Making of the Cover Art for Dog Slobber!

Hmm, not sure I can call it art as such.  More cartoons really.

The front cover image didn't get too much working out before I went for the final event.  Actually at the time I drew it, it was going to be one of the inside illustrations, but I couldn't go past it for the cover once I'd done it.

Here's the sketchbook page where I messed with ideas.  If you click on it you can see it much better.

I didn't think to do progress shots but here is the scan of the image once painted.  I ended up having to photograph the images used both inside and outside the book (with Andyroo's help) because our scanner has gone weird and was kind of flaring out areas, as you can see here.

 

Here's the back page.  I remembered to take more progress shots of this one.  Here's the sketchbook page.  Once again it looks much clearer when embiggened!

You can see I was working with ways to pose the dog and person so that they fit the page nicely beside the text, and you also always have to factor in the barcode box which generally goes on the bottom right of the back page.

Once I'd decided which composition I liked, I redrew it in my watercolour pad.

Then did it in ink with my trusty old permanent pigment ink fineliner.

And finally the watercolours.  Sorry, I forgot to take progress shots here, just went for it!

So there you have it, two images, some work (and a little swearing) with Gimp, and my new cover was ready!  I love it, especially the cheery colours.  I hope the young readers do too!  

I've had a good time with my writing this week.  Been having a blast editing Bunyip Dreaming, and enjoyed it so much I kept doing more of it, so am almost ready to send it to my first readers.  Woooo hooooo!!!  Not long to a new book now, peoples!

Today I had lunch with my sis, Jen, while we nutted out some ideas I have had for my next book, which is a sequel to Cunning Plans.  She's horsier than me these days so I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting too farfetched with my ideas.  It will be another mystery, set in the horse world like Cunning Plans, to be provisionally called Heroic Plans.  Jen could totally be a novelist as well, if she wasn't so busy being a mum, IT guru, and horse nut!  It was a lot of fun and we got plenty of good stuff worked out for the book.  I'm very lucky to have her for a resource for idea-bouncing.  Andrew too.

May you have encouraging, kind, creative-collaboraters and supporters of all kinds about you!  It's what we all need.  Avoid the critics and seek out the supporters.  We all have quite enough critics in our own heads. 

And for a little giggle, the face recognition thingy in my photo programme decided this bit of a pic of Ferry from the book was a face and made a separate image that I found when searching for the pics for this post.  Too funny!