Holly Heisey Covers the Dim Knight

Today closes out the building of the cover for Tales of the Dim Knight by Adam and Andrea Graham.

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

The In-Between

As I said at the end of my last post, this will focus on my more recent drawings. A hodge-podge of sorts, I suppose, but then my next art post will get into the illustrating-for-a-small-press thing, and my inordinate fondness for beetles.

During college my artistic passion waned a bit, and I changed my major to biology. Yes, I know, that's pretty random. But I didn't give up on my creative side. I spent some time painting store-bought figurines, including a Nativity set that took weeks to complete and is still my most cherished Christmas decoration.

I love the camel :).

I also got into scrapbooking after my son was born. Don't let anyone tell you that doesn't take creativity. (And a bit of an obsessive personality....) But it's not the same as drawing when that's something you really loved doing.

So I grabbed my sketchpad a few years ago and drew my old boxer, Rocky.

OK, yes, I posted this before, but he's just so adorable.

Then I decided to draw a friend's cow. Don't ask.

An artist friend of mine saw this and said, "Whoa, trippy cow." And it is thus titled.

But my world is not limited to the mundane, and I had to try my hands at some fantasy work.

Of course nothing says "fantasy" like a blue-skinned elf :P. This was my first attempt at using oil pastels for something other than background (like the scribbling behind the trippy cow).

I also discovered the fun of digital editing...

...and blue-skinned elf becomes green-skinned elf with purple hair :).

And last but not least, since we're talking digital editing, here's a photo I'm particularly proud of:

Yes, photography counts as art! Especially when it is not just "point and shoot." This is a gargoyle that normally guards my bedroom door. I placed him against the tile floor in my bathroom. Got him angled just right and took a few shots on the macro (close-up) setting. I turned the whole image sepia with my photo-editing software, and played with the contrast a bit. I love how his little fanged face just pops out. I'm totally tempted to write a book about a gargoyle just so I can use this guy for cover art.

Alright, that brings us pretty up to date. My next post will technically be a book review and interview with Karina Fabian. Her latest release, Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, just released and I had the privilege of reading an advanced copy. (Sneak peek here--I loved the book. Karina is hilarious.) So, look for that on the 19th, and then we'll get back into the art mode.