Covering

I feel mildly guilty for my scatterbrained post last night. I was tired, sore and a little cranky when I wrote it. Now I'm tired, nauseous, but less cranky. :)
I spent 15+ hours on my cover over the past two weeks. My reason behind that is that I went onto Facebook where there was a cover design group where they'd critique my cover. They tore mine apart saying that it had no contrast, no visual interest. Nada.
I walked away with steam in my ears.
At first I was ready to toss my hand in the air saying "Forget it. I'm clearly not meant to do this! I'll take up knitting!" I even asked what the price of knitting needles were.
Fortunately my family and friends took compassion on my poor soul. I spent days trying to figure out what to do. I had no idea! I felt petrified with nothing. My family spent hours coming up with ideas, silly ones, but hey, the thought process can be full of silliness. Like Lindsey Stirling said, "Don't be afraid of the bad ideas."
My idea came to me while driving to my grandparents. I had been toying with the idea of taking a picture of a key, slapping the title over that and calling it good. I tried, here's the result:

Pretty good picture if you don't mind me saying. But it didn't add the visual appeal I was looking for. I mean it is interesting to look at (and yes, it follows the rule of thirds and framing! I didn't add the blackness around it on the computer, I was holding a flashlight between my knees and the key with ribbon in front of my jacket hanging in front of the chair I sit to write in.)
This picture sparked an idea. Yes, a key is intriguing. What are keys used for? To unlock things. And if you think about it, there are things in Twisted that need unlocking, such as a front door, a cell door, or a soul.
From there I had two ideas. Everyone that has heard about my book and read the blurb about it has told me that I need to put the Secret Keeper on the cover somewhere. I never tried because he is really difficult to draw! But I decided I wasn't going to draw, I was going to take a fancy photo and go from there.
My two ideas are as follows (ooh, fancy today aren't we Tayla?)
1. to have a hand holding a key with the form of the Secret Keeper in the background.
2. A key hanging from something with the wraith in the background.
Both ideas sounded good, but I didn't have a clue on how to do them, plus I'm kind of lacking a costume for it (someday! Someday I tell you, I will make it!)
From these two ideas was born the one I would go with. The Secret Keeper walking through a forest with a key. I thought this would perk interest. What is a faceless being doing with a key? Where is he going? As hard as he is to draw, the wraith draws the most attention. I pay attention to books with beings like him on the cover. As of yet I haven't found any I want to read...but still, they  drag my eyes in.
I tried several times to put together a good cover. I attempted it on the computer. I walked away in utter frustration until my brother told me to do it step by step. Stop worrying about the whole composition and draw each individual piece.
I love my brother.
This idea worked marvelously. I drew each little piece starting with the Secret Keeper. Since I've been practicing drawing wraiths since summer I think he turned out marvelously. From a stick figure to a hooded being, the persona of death itself.

This is the shaded version. Truth be told? I've never drawn anything like it before! I used a variety of shading techniques, most of which I've never attempted.
I also learned that when I have his hood tilted to the side like that, it draws attention. From the front, he's threatening because it looks like he's going to run you down, but like this he's mysterious.
I remember telling my grandmother about him. I was blabbering away and said, "He's called the Secret Keeper, scary right?" (positively terrifying, gosh.)
My grandmother thought about it for a moment then said, "Sounds mysterious."
Bingo. I don't want him to be so scary people are too afraid to open my book. It's not him. His personality doesn't always scream, "I'm a scary wraith! Fear me! Raah!"
Sometimes it's, "I'm not what you think I am. Why can't you see that?"
I think I captured that in this drawing. And no, he's not dropping the key. I spent FOREVER drawing his hand and didn't want to erase it over the string.
BTW, this was my reference for his hand, amazing picture. I wish I knew who it belongs to, I'd give them thanks in abundance.

Then came a part I was dreading. The forest. I've always lived under the assumptions that I just don't DO backgrounds. I was proved wrong. On a Sunday night where I took a four hour nap and wasn't going to sleep, I drew it.

And here it is! Voila! A forest! If you look closely, the trees in the front are twisted (get it? Haha, I'm such a nerd!)
And this is where it changed from a forest in bloom to a forest in death. I realized that I wanted to go more for a "seasons of the soul" type thing. A soul in winter will be a cold one indeed. At this point this is where the Secret Keeper is.
Truthfully, though I go on and on about my other characters (not on this blog...I think) the story is really about the Secret Keeper. It follows his journey from death back to life. That's why the first cover will be a cold winter scene. His soul is breathing winter.
If I didn't call my book Twisted it would probably be Winter Soul. It just has a nice ring to it. =D






I put it together to get this rough sketch of how the entire cover would look

After I got done with the sketches I got a little paralyzed. I've tried doing pictures on the computer in the past. If you go onto my YouTube account I have a video called "Fantasy Horses" all of those are my failed attempts at it. They look decent, but I didn't put much effort into them. I was afraid that my cover would end up looking cheesy and stupid. I do judge a book by the cover, if it looks like crap, I'm sorry, I'm not going to invest much time into reading it. You know those covers with the flat people with the elbows that bend like circles? Yucko. Not opening it.

