How I Design A Book Cover Part 2: Choosing the right medium and surface

One of the best things about being an older and more experienced illustrator is that I have a lot of tools in my tool kit. I can make better decisions about what medium to use on which surface.

Star Map Inspiration

I’ve chosen the create a star map as part of my book cover illustration. The inspiration is a Tibetan Star map I found online. Because the map is highly technical I felt that paint wouldn’t be the right medium for it. I’ve used colored pencils on dark paper many times with great success. So I decided to do some color tests to see if that would be the right medium and surface for this piece.

Some of my colored pencil pieces on medium and dark Canson papers.

As it turned out the Prismacolors weren’t giving me the effect that I wanted. The colors were too dull, and the color harmony was off. I experimented with Neocolor II Aquarelles, next. They worked better, giving me the pop of color I needed with the added benefit that you can sharpen them for technical work.

As Canson paper won’t hold up for wet media, I dug out a sheet of black Stonehenge paper. This heavier paper can handle light and medium washes just fine and will be a better match for the Neocolors. Another advantage to using these watercolor crayons is that I’m able to give the girl’s face a more painterly look.

Color Design Tests for the Book Cover

Art is no mystery. It’s a series of carefully considered decisions.

Shifting the Color Scheme

Here is a sketchbook exercise I did yesterday. It was based on a gamut mapping exercise from James’ Gurney’s book, “Color and Light: Guide for the Realistic Painter.” He does an excellent job describing this exercise and also how to create a gamut mask in his blog.

My goal was to shift the color palette of my photo reference in a triadic color scheme from cool to warm colors. I did two small drawings to try this out. The first drawing used the natural (cool) colors of the photo. In the second drawing, I shifted the colors across the color wheel to warm colors in a similar triadic relationship.

I started with this photograph I took on Orcas Island, WA.

Next, I did a small drawing using a yellow-orange, a red-violet, and a blue Prismacolor pencil. I also used a 50% cool gray, and a black pencil. I mixed my secondaries from the primary colors and got a purple, a green, and a red-orange, as well as a subjective (visually correct) neutral - a reddish gray that “read” as true gray next to the other colors.

Color test #1 - natural colors (cool).
Prismacolor drawing in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook.

In my second drawing I used three colors – yellow-orange, red, and blue-violet, as well as two grays – 50% and 70%, and black. My mixed secondaries were red-orange, violet and a very weak gray-green. The green was so weak that it barely reads as green at all, only in comparison to the rest of the colors in the drawing. The subjective neutral (gray) in this drawing is a pink-gray, which reads as true “gray” in comparison to the other colors.

Color test #2 - shifted colors (warm).
Prismacolor drawing in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook.

I was pleased with my test, and my shifted color palette. (I actually liked the shifted color drawing better than the original.) If I were going to do a painting next, I’d probably do a few more color tests, to find the perfect color scheme to get just the right feeling for my painting.

Been in Maryland for the past few days

I just returned from a very busy trip to the East Coast assisting my aging father with a house move. The trip was a lot of work but in between sorting, packing, and other errands, I was able to get in a little bit of sketching. Here are some of the sketches I did while on the trip, all done in graphite and black Prismacolor pencil in a gridded ledger.

This is "Chaz." He belongs to my Dad's best friend, Myron.

This East Indian sculpture is of Brahma riding his peacock.

These sketches were done in the waiting room of the
VA hospital in Baltimore. The man on the right was a
lovely priest by the name of "Angel."

P.S. I ran into watercolorist Susie Short at Daniel Smith's in Bellevue a few short (no pun intended) hours before leaving for Maryland. Susie was kind enough to show me some watercolor tricks for smoothing out my washes in the few minutes I spent with her. Now that I'm back I'm looking forward to trying out her suggestions in my next watercolor piece. Thanks Susie! :-)

Sketching this Weekend

Not too much to say about these drawings except that I’m becoming more disciplined about using guidelines and it’s rather fun substituting colors for black pencil.