RABID FANGIRL >_>;;;;; @LadyRowyn #moonetherium pic.twitter.com/TWEP4UCt4o
— B. H. Tang (@catofalltrades) July 8, 2016

The aspect ratio is off, so not quite appropriate for the final book, alas. }:) Although in complete seriousness, I like a number of things about it. She's using the skyline of the Sun Etherium at the top and the Moon Etherium at the bottom to frame the figures, which I had not thought of and which looks cool. And her rendering of Ardent (the satyress on the left) is charming. ♥

I am ambivalent about my skillz as an artist, particularly when it comes to realistic illustration. Silhouettes I can handle. Full color ... eh.

But I have, once or twice, done full-color portraits that approach the general vicinity of the skill level I want for The Moon Etherium cover. Moreover, the final image is going to be mainly seen at 150x250 or 300x500 or so. So I was thinking, maybe if I start with a really big file and then shrink it down a lot, it could be mistaken for professional?

I am unconvinced by this reasoning.

Still, I kinda felt like drawing this morning, and I really did not feel like writing, so I took some reference photos of myself, did a sketch, and started to color it. Not in the slapdash fashion of my quick doodles, but a serious attempt to make it look good, no matter how long it takes.

I didn't really keep track of time, but this is probably 2-3 hours in. I am abandoning it here.

Interestingly, I'm quitting not because I feel like I've proved to myself that I'm not good enough: the jury is still out on that one. From the technical "does this look like a picture of a person?" perspective, it's not that bad.

From the "does this look like an appealing character?" perspective, though, it's not working. I think Gnibbles's painting has more heart and spirit. Mine looks ... off. Not just "I need to futz more with it" (which I do), but it just looks fundamentally not-very-attractive. Possibly I could fix it without restarting entirely, but I think re-doing the underlying sketch and coloring anew will be less frustrating.

EDIT:

Revised version-in-progress! Got to about the same place as the earlier one, after 2.5 hours, and am much happier with it. Not wild about how it looks at thumbnail size, though. I may need to do the headband in a different color so it doesn't blend with the horns at mini-size. Or change the horn color.

Since my last update, I have:

* Finished an alternative layout for the Further Arrangements cover, which most people liked better than my original vertical one.
* Finished a couple of different set of separators for the FA cover, and an alternative version for one of the panels. Poll results were not conclusive on these.
* Changed the color of the decorative trim on the FA cover, after

terrycloth pointed out this obvious solution to the "it's invisible at thumbnail size" issue. I actually don't mind it being invisible -- I think that looks better than the solid white -- but the dark looks fine too. Pix and poll a new below!
* Written three scenes and completed one bullet point for Birthright. I wrote slightly more words in one more day than I did last week, and realized that I am still obsessed with word count. I really don't need to worry about words, because this manuscript is almost 50,000 words and only 20-25% of the way through the story. There will be plenty enough words before it's done. So I am going to stop recording words written and only focus on scenes & bullet points completed.
* Wrote a back cover blurb for FA. I'd like to improve this before the publication date, but it's good to have something.
* Asked the SFWA new release newsletter to include Further Arrangements in the February newsletter. Gave FA a release date of February 2.

That seems like enough.

Further Arrangements Front Cover dark trim

Further Arrangements Front Cover symm cats and decor

[Poll #2034018]

The triangular layout won the poll both on LJ and Twitter, which meant I had to spend some more time futzing with it because I really hated the section dividers on that version.

Most of the people on the poll respondents said "the cats are fine", but I remain undelighted by the original cat pose, so I re-did that, too. Hence, a few new versions to show off! Click through to see full-size versions.

With original asymmetrical kitties and decorative trim:

Further Arrangements Front Cover Triangular Layout asymm cats

With symmetrical kitties and plain trim:

Further Arrangements Front Cover symm cats and plain

With new, more-symmetrical kitties, and decorative trim:

[Poll #2033850]

I am working on the cover for Further Arrangements! That means it's time for a poll!

I originally had three different layout ideas for this cover, each of them a triptych: vertical, horizontal, and triangular. The horizontal layout was the least popular on my Twitter poll, and would require totally different illustrations for each section. But I could do the triangular & vertical layouts using the same illos for two sections, though I had to redraw the third. So I did the vertical layout on Sunday, and then yesterday & Tuesday I pushed things about to make the triangular one. It was more annoying than I'd expected.

I don't like the separators for the triangular layout at all. and I miss having the twee cat-tail-heart-shape. Even though it is very very twee. I think the triangular layout is a better use of space, but I'm still not sure. Maybe I just need to re-do the cats? Maybe there's not enough whitespace in the triangular version? I DON'T KNOW I HAVE NO MEASURABLE GRAPHIC DESIGNS SKILLS HELP.

The title/author text is a placeholder because I don't have the typeface

alinsa used on RA. Final one will match RA's.

So. POLL!

Triangular layout:

Further Arrangements Front Cover Triangular Layout

Vertical layout:

[Poll #2033561]

You can click on the images to enlarge. They're displayed at approximately Amazon-preview-size, because that is the size they will be most often viewed at prior to purchase. This is the size I want them to look best at.

Edit: At Micah's suggestion: the two potential covers bracketing RA's cover:

The "three figures dancing" was more popular than any of my other choices from the previous poll on the cover for A Rational Arrangement, so I've been working on that one. I fixed the ratio* first, and added a bit of the heretofore unseen dancers on the right and left, and made a few adjustments to the figures. I also fiddled a lot with the background in an effort to make the text would stand out better and to make the whole thing look better when it's shrunk down to thumbnail size. This meant ditching my beloved parchment background, which I've used for all the headers so far**. Oh, and

tuftears and

archangelbeth both suggested putting the frame at the very edge of the image, so I did that.

Then I tried text layout again, and branched out from Amazone to experiment with some less-script-like and possibly-more-readable fonts. Also a few different layout choices.

archangelbeth suggested both making the word "Arrangement" more prominent and putting the author name at the top, so I did samples with those. I think I personally prefer the author name at the bottom. I am not sure about making "Arrangement" the dominant word: I think the significant word in the title is "Rational", myself.

Anyway, I've got four different variants now, I figure I can do a new poll!

You should be able to click on the images to see the full size versions on Flickr. I've thumbnailed them at the size Amazon displays thumbnails on its main page.

[Poll #2012821]

@fullaquirkes on Twitter pointed out that I didn't order the images by typeface, or clearly label them. Ack. The images in the poll are:

1. Amazone
2. Harrington
3. Amazone (again)
4. Chisel D

* Amazon's Kindle site has one ratio in the guidelines for uploading to the site, and a different ratio that they actually display at and that everybody else uses. I dunno what's up with that.

** I am resisting the urge to replace the backdrop for all the existing headers to match the cover. This way lies madness.