Temporary Cover Art for Two Serials

Okay, so I only had a bit of the concept for this first one and the cover artist used her expertise to put it together really quickly, but here’s the temporary cover for A Stolen Name.

stolen_name_cover

Then, because my cover artist had to go to bed, I thought I’d not have one for A Perfect Sunset, but with the help of a cool tutorial that I could only partially follow, I created this:

sunset try small

(Yes, I am absurdly proud of myself even though it’s not that good.)

Want to Be of Artistic Assistance?

I could use some help in creating a temporary cover art for the pages to introduce my latest serials.

I actually made a couple that I really like, but alas, I don’t have the rights to use those images. So I have to create something that will work in the meantime to make them look nice until the cover artist is able to do a full original piece for them.

Anyway, the two stories in question are A Perfect Sunset and The Stolen Name aka Identity Theft. The first is sort of fantasy, and the second is a historical mystery of sorts set about the end of WWI.

So I have a few stock photos I’m thinking of using as a basis, but I need to narrow them down, and so if you want to give me your input, I’d appreciate it.

I have a lot of possibilities for A Perfect Sunset, but most of them feature the queen (I could go cloaked figures for the Nebkasha) but I could use any of these:


Bride

Medieval Dress

Wings

Cage

Butterflies

I had a hard time finding good ones for the historical. If anyone knows of better ones, let me know.


Vintage Pregnancy

Vintage Birds

Sketch of Cover

The design part of Kabobbles has been putting a lot of work into the cover for The Consultant and the Cat.

This would wrap around like a print book’s cover. We will be offering to print versions as well as the ebooks, but the print version may not be available at the same time as the ebook release. Not all of this image will end up on the front, but here’s a sketch to show the general idea.

I added in a bit of text, but it probably won’t stay where I put it, and the colors aren’t quite right yet. The leopard will be black, not just an outline, but this gives you a sense of what’s coming.

consultant and cat cover sketch

At Last, More Art

The two halves of Kabobbles came together to make a beautiful piece of art.

Okay, yes, the author had very little to do with anything but the concept, but that doesn’t mean that the picture’s not very close to the concept and true to the characters, thanks to the talents of the graphic artist of the team.

in the family cover art

The story is still in the process of being edited, but this title will be available as soon as the edits are completed.

I Am Not an Artist

I had a simple concept for the art on Just a Whim. From the beginning, I knew what I wanted, and I even thought I knew how to get it. I was definitely wrong about that.

 

The cover needed only a few things, a hand and some ribbons. Why ribbons? Why a hand? I thought both of them symbolized what the story was largely about. Whim’s ability to see these things that pass through our thoughts and hands sometimes faster than we notice. The dreams, the hopes, the wishes, and the fear, all kind of like threads passing by. Then we have his mother who gave him rules, and these rules could be chains, but Thyme points out that they could be more like guidelines, that they only really matter when Whim believes in them, and so in a way, the cover is also showing those rules falling away.

 

At least, that was the theory. The execution of it… Well, it definitely didn’t look good when I started in on it. I figured all I needed was a picture of my hand with some ribbons. Then the color was wrong, so I started to fix that.

 

cover art attempt start whim

 

You can see it wasn’t going quite as I hoped. Still, I kept trying. I got rid of the background, made it so that the ribbons were all solid color, and the hand even looked… okay.

 

progressing cover attempt whim

 

It was coming along. Really. Okay, kind of.

 

nearly complete attempt

 

I thought making it white in back would help.

 

pretty much end of attempt on whim

 

Still, I could tell it was wrong. I asked for help. This is what I got. This is why I need a cover artist. Because the cover artist did this.

 

just a whim cover art

 

It’s still my hand, though.