Musings of Two Creative Minds

     As usual I started experimenting with a basic quick sketch of what I had in mind. I knew right from the start that I wanted to incorporate the title into the image for this one, especially since it was our more traditional two word titles. Naturally I aimed for an actual door, knowing it would be fairly easy to incorporate the word "door" into the wood grain.      From there I started testing out different color schemes for the wood grain itself. But then I started asking myself, how would a door that had been exposed to the elements for almost two centuries look? So I did some Googling, to find images to get a better idea of what such a door might look like. Here's a few of the examples I found:      So now I had a basis to build upon. Yet I also felt that whatever I created should have good strong colors that still gave that weathered yet somewhat foreboding feel. So I pulled out my soft pastels and started laying down some colors in order to st

When it came time to work on the cover for "The Vampyre Blogs - I: Coming Home" I was finding myself coming up against a wall as far as cover art ideas went.  The other books had been relatively easy because of their two word titles: "The Bridge" and "The Ship". But this time the title was much longer, so I needed to come up with something different. Since we were using the word 'blogs' as part of the title, I thought about incorporating a computer or laptop into the picture.  So I experimented with Adobe Photoshop and came up with this image: While very effective in many respects, some people told me they missed seeing my original artwork on the cover. Many said it helped make our books stand out more.  So I began wracking my brains for a a new cover style and wasn't coming up with much. Mind you, at this point we had not even started writing the novel and decided not to worry about it.  I figured once the story was written I'

As some of you may or may not know, besides being an author I'm also an artist.  I work mainly with soft pastels and charcoal, and have designed and painted the covers for three of our books. Now I  do not consider myself a 'professional' cover designer, but I've also seen artwork on books that many times had very little to do with what goes on in the story. And as one of the two authors who knows the story inside and out, and as an artist who had taken awards in various art shows over the years, I felt I was qualified enough to give it a shot. Especially when I had a specific image in mind that would incorporate the title of the book into the artwork itself. "It should be a piece of cake," I told myself. I suspect a number of you already have an idea of what came next. Our old friend the "Learning Curve" decided to make his presence known. First there were the experimental designs I knew right from the start that I liked the title being pa