I thought it might be fun to take photos of a work in progress. I'm determined to get
Eliza's Copper Penny up on Amazon within the week so I started working on the cover painting yesterday. I started by asking my husband to pose so I could have a picture of the body. I kinda messed up the proportions on Julia's cover so I knew I needed to start with a much better photo.
Julia's Golden Eagle was made up from a whole bunch of images. Oh well, it still works but I knew I could do better. Anyway, here's the start in progression.
After sketching it first in chalk, I start by doing the background. I eventually ended up with the hat too tall so I had to add more sky. Bummer but it's okay. Anyway, I worked on the face next. I sorta did this from my own imagination and my husbands photo and ended up with a hero that looked a little like my son and a little like my very first boyfriend.
I didn't want the shirt to be all black so I added some reds in it. The shirt took the longest to paint due to the folds. And the black I used was old so a bit sticky. It spread nicely as long as I had white to go with it.
I love the immediacy of acrylic but I think I could make it look more photo realistic if I used oils. But I'm still happy with the result. For the various coins, I've been using photoshop. I didn't want to use the real thing as I though just a vague idea of the coin would be better. I'm hoping each book will also have a sense of the various seasons. This one is for spring,
Julia's Golden Eagle is for Fall and
Sarah's Brass Token is for Summer. When I get around to doing
Kaitlin's Silver Lining, I'll try to capture winter. As that book isn't as tightly connected as these first three, I'm not in as big of a hurry to get it out. With my schedule, I'm hoping for March when I have spring break to work on it.
I'm working hard to revamp and tighten the original. I don't make big changes; I just want to take out some of the redundancy. If all goes as plans, my goal is to have it up tomorrow, but....
It took a comment on one of my Amazon reviews to spur me to action but I'd always intended to create new covers for self published books. It's just at the time of publication, I could find nothing that suited me, so I painted my own. I'm going to keep the cover of Sarah's Brass Token as is as that one holds special meaning. However, the rest all have new looks.
I kinda wanted to keep the old cover of Texas Forged but I recognized I had problems with some of the perspective so I went in search of a stock photo I thought might work. I found several I really wanted from Inmagine so I sent them a simple query. I wanted to know licensing information in terms of e-book covers. All they had listed were terms for print covers. Everything else was in legalize I didn't fully understand. Their answer was to ask me which photos interested me? Okay, I'll bite so I sent them a list. Their new response was to set me up with an account manager. Hmmm, I just wanted a simple question answered. Needless to say, I did not register with them and their handling of my question spurred me into looking at a different avenue. At this point I could go with www.romancenovelcovers.com/ or www.hotdamndesigns.com
I admire Jimmy Thomas and the work he does, but I felt like I had more variety with Hot Damn Designs. The hardest part for a historical western romance writer is finding images where the cowboy is dressed in period clothing. I think I may shoot them both a note with regards to this. I also had a difficult time finding a male cowboy model with red hair for Eliza's Copper Penny. I figure for this cover, there's enough shadow that hides the model's true hair color. 
One would think the stock photo sites would offer writers more choices when it comes to models for our covers. On the other hand, I'm so very glad they do have sites and images for our use.
