Happy Hump Day!

I just updated my site with four recent cover designs. The first one being Bitten to the Core by Robin Slick (seen on the left). This cover went through a number of test runs before this final design was accepted.

I started out with something much brighter and quirky. Though both my art director and the author liked the cover we all felt it just didn’t fit the story properly. The main character is an older woman, but more importantly she is an artist, funky and hip. So I went back to the drawing board. At first I went through a few ideas involving the artist standing in front of a canvas with an apple but then I thought about something the author had said. She really liked the idea of black and white with hints of red. So I found a piece of abstract art and a female figure with the right attitude.

The original stock pieces were in color so I  changed them to black and gray, adjusted the levels, and ran the cover through an action designed to create the urban illustrated look. Finally, I added the text and the apple core. Even then the cover went through some minor tweaks, I gave the female some black curly hair, I changed the font color, and the apple was originally vector style but that was changed, and the placement of both the apple and the text was adjusted slightly. It was a lot of work but in the end the author was really pleased.