Cover Art

Nicole Clarkston's Pride & Prejudice Prequel, The Courtship of Edward Gardiner, will be released on the 21st of October, 2016. The painting on the front cover is so perfect that it almost seems it was painted just for this book. Almost everything about it fit the story. 

Everything on the back cover has some significance to the story!  The tag line even has a dual purpose, so clever of Ms. Clarkston! It had to be placed under the children to make its twofold meaning all the more evident! It was such a pleasure working with cover for this story and Nicole Clarkston. 

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Northern Rain by Nicole Clarkston is a North & South variation. As the title suggests rain plays a significant role in this novel. Both Ms. Clarkston and I had trouble finding pictures of a man and woman in the time frame needed for the 1850's, especially with an umbrella and in the rain. Since my son does 3-D renders, I approached him with the possibility of doing a picture for me. The main problem we had was finding realistic looking clothes for the figures.  The newer figures render much more like actual photos when they have newer clothing, but the clothes sets were for the older figures. That meant I had to do some major adjusting to the renders. (The men were built like superheroes! Of course, we think John Thornton is a hero of magnificent proportions, but not in the sense of the figures...think Hulk! :) 

With renders, the artist is able to pose the figures in any way he/she chooses. That makes them wonderful for creating the desired scene/setting. If clothes would just be created for the more detailed figures, this would be a wonderful way of having whatever one wanted on a cover. That said, my son and I went back and forth via email and sitting at a computer together working it out. We finally got a couple and background that was close to what I wanted for the cover picture, according to what had been discussed between me and Nicole. Add in the rain, and below is the final result.

This was a fun cover to do, especially since I was working with my son. He even took pretty well, my many emails asking for little details such as, lower the hat, raise the umbrella, can you bring Margaret's elbow in...etc. It was a first experience for both us and I appreciate Nicole Clarkston giving us the opportunity to work with renders for her book cover.

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The latest novel by Jan Hahn, A Peculiar Connection, was released in eBook format at Amazon on March 11 and the paperback is now available now. This cover ended up in a different direction, color wise, than what we first thought, but the natural progression seemed to fall into place and made it very enjoyable work. Each item on the  front cover is significant to the story. 

It will not take many pages into the story to recognize the significance of the picture on the back cover and the part it plays in the story. 

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Sally Smith O'Rourke's latest release, Days of Future Past, was much fun to do. She had a painting that she wanted on the front cover. I had to add to it to get it the size needed. There were also some color changes and things that needed removed from the painting to get to the finished design. 

Full Cover

Back cover in stages. The actual photograph is first; then the created photograph is next. It is made up of about thirteen parts of photos. All were taken by me so no worries about copyright issues or getting permission to use. The finished back cover is last.

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I did the artwork for the books, Men of Derbyshire, by J Dawn King. There are three books in this series but only one has been released to date. I did not do the cover design, only the artwork. The First in the series is A Father's Sins, which was first released with a different cover. Below is the new cover. To the right is the actual artwork. Click on any of the images to see a closeup.

 Joy gave me permission to go ahead and show the artwork for the other two.

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The two covers below were designed for author, Cassandra Grafton. She posted chapters of her novel, Lizzy Bennet's Diary at Austen Variations. Cassandra's inspiration for the covers were the posters for Bridget Jones' Diary. (Hence, the title) Cassandra thought it would be fun to celebrate both the 1995 miniseries and the 2005 movie with a cover paying tribute to each. Darcy and Wickham are partially transparent to give the illusion of Lizzy thinking about them as she ponders her diary. The background for the 1995 scene is a photo taken at Luckington Court, which was used for Longbourn in the miniseries. I did not use any promotional pictures but took my own from the respective films. Once all the photographs were put together, I turned the new picture into a painting via software. I hope you enjoyed the postings of this novel as much as I did.

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Thank you, Suzan Lauder, for the wonderful suggestion of putting my cover art on a page of my blog. It is great to see all the books together on one page. I hope all of you will enjoy seeing them too. 

I also do freelance cover art so please contact me if interested.

The soon to be released book, The Secret Betrothal by Jan Hahn, is my latest cover. Jan is a family friend and requested my grandson for the front cover. He is Darcy and two of his friends are Lizzy and Wickham. For these I tried to make the drawings look like their models. It was much fun to age them and turn them into Regency characters for this setting.

               

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My second cover was for Suzan Lauder's book, Alias Thomas Bennet. My son and granddaughter were my models for the front. (although I did not attempt to make it look like them) As Suzan mentioned in one of her blog posts, I couldn't allow little Jane to be that close to the waves without adding the rope behind her. Even though she is holding her father's finger, I felt compelled to add that extra protection for her. Maybe I got a little too involved in the feelings invoked by that cover! The back is a drawing from a photo I took when visiting Luckington Court, or Longbourn in the 1995 miniseries of Pride & Prejudice.

               

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The Red Chrysanthemum by Linda Beutler was my first cover. For Linda's cover, the drawing for the front was actually done in full color and then changed to sepia with software. It gave the older look that she wanted. The same effect was used for the table and note on the back cover. The reds from the roses needed to dominate the back because of what they represent in the story. 

Prismacolor Soft Core Pencils are what I use for my drawings for these covers. The pencils allow for much detail and blending. For each book, both the front and the back cover depict scenes from the book that are significant to the story. 

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I have also done some covers using photographs and changing them into paintings. One is on the front of Tess Quinn's second volume of A Fitzwilliam Legacy: New Year's Resolutions. 

I am working on two front covers for Cassandra Grafton's new blog series and will add them to this page as soon as they are finished and on her blog. At a date as yet undecided Cassandra will be my guest and I will be hers where we will be discussing her WiP and my covers. Be sure to watch for both posts.