Book IV of The Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Key Finished Front Cover and Details

 Whew, long title! Just wanted to share the updated Book IV cover with the new art, along with a few detailed shots. The book page has also been updated.

Watch as this glorious dagger goes outside the post border!

Yay for decent hands! From the tears and scars to the pose of the character to her feathery dress to the background...I love putting the little details into a painting like this, and especially a book cover. A book cover should tell a story just as much as the book itself, and I'm so excited to eventually see this in print!

Speaking of print...I plan on having Book IV published by the end of this year! Look for future updates on the blog, and happy reading!

My Favorite Medium

 Though I love to do digital art, my favorite medium will always be graphite pencil, followed closely by colored pencil. Between motherhood and everything else, I will from time to time complete a hand-drawn illustration. This past week my family camped in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, and being unplugged from much of our technology helped me focus on my hand-drawn art much more.

The first piece I completed before the campout. I had drawn out this character, but it took me several months to get to actually shading her. I was on a creative burn out and was itching to lubricate my drawing muscles, so I found the picture, sat down, and shaded it. It's a little rough in places, but I'm pleased with it nonetheless.

This character is Kierra of Karin, a character that appears in The Legend of Draconite series. She's taking a break from being awesomely sneaky to sniff a flower. I had a lot of fun doing her helmet in particular; it's supposed to resemble a dragon head, and its horns are unusually long for a Draconite helm.

This second piece I did completely at camp. I had this idea of Sabra in a pensive pose, using her armor to rest her hands on while she took a deep breath. I didn't really have an idea for a background at first, but I thought of forest, and then it kind of turned into a seaside trail. This is her in her short-haired days, between Books II and III of The Legacy Incarnate.

Fun fact about elf hair in the Chronicles of Libera: it grows pretty slow! It is also a huge health indicator for an elf. To have it suddenly removed (as was Sabra's in this case) can be traumatizing. You may notice on the cover art of LI Sabra's hair getting slowly longer, even with the large time spans between books. Now you know why.

As always, the scanner never does graphite pictures justice. I tried to edit the pictures to the original shade in GIMP, and got as close as I could. Thanks for looking!

Book IV Cover Art...Again

 I've been holding back...and redoing stuff. I took a look at the cover art for Book IV of Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Key that I created a few years ago, and decided I wasn't satisfied with it, and there's a few reasons for that. I compared it to the previous 3 cover pieces, and it looked too clean. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I wanted to go with a slightly grittier look.

Another reason is I wasn't satisfied with Sabra's look. I loved the idea of doing the scene of her dripping with fire, and perhaps redoing the same scene would have been great, but I decided on a different scene from the book, one that's just as heartbreaking. (You'll have to read it to find out why!) Let's just say it involves a dream with a certain someone that has appeared in every book of the series so far.

New art.

Old art.

Oldest art.

As you can see, this cover has evolved quite a bit!

Like the other pieces, I went with a single color palette (black, or black and white), focusing on sharp shadows and lighting. I first drew this as a pencil piece, and then scanned it onto the computer and went over it in black lines. Before I made it grayscale, I filled in the base colors for Sabra: brown for her hair, skin color, and red for her dress. I did this to make sure the color scale transferred correctly to the grayscale. I did the same for the background, which involved reds and whites. Sabra's dress is supposed to be feathery in nature, and if you've read the books, you'll know why she would appear rather feathery to a certain someone. I'm not trying to get anyone reading this blog to read my books, am I?

I am currently on the third revision of Book IV, and it should be in print by the end of the year. If you haven't read the other ones, check them out before reading Incarnate Key!