Last post I wanted to show the image of the “before” cover to the first book, A Siruis Condition. I have since downloaded Irfanview to help with the jpegs and hope to accomplish it this time.  I guess this will be a learning process for me in how things work, since this is my first blog.

To see the “after” cover, you can go to amazon.com and look up the book Swagger Vasa Chronicles under the Kindle selections.  As to how it changed?  I started out with an original piece of art.  I used colored pencils and tried to make Swagger look as if he is looking up into the night sky.  Actually, creating the cover, proved relatively easy. I have Printshop graphics program. I scanned in the original art, used the cropping tool to outline Swagger’s head, but I wanted him to blend better and not have the look of a picture placed on top of a starscape, so I applied the special effect called “water”.  It does remove part of the picture but allows the background to bleed through, so it looked like it was IN the stars.  I searched the web and found a copyright free photo of the constellation Orion, where Sirius is located.  With a series of layering, I scanned in the RAV ship, applying “radiant glow” to the engines.  The lettering was put on last.  So, I call my cover a mixture of original artwork combined with digital enhancement.

I liked the results, but I have a co-author who did not like it, hence the change in the original art of Swagger.  I have to admit, the second version is better.  Sigh.  You find out, when you’re an artist, you have to learn to let go of pieces you’ve spent hours creating.  There might be just a small “something” wrong, but that piece gets deleted or sent to File 13.  Art, especially for book covers like ours, is an on-going process. Someday, I’m going to upgrade to Photoshop and then the learning curve will extend to infinity and beyond!