We were blessed to gain the painting skills of Holly Heisey for the final cover. She is a massively talented up-and-coming artist and writer. She specializes in digital painting, but she's wicked good at pen and ink and pencil drawing, too.
Holly told me she did the entire painting in Photoshop, start to finish. The first version was without helmet or gloves:
And then with the mask, like the one I had in my original drawing:
The problem is, Powerhouse wasn't wearing his helmet in the drawing I did because I was going for comical. If you look, you'll see I drew it so it appears that his helmet has fallen off and he's trying to reach down and grab it mid-flight:
But we LOVE Holly's rocking painting, so it's decided to go with that and just put his helmet and gloves on:
The final touch is adding the text. If you scroll up, you'll see there is text in the earlier drawings, but Grace Bridges (owner of Splashdown Books, if you haven't caught that yet) is a stickler about having the perfect text with her cover designs.
I got to be a part of that process, since Grace sent me images with the text in place asking for critique. The slightest adjustment can sometimes transform the text from "meh" to "just right!"
Again, here's the final cover:
See what teamwork can do? And of course the amazing talent of Holly Heisey. PLEASE visit her at her blog and check out more of her awesome artwork here.
Thank you, Holly! You rock! :D
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