While I was
"toiling away" for the Halloween party, I was marinating on a project I’d signed up
for months ago – an art piece illustrating a scene from a fellow YA writer’s
debut novel, SACRED.
She had
sent me an e-ARC months earlier, and I had chosen the passage I wanted to illustrate,
but after a few frustrating tries at sketching the scene, I’d put it to my subconscious to
come up with the solution. And so it did, although I’m not sure my technical
skills were up to the task at hand. It
was one of my few attempts at a nighttime scene, and I was really interested in
developing the effects of the different light sources. This of course gave me a
choice about preordaining the brightest points of light, or figuring it out
later using the screen or dodge tools in Photoshop. Those lightening tools can
sometimes have a heavy-handed effect, and I’m not sure the distortion of the
gazebo really worked – it might just look crooked. I am not sure if the two
figures are convincing as teens, but it’s hard because they are dressed up for
prom, and some kids do look like adults when they’re gussied up like that. Nevertheless,
I received a decent response to it and it was, as always, a good experience for
me. I got to be interviewed on her blog and it was fun to be a guest somewhere else (it gets pretty lonely around this here blog, just me and the tumbleweeds ;).
