Cover Art Again

I guess this was the latest effort. The multiple gradients in the back were interesting play in Photoshop.

This one accompanied Dan Mulhollen's story, "Something I Forgot" in the Piker Press.

Editing

This past week has been taken up with editing "Transitions."

Well, until Friday, that is. On Friday I succumbed to my granddaughter's latest viral introduction, and have been out for the count ever since. The last one started the New Year off with a hack; my cough was done for ONE DAMN DAY before this pinched-nerve crap started.

How timely that the next virus hit THE VERY DAY that I completed physical therapy for the pinched nerve. I'm really pretty fed up with fate.

"Transitions" is coming along all right. It's not a great story, by any means, but it feels good to write it, and spend time with the characters.

Blue Tree #2

On Tuesday, I betook myself to the studio and worked on a better cover image for Lydia Manx's story, "If These Walls Could Talk."

I started with a pen and ink drawing of a tree. Initially, I saw the tree as being much more leafy, but I really wanted the blue-to-green gradient and the moons to be visible, so the tree was limited to a crew cut.

Then I went to Photoshop and worked with a lot of layers.

As with many projects, once it was done I could see things I probably would have done differently. I think I'd re-do the ink of the tree and drop that branch down a little more, like a dancer with a fan. The light colored-leaves would contrast with the dark grasses just fine.

Blue Tree #1

Gad, I was so tired and achy Monday that I took an old picture of my Japanese maple, leached some color out of it, added some other color, and did some fuzzy hazes over it.

It was a creative effort, but it wasn't what I wanted to see.

Almond Blossoms!

I had a kickass photo-shoot in a nearby orchard today, in spite of the early overcasting of clouds.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/palmprintgallery/

After I brought the raw photos home, I plied some Photoshop to properly crop the pics, and was very pleased with the results.

In keeping with the recent torrent of creativity, I also cut some cardboard panels and put gesso on them to make them paint-worthy. They'll be useful for experimental stuff.

I think I want to put a second coat of gesso on them, though, so that if we want to sand them smooth, we'll have plenty of surface.

Gesso is a kind of thick paint-y goo that preps a surface -- almost any surface -- for painting upon.

Zoom! The Days Fly By

Monday was the cover image (see below).

Tuesday I wrote a little, editing Transitions.

Wednesday I painted -- oils -- on a painting I'd begun years ago. I was able to do some groovy blue on darker blue texturing, which I believe will set the tone for the rest of the painting.

Thursday, Lillian began asking questions about my art work; she was trying out new terminology and mis-used the word "stencil". I whipped out the Exacto knife and cut a simple shape from card stock, then used soft pastels to demonstrate what a stencil does.

While Lil experimented with a heart stencil I cut for her, I continued to mess with my shape. I added a little other color to the shapes, too.

When the air began to chill, I cleaned up the work table, and then smiled, realizing that what Lillian had done for me was -- get me to playing with my toys. Now that's priceless.

Cool Work, Me!

This was the cover for today's Piker Press.

The story is "Transitions", which I've been working on for ages ... well, today was the first chapter of it, not the whole mess of 88k words, of course.

Yesterday's creative effort was to pick up the massive pile of print out and go through it, editing as I went. After several months of ignoring the thing, it was actually fun, and I found the continuity gaffe that had been hanging me up and fixed it.

This morning (as well as at various times during the night when I woke up and worried about what the morning would bring) I thought about what cover image should accompany the story. I didn't want to do anything representational; I know what the characters all look like, but maybe someone else will have a different vision of them, and that's cool.

I went outside with my camera and took three pictures; the above is a composite of two of them, layered with about 65% opacity. The part with the ripples I adjusted separately, bumping up the contrasts A LOT. I had an idea of what I was going to do when I went outside, knew what I had to do with the photos when I fired up Photoshop, and whammalooey, it was done, and was just what I'd wanted to do. That's RARE!!!!

Ahhhhh.