Latest Update May 2010

I know I know.. It's been a while :D Been busy working covers, learning how to use my camera, growing some veggies and being Mum.

Here are my latest Coming Soon/Released covers (although by now I'm sure they're mostly released LOL!)



Sinfully Decadent and Reasonable Doubt. Both relatively simple Contemporary covers involving masks, blending and textures.



These two books are for Liquid Silver. It was difficult trying to make Divine Intervention look sexy whilst giving it a Political feel LOL! Love Charlotte's Younger Man. Had a bit of fun with that one, giving the guy a more modern hair-style and playing with the Egyptian textures :D



Thai'ing the Knot is another in a Series by Sedonia Guillone. The cool tattoo was thanks to the very talented Alizel over at DA :D A Subtle Breeze had a paranormal element to it (ghost of dead mother). It kinda worked with her blowing 'magic' dust over her son :D Surprisingly it fitted with the title too.



Forgotten Family is 2nd in a Menage series by Brynn Paulin. I have to admit that I find Menage covers a bit of a chore. Probably because there's so much work involved in them. The theme follows on from book 1 :D

The Perfect Union. I had to create the celtic triad in Photoshop for this one. So I'm rather proud of this cover. There was a lot to fit in but I think it balances out nicely.



Bound by Moonlight is 2nd in teh Exotic Wolves series that I have done, again mostly masks and textures. Mirror Image is another cover for Liquid Silver. I enjoyed the Sci-Fi Theme for this one.



Rescued is pretty straight forward. Masks, blending and textures.
What's your pleasure is 2nd book in the Pleasure series. I really like the simplicity of this cover. And just in case your wondering, that is supposed to be a burn scar on her back. It was an interesting time trying to get something that looked relatively real.



Deadly Obsession and Taking the Chance. Two more contemporaries. Pretty straight forward really.



Healing Hands, probably my favourite cover here. Love the fantasy element to this cover. It all came together quite easily. Ride 'em Again Cowboy is 2nd in the series. I kept the same theme as it was about the same characters.

Just for something different I have created a couple of covers for a few 'Cover Artist' challenges. They are available to purchase should anyone like the look of them. Titles and names, etc can be changed of course :D I'll hopefully be doing more of these in the future, incorporating some different Genres as well.



Contemporary Fiction Thriller/Murder Mystery

Cheers!

Theron's Return

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Theron's Return by Carol Lynne is Book 11 in the Campus Cravings series.

The covers in this series, as I have noted before, are all very much the same. Just a change of images.

A bit of cutting and pasting, juggling of images, etc. The hardest part is searching for the right images.

This one had a Psychiatrist in it, from memory. Hence the leather sofa at the top. With the top image I usually try to give some hint of the storyline. While the bottom image centers on the Characters.

I used a total of four stock images in this cover.

Duet in Blood

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Duet in Blood by J.P. Bowie is the 3rd book in a Vampire series.

The previous two covers were done by another cover artist with TEB so all I really had to do was find the images. The set-up was the same for all three covers.

I've been wanting to use the dark guy in the background for ages. He's got a real dark, broody look to him. I wish there was more stock like this for the darker genres.

So a very easy cover yet relatively effective. Nice shot of Paris down the bottom :D

I've been finding it soooo hard these last few days to come back down to earth after my little trip to Melbourne. It's reminded me that there's another world outside of my little computer desk. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing in all honesty. I'll have to wait and see if this itch subsides.

Now, I must get back to my covers before I get sacked!! LOL

Red Stone of Passion

Coming soon to Total-E-Bound ...

Red Stone of Passion by Tuesday Morrigan.

I've had a sudden rush of covers released. Can you tell? LOL.

Red Stone of Passion is a Menage book, obviously as there are two bodies and a head on the cover.

I just had to lighten the woman's skin tone to a 'coffee colour' and give her a bob hairstyle. She also had orangy-gold lipstick which clashed with the red diamond so I just changed the hue to something more suitable.

The guy's were straight forward cut and paste. There was a bit of jostling for position but they fit in quite well. It's funny how something as simple as a belly-button can cause me to re-work a cover. Originally the middle guy's belly-button was framed by the 'd', making it stand out too much for my liking .Of course now that I've mentioned it, everyone will be looking at it. It's still a bit prominent, isn't it. It looks like a bullet hole.
Oh, hey AJ! Does the fellow in the jeans look a little familiar LOL!

