Had the extreme honor to illustrate, ink, and color a book cover for the wonderfully talented author Tracy Blom. She was not only brilliant, but an amazing client to work with. As always, we started with quick, rough, thumbnails(below), then moved on to the other steps of the process(pencils, inks, & coloring), which you see below. Also loved that Tracy fought for me with the publisher, who wanted to use their own artist(typical), and after telling Tracy I wanted to do the typography of the title too, she jumped right in and told the publisher I would be doing the typography for the title. In the end, I can only hope this cover can match what Tracy had in her head to honor her mother, which she does with her writing in this book.

Pencils first, Tracy wanted to show herself dreaming, then have her bed be stuck in a tree, with all the leaves that were falling, showing the religious symbols for each denomination.

Inks...which in all fairness, from colors to inks, my work always changes drastically. I always enjoy using the inks as a guide, but in the end...using the color to enhance the inks. With these inks, I didn't want the inks to stylize the tree branches too much, so I used the digital coloring to replace the lines in the tree bark.

A montage, showing start with tight pencils, to inks, and then to digital coloring, all different stages of coloring.

Here is a great shot of the front cover, spine, and back cover. From Tracy Blom's site, as she starts to sell her book.

Tracy also commissioned me to do 2 black and white dream sequence drawings, and to do them quickly. Each was done in an hour and a half for Tracy. They are to be placed inside the book, although, I am not sure exactly where in the book they will be placed.

The finished product, so proud of Tracy, and so thankful I could help her, what a blessing she is to me.

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