Pattern Animals – Spring Rabbit and Hummingbird

Art

Rabbit drawn in marker, filled with crazy patterns and colors Wish I Hummingbird drawn in marker, filled with crazy patterns and colorsWish I hadn’t patterned over  in so much of the hummy’s belly…but it’s still fun.

How I make these: swatch markers and pick 2 or 3 light and 1 dark. Draw silhouette lightly in pencil. Fill in silhouette with random colors. Outline silhouette in darkest color, then fill with random patterns. Done while watching COUNTING CARS, which I love.

Book Covers Behind-the-Scenes: The Making of MIDWINTER MAGIC

Art

Hi so I spent over two hours today painting a decent-looking stylized reindeer for my latest eBook Midwinter Magic (and that was just on one file, and doesn’t count all my OTHER painting and sketching and thumbnailing time) (honestly, it felt like 5 hours on just that last file, though), but I can’t reveal the cover yet so you’re going to now suffer through my thumbnail sketches and WIPs.

sufferrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

j/k I hope you enjoy!

More cover design thumbnails for MIDWINTER MAGIC in Crayola Marker (Book Cover Behind the Scenes)The ones above were done after researching what other fairy tale collections were doing. Blue was a very popular color, as was sticking huge typography in the center of a rectangle. I first did these in pencil and came back after the next batch of thumbs and colored ’em.

I did not have a title at this time.

 

Cover design thumbnails for MIDWINTER MAGIC, done in Crayola Marker (Book Cover Behind the Scenes) Still no title I liked. Playing with the idea of folk art patterns and reindeer. Attempts at folk art style reindeer and flowers (Book Cover Behind the Scenes)Trying my hand at Scandinavian folk art patterns (there’s multiple schools of Scandinavian folk art with cool fancy names but I’ve forgotten them all). Of course this was after some research, but I don’t think any of these were direct copies, just me fooling around on watercolor paper with markers.

Cute li'l folk art flower (Book Cover Behind the Scenes)

Oh, right, it’s called “Rosemaling”! I remember because I invented my first Krita brush to try and emulate the single-stroke style color changes and stuff for this fnower. You can totally YouTube it! There’s guilds and everything!Tiling folk art flower, doodads, and pine tree (Book Cover Behind the Scenes)

Messing around with Krita’s tiling function got me this fun little tiling pattern.     Penciled thumbnail designs for MIDWINTER MAGIC's cover(Book Covers Behind the Scenes)

I fell ill in the middle of this project (both the writing and the drawing). By the time I got some energy back I felt like I was running late. I got my act together and came up with a title that didn’t embarrass my ancestors, then came back to thumbnailing. My default book cover solution is “slap an animal on it” but at least this time it wouldn’t be a cat.Reindeer sihouettes in blue marker (Book Cover Behind the Scenes)Marker attempts at reindeer/caribou, done with reference, but still trying to keep a stylized feel. The top left one was used in a few mockups I won’t show here.

Armed with a title, I went into Inkscape and chose fonts I thought would work. Then, for good measure, I grabbed some reindeer product silhouettes and slapped ’em on in some sort of artistic way (thanks, Trace Bitmap tool!!)

MIDWINTER MAGIC mockup - dark blue bg, reindeer sihouettes, and typography (Book Cover Behind the Scenes)

I liked these poses, but…other than that….this was bad. Really bad. I wound up going back to my thumbnails page, picking one I liked, and just elaborating on it in Krita.

I thought the final image would be, like, folk art flower patterns on a blue background, with a reindeer shape cut out in the middle, revealing some cool winter snowflakey pattern beneath (very hand-drawn-looking, in other words), but, uh, I traced a deer in one of the thumbnails, slapped a background from Unsplash.com behind it, went, OH! and went in a totally different direction.

How’d it turn out? Stay tuned for the cover reveal tomorrow morning!

Rusty Lake Fanart: Corrupted Soul (OK, and a Corrupted Cat)

Art

The shadowy, creepy-eyed figure of the CORRUPTED SOUL, from the Rusty Lake gamesI played all the free (and creepy) Cube Escape games from Rusty Lake, then got hooked on the premium games. So I did up a little fanart of the Corrupted Soul after finishing chapter 2 of their latest release, Cube Escape: Paradox.

They’re surreal and creepy fun and really thoughtful, and I feel like their premium games are a good value (especially with Paradox…after 5 hours of play I still have  achievements and the alternate endings to get!)

STEEL CITY, VEILED KINGDOM manuscript art challenge – Institute exterior

Art

Exterior of a skyscraper-type building, done in Sharpie markerAbout This Project: The rough draft of my novel STEEL CITY, VEILED KINGDOM came out to over 800 pages of paper. I finished the pencil edits ice ages ago, but since it felt wasteful to toss out all the reams, I’ve given myself a challenge: I’m going to draw my novel (kinda sorta). Whatever’s happening on the printed side gets drawn on the other side–action, characters, or scenery.

Exterior of Jerimin’s workplace, done after copying some GIS skyscraper exterior refs. His world looks like Minority Report + Iria: the Anime. Like, if those two movies’ sceneries had babies it’d be his world.

#nottoscale

STEEL CITY, VEILED KINGDOM manuscript art challenge – Parents’ apartment

Art

Sharpie thumbnails of an apartment interiorAbout This Project: The rough draft of my novel, STEEL CITY, VEILED KINGDOM came out to over 800 pages of paper. I finished the pencil edits forever ago, but since it felt wasteful to toss out all the reams, I’ve given myself a challenge: I’m going to draw my novel (kinda sorta). Whatever’s happening on the printed side gets drawn on the other side–action, characters, or scenery.

Roughs of Jerimin’s parent’s apartment. #nottoscale