Cover Art Fun

Today I really pushed myself to get Book III of The Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Memory submitted for review on Createspace, and in doing so completed the back cover art and the one-piece cover PDF.

This back cover art was really fun to do. I originally sketched out the concept in my sketchbook, and then sketched it again in Krita.  I wanted to do the whole piece in Krita, but Krita seems to be limited on how to apply gradients, so I moved the painting over to GIMP and it worked out really well. I didn't know painting mountains could be so fun and satisfying. I purposely left a lot of space in the upper part of the painting for the book summary, and of course the palette is green to match the cover.


I also stumbled across one of my concepts for Book III's front cover art that I never shared. I think one of the reasons I scrapped it was because the lighting of the picture wouldn't have worked out well with the book titles, and I didn't think Sabra featured prominently enough in this piece. That, and she's supposed to be wearing her armor Adel in this scene but I drew her in a tunic instead. Not sure what was going on there. This might be a fun piece to go back to and re-do, though. We'll see.

Once the book review is done I'll order a proof copy to make sure it's suitable for sale. I am so excited to get this book released . . . and relieved in a way as well. I'll get to move on to other projects! As I've mentioned before, I'll be jumping into In Chaos Forged again, and I'm excited to apply the new writing skills I've acquired during Incarnate Memory's revision to the raw drafting process.

Everyone have a good evening.

ALMOST THERE

I've finished the 2nd edit of Incarnate Memory and am doing a last digital read-through before formatting the manuscript for publication.  I plan on buying a proof copy before making it publicly available on Createspace. The goal is to publish this book by the end of March.

I made a check-list of what I need to do to get the manuscript put together, and I've completed a couple of things. One of them is the official map (aside from the Libera world map). I'm grateful for how this map turned out, and I'm glad it's not complex as some of my other maps.

I still need to do the back cover art, and I think I have a good concept, I just need to draw it on the computer. It involves mountains. I love mountains.

Pregnancy has been more forgiving for me lately. My morning/all-day sickness has tapered off quite a bit, and I've been exercising more and eating healthier. The warmer weather has been a joy, and we've spent a lot of time in the sun this past week. Hopefully with more energy I'll have more energy to write again, especially in Hammer of Fire, and more energy to draw. It's been exasperating not doing my hobbies as often as I'd like, especially the more physical ones (like archery 😭), but I'll get back into them.