The diamond was a simple colour change from blue. I like the vibrancy of the red. I also played around with a few different fonts for this one. For the title itself I've used three different fonts.

Now for something a little different. Jacquelyn Frank is holding a raffle were you get the chance to win some truly mouth-watering prizes and all for a good cause! So if you're a pet lover, head on over and see if anything takes your fancy. Best thing is she's happy to post WORLD WIDE! Godiva Chocolates, ladies ... an advanced copy of NOAH, the final book in her Nightwalker Series, AND a load of fantastic reads from some carefully selected authors. So get on over there and have a squiz, buy a ticket and support the Animal Compassion Network!

Men of Tokyo - Sudden Surrender

Coming soon to Total-E-Bound!

Men of Tokyo - Sudden Surrender by Sedonia Guillone is book 3 in the WhiteTigers series.

This is the first cover I have done of this series and damn if it wasn't a tricky one LOL! I honestly thought that body tattoo was going to be the end of me as a cover artist. Seriously!

Anyway, because I'm pretty chuffed with how it turned out, I thought I'd share with you how I managed to pull it together.

First things first. I needed to find the characters. In all honesty there's not a lot of Asian/Oriental guys available out there. Well. I don't think chubby business man is quite in the 'Erotic Cover' league, but someone might yet surprise me.

Anyway, so I managed to find some nice bods. The guy on the left worked perfectly for the Character he was to portray. The Guy in the middle though, looked like he'd sucked on a lemon so I decided to lop off his head and give him a new one. Oh, if only it were so easy in real life, eh?

The original head I chose was a bit too 'cranky' so we went for the guy on the right. Sweet!

Okay, so now with lots of cutting and pasting of heads we have our two characters ready to go. Now for the hard bit.

The character over on the right called for a full body Yakuza tattoo - white tigers and cherry blossoms. O.M.G.!

Now I'm pretty adept these days at adding a tattoo here and there and getting them to look relatively natural. BUT a whole body tattoo??

So the search began. Firstly I trawled through the stock sites. There were a few things I could have thrown together but in all honesty the amount of stock required would have killed me. However, in my searches I managed to stumble across this image on the right.

It had the tiger AND the blossoms. Bingo!

Unfortunately the tiger was yellow, but thanks to the desaturate tool I was able to leach out the colour and produce a white tiger. Next, it was obvious that this image was not going to fit on the big guy's body without looking a bit odd. Plus the larger I stretched the image, the poorer the quality became. So I was going to have to keep my images small.

What I ended up doing was creating a new document and copying and pasting parts of the image around the tiger, gradually expanding outwards. I'd blend the edges of the image so there was no obvious seam by erasing with a large, soft brush.

This gave me a broader canvas to work with. Also ensuring that I would not notice the edges of the cut & pastes in amongst all that busy background.

So back to the big guy. Using the expanded tattoo design, I enlarged it enough to cover his chest. I had to dabble with the perspective so that the angles were correct. Then using a displacement map of his torso, I was able to distort the tattoo so it fit to his chest. I worked like this in sections all over his torso, upper & lower arms and shoulders. Cutting and pasting, blending and merging sections of the basic design until I was happy that his body was covered.

As you can imagine there were quite a few layers. At least 20 just to cover his torso, arms and shoulders. Once I had him covered I copied those layers and then merged them into one. I changed the layer to Multiply and fiddled with the opacity until it looked more natural. Phew!

My next challenge, but obviously not so difficult was to try to find an image of the Kanji for Suzuki. I did manage to find one but it was of poor quality. So I had to recreate it in a new document. I hope to god it is correct LOL! This was just a 'normal' tattoo that needed to go on the background guy.

The hard bit out of the way all I needed to do now was bring the design over from the previous ones of the series. Pop the the guy's together, blend them in, fiddle with contrasts, shadows, highlights, etc and then go and find myself a nice quite corner to huddle in. LOL!

Of course there was a lot more fiddling involved, but I don't want to bore you all with the details. This is just to give people the gist of what goes on behind the scenes.

Hershies Kiss

Hershies Kiss coming soon to TEB!!

Hershies Kiss by Carol Lynn is book 10 in the Campus Cravings series.

This was a pretty basic cover. Again it sticks to the series theme. From memory one of the characters is a Chef or at least likes cooking. Hence the pots at the top.

