Gallery Update: We’re Off to See the Witches…

The original cover for book 1 was alright, but full of problems from my point of view. Aside from being too dark (and causing printing issues because of it), there were a lot of color, lighting, and detail issues I just wasn’t happy with, but it was the best I was capable of with my digital skills at the time.

Here’s the expanded cover for book 1, which, in my opinion, is miles ahead of the original. There are still a lot of things I don’t like (some of the colors are a little too saturated, some of the edges are a little to soft, I could have done more with textures…), but overall I’m much happier with it. Among other improvements, I tightened up some details, brightened up the dark areas, and got rid of the jumble of branches at the top. The dual light sources made this image challenging to begin with, but it’s a lot closer to what I originally saw in my head now.

Of the four original covers, this one was probably my favorite. For the revamp, I didn’t really touch any of the original cover (other than maybe adding a few leaves and blades of grass along the right side in order to push the main image closer to the center of the front cover). For the back cover, I kept the colors muted to enhance the contrast between this side of the portal and Magia. I could have done a bit more with some bark textures, I think, but overall I’m happy with this one.

This was actually the first cover I did for Lisi, and like book 2, I didn’t have to go back and change much of the original image. The expansion was pretty simple, though plain, but seeing as it’s on the back cover and covered by text, much more than that would either be lost or become a distraction.

This was the last of the four covers I did, chronologically speaking, and the one that probably best represents my skill level at the time. The number of figures, and the fact that they are based on real people the author knows, definitely made this one challenging. I was absorbing so much information, trying to learn how to be a better digital artist, and artist in general, during the couple of years I created these covers, that pretty much every cover was done with a different “method”. With this particular cover, I was experimenting with colorizing a fully rendered black and white painting. Given the look I wanted to achieve, it wasn’t the most efficient or best way to go about things, but I made it work. This was another simple expansion, given the background, which was intentionally left minimalistic so as not to distract from all the figures.

This is book 1. The photo cover was a nice composition, but it didn’t quite “pop”. I kept the elements that were strong (and important), like little Thea and the brooms, but reworked the rest of the setting and gave the colors some more life. Originally the brooms were suspended between two trees on a line, but I thought it might be cool if they were magically floating in front of Thea. I also took the opportunity to add some nice textures to the most prominent trees. I like this one overall, but in hindsight I might do something different with the greens, either change the textures to make them look more like evergreen scrub, or alter the leaf colors to match the rest of the fall setting. They were based off of what was in the original cover photo, fall leaves on the trees with leafy green bushes, but the more I look at it, the less “right” it looks in my illustration.

Here’s my latest cover, for the second Little Witch book. There will always be things I’m unhappy with in any “finished” piece I create, but I’m really quite happy with this one overall. It is teh culmination of a lot of learning and practicing working digitally. I began with a photo composite of my own in Photoshop as a reference for the layout and a few details, then went to work drawing and painting digitally. I’m pretty happy with the snow-caked trees, as well as some other elements. I wanted to push the shadows darker, to bring out more contrast since this is a night scene in the woods, but past experience told me that would lead to printing challenges again.