Creating from photos

This weekend, I turned a log of wood into a series of patterns that I might upload to Redbubble and two book covers – already loaded onto Magic Owl Design. Why? Well, because I could, really. It was fun. That’s what art has become to me lately – simply fun. I find myself racing from one experiment to another, becoming happier and happier as I go along. Whether others think they’re wonderful doesn’t really cross my mind, unless the art is a commission, of course, in which case I slow down a bit and concentrate on what they want.  Otherwise, I’m simply rolling with the flow of whatever happens and enjoying every second of it.

So how does a log of would become a piece of art? This way, basically... 

Start with a photo of an interesting log of wood.

Smooth the texture out so it looks painted.

Lay the result in various patterns – reverse the image,  maybe overlay it here and there and then mess around with the colours and blends. Photoshop is full of surprises when you play around with it.

 With these particular results, I saw possibilities for book covers. If you look closely you can see a man in the first picture. That's what inspired the first cover. The second, I cropped, stretched and added all sorts of filters and gradients to it. 

Voila! Two more pre-made book covers for sale.

And sadly, I now have to stop and go and live real life. My family do need to eat after all. 

Another Year...

Another year. They seem to be passing with speed that’s on a logarithmic scale. It feels like tomorrow I’ll be wishing everyone a happy 2015, but common sense tells me that time has not sped up, just my perception of it. It’s scary.

Sorry my blogging has been so erratic. My whole life has been erratic to tell the truth. I’d like to think that this year, things will settle down, but it’s not looking promising so far.

On the good side, I did get that one book published in 2014 and the website I started in the hope of selling book covers has grown and is getting a satisfying number of hits each day. I’ve been privileged to create covers for some really great books. I’ve also done some maps and of course more troll illustrations for the wonderful Smelly Troll books by Rosen Trevithick.

Photo manipulation

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will know that I spent some of the money I’ve earned through book covers to buy myself an Intuos Pro, a drawing tablet from Wacom. I already had a Bamboo tablet, but it was tiny and I found it very restrictive. This is huge and I absolutely love it. If I’d had lots of money, I would have bought a Cintiq which allows you to draw straight onto your picture on the screen. But I didn’t have lots of money, so the Intuos had to do – and it’s proving pretty good. I love being able to do the whole illustration from sketch to finished product straight onto the computer. No messing around with pencil and eraser, no trying to scan the drawing to a satisfactory quality. Just straight onto the screen, multiple layers and then all sorts of lovely effects you can get through Photoshop.

Original art plus photo

One thing that has become clear to me over the year and with using the tablet is that my penchant really is for children’s book covers and fantasy covers. Photo manipulation is fun, but I just love being able to create the whole cover out of my head or turning photos into my own artwork. I don’t suppose that surprises me. I’ve always loved creating fantasy/illustrations, but I wonder if there’s a market out there for original artwork covers? Something for me to find out this year: how many authors are actually willing to pay for full rights to an original cover?

On the writing side, I have a work in progress – a novel based on “Orlando’s Gift”, the short story I had out on Amazon for a while. It’s very different from the short story because I’ve devised a whole other tale to intertwine with it and that’s rather taken over, but from the reaction I’ve had on Critique Circle to the chapters I’ve written so far, it’s going down all right. I just need to knuckle down and keep writing. I already have the cover done, just to keep me motivated! I'd love to show it to you, but that would spoil the effect later, wouldn't it? I still don’t have a title. I’m waiting for it to hit me as I write.

Original art 

To all of you who read this blog, a very belated Happy New Year…unless you celebrate Chinese New Year, in which case, I’m a few weeks early! Here’s to a year of getting done what you want to do, surrounded by supportive friends and family. 

When work is not work.

Have you ever read a book and thought, I’d love to design the cover for this (or write the screenplay, or whatever your creative bent might be)? I have. It was when I read “Tollesbury Time Forever” by British author, Stuart Ayris. It’s an unusual book. I don’t normally go for ‘literary’ books, but it caught my interest, so I downloaded it and read it while waiting for my husband to have tests in hospital last year. It says a lot for the book that I didn’t mind the six-hour wait at all and even felt a little miffed that P came out before I’d finished. My review of the book is here (and it took me a long time to find because it has a lot of reviews).