The two fellas say it all really. Simple cut and paste and a bit of contrast balance and shadowing.

I hear that this book is pretty hot!

Got myself another book to read. This time it's Damien by Jacquelyn Frank. The Nightwalker Series. I so easily get sucked into these series LOL! I'm almost finished it - of course. Books don't last long in my grasp. I'm hoping that by the time I finish this one, the next in the Sookie Stackhouse series will be available in Paperback. Although I doubt that will be the case by tomorrow LOL!

Once I've read that book though I will have to wait a good 12 months before the next book in any of these series come out. Actually, no I lie. Noah comes out in September 08, but that's in the US. Although I could pre-order it I guess. We'll see.

I think I'll be pretty busy in between books though. I really do need to set myself up with a desk diary so I know what I'm doing these days. That includes fitting in housework around covers, computer time and reading LOL! I really do need to set aside quiet time for my reading though. I often find I'm reading my book whilst trying to get the kids breakfast or when I'm cooking dinner. I'm so impatient when it comes to my books. Still, it would be better if I could concentrate without the constant interruptions. I'm sure I'd enjoy the books even more.

Ride 'em Cowboy

Another cover, coming soon to TEB!!

Ride 'em Cowboy by J.P. Bowie.
(can't add links atm, so I'll come back to those)

*sigh* Cowboys .... yum!

Okay. Thinking, thinking. We can all thank Claire for the image of the sexy cowboy in the back. He was originally leaning up against a barbed wire fence, but I cut that out. Obviously ;)

The guy in the front I made blonder to suite the city boy character. Actually, he kinda reminds me of a Lesser from JR Wards Black Dagger Brotherhood series. I don't know if that's such a good thing, now that I think of it LOL!

The background was a bone of contention and it took a bit of back and forth before we found the right image. All the pretty country images showed mainly run-down, dilapidated old sheds. At least with this one the shed looks like part of a working property, instead of a ruin in the middle of a deserted paddock.

Had something interesting happen this week. I'll sit on it for a bit to see what comes of it before I share.

Now speaking of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by JR Ward. I just finished Lover Enshrined. That would be Phury's book for fans. I can't believe I've finished it already. No. I can believe it. I absolutely love this series. I can honestly read one of these books within 24 hours. Anyway, I've finished it and will now have to wait another 12 months for the next in the series. God I hate that. I think it's Revhenge's story from what I've gleaned from the forums. Which will be interesting as I don't know how he's going to do the deed unless he's matched up with another Sympath. The old 'fish-hook' thing wouldn't help matters in the bedroom. WHAAAT? I hear you cry LOL! Oh well. I guess you'll have to read the books to find out ;) Still. It will be interesting to see what JR has planned for Xhex and John.

I finally got around to doing Amarinda & Dakota's banners - Yay!! Can't figure out why they're not changing though. Maybe one of the girls can give me some tips.

Having it All

Coming soon to TEB - Having it All.

Having it All by Jamie Hill is Book 3 in the Unexpected Love Series.

Geez, this one was a while ago so I'm having difficulty remembering what I did. It was pretty straight forward from memory. I just cut out the characters and fit them onto the cover.

Of course it's never THAT easy. I need to blend them so they don't look like paper cut-outs. This can entail adding shadow and highlighting or a few strands of 'fly-away' hair to soften edges. Colour matching the characters or adding a bit more contrast, etc.

Then I need to juggle the size of the characters so they 'look' right. I like them to fill the cover, whilst not overcrowding it.

I've kept to the same style with this book, as you can see below.















So I've been totally sucked in by Facebook. There are loads of fun games that you can play over there. Who knew! I'm already addicted to PackRat and Scramble. You can play anything from Sudoku to Majhong. PackRat is a game where you collect sets of themed cards either by purchasing them with game credits or stealing them from your friends. The collector in me is in heaven with this game. Unfortunately it has become an obsession. Thanks April!!

Cover Backlog

Here are a few more of my covers. Perhaps another post will bring me up to date on artworks that have been given the go-ahead and then we'll be living in the moment ;) LOL.

Okay, so today I thought I'd post a few of the covers that I've already done. I'm relatively new to the world of cover art so I still have a hell of a lot to learn. However everyone over at Total-E-Bound are making it a really enjoyable experience for me. So here are the first few. I'll add more over the next few days :D