Psion Alpha

Jacob Gowans invited me back to do the cover for his fourth book in the Psion series: Psion Alpha. There is a part in the novel about a psychopathic serial killer who paints a government logo on the wall in his victim's blood. The government logo is a flaming skull. I know, it sounds more like a horror story than a juvenile science fiction book, but it is not a horror. It is a fabulous juvenile fiction series that gets better with each book.

Well, Jacob really wanted the flaming skull in drippy blood on the cover of the 4th book. I can't say I've ever designed anything to look like dripping blood, not to mention a flaming skull, but I was interested in trying. After designing a flaming skull logo that we liked, I posted some paper on my wall and watered down my red acrylic paint and had a go with my hands trying for an authentic look. This is one of three attempts:



It was much too neat. I decided I couldn't sketch the skull logo out in pencil first (which I did above), I had to make it much bigger, I had to use poster board (my paper wrinkled too much), I had to have a bowl full of paint, use my whole hand, and I had to do it fast.



On the third attempt, I got it! Pretty gory...

We didn't want the cover to be too gruesome, so we tried changing the color. Here is how it turned out:



I think it turned out adequately creepy, but not too gory. Just right.

I really like the flaming skull logo we came up with. I made it into a governmental patch for the back cover.



I'm sure glad we don't live in a post-apocalyptic government that has such an intimidating logo for their elite squad of soldiers.

The impressionable memory of a 3 year-old

About three months ago I was commissioned to do several illustrations related to sex ed. I worked on these primarily when my children were sleeping, but there was one point when my 3 year-old saw me working and asked about the pictures. I tried to explain them simply in terms she understood.

She was very interested in the baby in utero pictures and talked about them for several days. Over two months later she drew this:

She had a little blob for the baby but was unsatisfied, so she asked me to help draw the baby. I did and then she "colored it in." She was careful to include a way out, with similar texture as was illustrated in one of the female anatomy illustrations I drew, and she deliberately included a line to label the baby, also a feature in the anatomy illustrations.

This was amazing to me for two reasons, 1) her memory is pretty much amazing. She hadn't seen these pictures in over two months, then decided to draw them, pretty anatomically correct for a 3 year-old and 2) she doesn't like to draw and the one rare moment she wants to, she drew that! What? Crazy girl.

Psion series continues...

I had the awesome opportunity to design two more covers for Jacob Gowans Psion series. These books get better with each installment.

Psion Delta is book #3 and probably the cover I'm most satisfied with compared to the previous two. I finally feel like I have a better grip on graphic design as art (as opposed to graphic design as marketing and craft, which is what I've focused on in the past).

Psion Gamma is book #2. This one came out right after I had my second child. It's kind of a miracle the cover turned out at all! I was in such a strange and foggy mindset when I was designing this cover.

Psion Beta

My Husband has a friend who is an aspiring author, and he is fabulous. He decided to self-publish his first novel last year and asked me if I would be interested in doing the cover art. What a neat opportunity, I thought, so I accepted.

I've done commissioned pieces before, but this was the first book cover. When I originally thought of cover ideas, they all had scenes from the book or action poses of the lead character, but my first instruction was: NO humans. Humans are kind of my forte, so this posed a new challenge for me. I decided to do the cover graphically rather than in paint or other raw media.

I worked really closely with the author to get a look that he liked. It was kind of refreshing working for a "client" whom I had to please with my work! My current job has a lot of freedom, well, essentially I can do whatever I want. I don't always feel like that helps me grow artistically, so this was a really good experience for me. There were times that I liked things that he didn't and vice versa, but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Since my field of work is designing fonts, I thought it would be fun to design a title font especially for this book. After I showed the author the title, he asked about using that font throughout the book. I made a quick mock-up font of what it might look like, so he could plug it in to see if it would work. I made it clear that the font was incomplete, and if he liked it, I would polish it up. He told me not to bother with the font after I sent him the mock font, so I didn't. But then when he sent me the proof, he had used my un-polished font!

I know most people probably won't even care, or notice, the font, but I see it and all I can think of is all the work it still needs! Oh well. I also designed a progressive swirling "blast" graphic for the head of each chapter.

If you are a bookworm, I recommend this book. It's similar to Ender's Game and Hunger Games and is geared towards a juvenile audience (so it's not too graphic or inappropriate). To learn more about it, check out the site here, and you can buy it here.