A couple of weeks ago, Stuart asked on a forum we both belong to, if anyone knew of a book cover designer who could re-do his book covers. He asked it during the day in England which, of course, meant that I was fast asleep. He’d been given suggestions by the time I saw it, so I watched a dream sail out of the window. Then I grabbed it by the tail and hauled it back in. Cheekily, I sent him an email. I’d no chance if I didn’t try. Wonderfully, he replied with a ‘yes please’. So I have spent the last ten days designing three covers for Tollesbury and the sequels (The FRUGALITY Trilogy).

Here’s the results –

Purchased at Depositphotos_23308274_1

Someone said how clever I was to use vectors. Truth is, I didn’t. I used this stock photo as a basis, resized it to fit the book and went from there, laying layers over the top. I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed doing anything quite so much (and those who know me know how much I enjoy doing my art work). The hours I worked on them just melted away. I only hope the covers help Stuart to sell lots of books, because believe me, they’re good!

Soon (hopefully) I’ll be launching a new website solely devoted to book cover design. My big dream at the moment (apart from a trip to Scotland/Ireland) is to be able to earn enough to stay home and work here – with writing, illustrating and book design. So I’m working on some pre-made covers to get people in and hoping that those who have used my services already will like them enough to spread the word. I’ll let you know when it’s launched! 

Tollesbury Time Forever

So that was the holiday...

I finished work for Christmas on the 19^th of December. This being Australia, we have our long break now, to avoid going to school in the hot weather – well, some of it, anyway. Of course, the first week involved a mad rush to get ready for Christmas. I hadn’t bought any presents at all, so it really was quite chaotic, but I made it in the end and no one complained about what they got. Friends probably noticed the lack of Christmas cards, but I just didn’t get around to it. My apologies to everyone.

After Christmas, I had an article due for the British magazine, ‘Writing Magazine’ about the creation of ebook covers. It involved a bit of research, so it took a week or so. As soon as I’d sent that off, I started on two pet portraits that I’d promised to do for an old lady in town. She’s a regular customer, so though I don’t like using acrylics for dogs (I prefer pastels), I gave it my best. The major problem was that while I was trying to do them, the temperature was well over 40C, so the paint kept drying quicker than I could get it onto the board. The other problem was that one of the dogs was black; a lovely dog, but black is really difficult to make ‘alive’. 

Portraits done, I decided to start a new page on Facebook. I have an author page (Katie W. Stewart Author) if you haven’t seen it), but I thought it might be a good idea to have a page just for my illustrations, art and book cover designs to get some more work (Katie W, Stewart Illustrator). I got a lot of positive feedback and even better, a commission to do a book cover for a lady in the US. It was a Post-Apocalyptic Zombie story, but fortunately, she didn’t want Zombies on the cover. She wanted a woman on a horse. I’m not great at horses, least of all from the back when they’re rearing, but I did my best and hopefully she’ll be able to publish soon.

Only a couple of days after I’d completed that, I heard of a lady in England who was looking for an illustrator for her children’s book about Trolls. I offered my services and she signed me up, so for the last week, I’ve been drawing Trolls. I have to say, if this is work, then let me work until I’m ninety, because it has been so much fun. Imagine drawing a huge ugly ogre, dressed up as a fairy, knowing that the next day, you’ll be drawing a troll hanging from a tree and wearing a tutu. The mind boggles.

Illustration for 'The Troll Trap' by Rosen Trevithick

Unfortunately, I have only one day of ‘holiday’ left. On Thursday I have to return to work in the Library and I have to admit that the only good point about that is being with the great staff at the school. Otherwise, I could quite happily quit and spend all my time writing and illustrating. I’ve worked just about all holidays, except for the odd trip to Perth to see movies (hint – if you haven’t seen Les Miserables yet, you’re missing a great movie!), but I can honestly say my ‘holiday’ has been wonderful. All this creating has inspired me. I’m so glad that I’ve dropped a day of work this year to give myself more time (with the safety net of reregistration as a teacher so that I can earn some money if I need it doing relief). With a little organisation, I think I can make a go of this author/illustrator business. I might even persuade my accountant that getting a business number isn’t such a silly idea. Well, I can dream.