Here's the movie. Yep. They're all scans. Back then I had no idea how to turn a .xcf into a .jpg.
I was a little paralyzed at the idea of trying, but I read this quote "doubt kills more dreams than failure ever did." I wish I could remember who said it! I'll look it up. It was NOT me!
Anyway, I took it to heart and tried.
First attempt.
Failure.
I walked away steaming.
"Knitting!"
Then I stopped being stupid and tried to figure out what I did wrong (look, I'm learning!) I realized that the image was too large and I didn't start with the subject. You ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS start with your subject. It gives your drawing personality and thereby YOU are more interested in drawing.
The next day I came back and I filled in the Secret Keeper. I put every ounce of drawing skill I had into drawing him. I started by blocking him in red. Then, with my fingers crossed (at least figuratively, kind of hard to use a computer to draw with crossed fingers) I began filling in color.
Bit by bit he began to take shape.
Here's how it went.

 Rough concept drawing right now. I highlighted him in red so when I turned the background layer off I could still see him. It gets difficult to see what you're doing when you used the background layer as your blocking especially if you're using similar colors. I tried it in the past...that's why I did it like this now. :)











Roughly four hours later I was done. I didn't copy every step I took even though I said I would. I got excited and stopped. :)


And then I panicked as I realized I had no idea what to do for the background.
I realize I knew someone who could. My good friend and pal Bob Ross. Last year I loved watching his program. I saw a lot of ideas of how to paint. When I tried them myself, ehh, not so great. I'll save paintbrushes and paints for later, but the same ideas could be used on the computer.
I tried looking for episodes online. There weren't any that I wanted. I went to the library with my mom after taking pictures for my photography class. I struggled a bit to find where the movies were. I knew at least one of them was there, I'd looked it up online.
When I found where they were I saw that there were two. Both had drawings I needed to see. I watched them both.
Feeling much more confident I came upstairs the next morning. Finished my schoolwork. Forced myself to feel calm and began.
Step one, blocking everything out. I did. I drew a mountain in the style of Bob Ross. If you look close it looks like one of the Wasatch Mountains, oddly enough the one that ended up being the subject of my panorama picture for school.

Yes, my horrible stitched photo. Mountain furthest to the right is the one I'm talking about. Funny story NEVER taking photos while the sun is setting, unless you're a pro. You can see the colors getting progressively darker. Oops. Oh well I got 100% anyway. :)
Back to my cover. I drew in two mountains, got a little stalled for the foreground. That's where I ALWAYS run into trouble. So I went with what I knew. I drew a little snow covered hill in front of my mighty mountains (LOL Bob Ross, he has such a soothing voice) and then I pushed my brush up, creating what looked like teeny tiny mountains in the distance.
Then I attempted trees in the foreground. YUCK! It was too abrupt. I backed up a bit and drew trees in the background. Much better. They looked pretty decent. My brother came in and suggest I add a little fog around the edge of the Secret Keeper's robes. I sighed wondering if I'd ever get to that point.
Then I tried foreground trees again. I was losing patience. It was beginning to look (in my mind) to look yucky. I kept going, smudging, adding color, backwards forwards, until I got a result I wanted. I used two trees to frame the Secret Keeper and branches overhead so your eyes are drawn to him. Then I added the fog, curling it up to finish the frame. Voila! Here's the result.

I thought it was great for a stand alone picture. It's now my profile picture for YouTube. I'm so proud of his hand! On GIMP (the program I used) it looks very pixelated up close, but I kept adding color. Then I began smudging. The result was instant, a hand! And a hand that looks dead no less!
But it's missing something. Yes. This is a good stand alone, but not cover.
I began adding text.
For all my other cover versions it was always black or silver. Looking at the cover scheme here it's easy to guess why that wouldn't work. This is a very cold picture. I kind of want my coat just by looking at it. (I'm so proud of it! It looks as though he's pausing to look at something while traveling down a snow covered road) I wanted it to look a bit warmer so that people would feel comfortable picking it up.
If you look extremely closely you'll see bits of gold flecked in his robes. Most of my characters have a signature color. It's like in Kung Fu Panda 2 how Po and Shen (is that his name?) have signature color. Po is bright gold, Shen is a brilliant red. Watch the movie again and look for it. They did a very good job of showing who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. Even without sound you can tell.
Red is a very aggressive color, makes you want to go out and hit something.
Gold is pure, it makes you feel calm and inspired.
The Secret Keeper's color is a dirty gold. I decided that years ago.
I used gold as my text color. Voila. It worked brilliantly. I put in text using the same color of gold as the key (which by the way went in marvelously. It looks like a freaking key!) and the result was amazing. It looks like something I'd be interested in reading.
Here it is.
The finished picture.

Yes. Every single little detail you see was drawn by me. I did it freehand by pencil, then by mouse on the computer. I don't have one of those fancy draw tablets (though, I wish!) and I used a heck of a lot of references for this. I wish I could thank every single person for sharing their pictures.
Overall learned experience from this? Just because you fail once doesn't mean you need to quit.
"...No failure ever need by final." --President Monson.
I firmly believe that.
No failure is final. It's final when you quit.
A quitter NEVER prospers.