Dear Artist: Favorite Styles

Dear Artist

Do you have a favourite style? I know you produce wonderful covers for BWL and I am sure that they are always the absolute best you can do based on the writer's requirements, but you must have favourites. What do you consider to be a five star design for a cover with regards to layout, colour, content, background etc?

UK Lady

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Dear UK Lady,

Thank you for taking the time to ask such a fun question.  Really, it all depends on the genre of the book. 

When it comes to anything from sweets to erotic romances, I like covers that actually clue in to heat level.  I don't like to see, or create, a cover that is sweet at best for a smoking hot story.  Flipside, when a cover is hot enough to melt my monitor, but the story is lukewarm at best.  

For softer historicals, I am a fan of the older Julie Garwood time period style covers - with a castle, a flower, etc.  I LIKE those covers for soft historical romances.  That said, for the hotter works, I HATE that style of cover.  For hotter historicals, I like the ones with a couple on them.

Paranormal and Suspense romances should most definitely be evocative of the genre.  If there is a wolf shifter who is the main love interest, then either the title or the cover should express that in some way.  Same for if the book is set in the year 3125 on a far-away planet.

I am not much into straight horror and suspense and all, because I never feel like I am pulling it off well.  I am a 'fluffy bunny' cover artist - I like creating light, fun, sexy, covers.  So I don't have much insight to offer there.

Young Adult should be FUN and to some degree flirty, even if there isn't a strong romance.  The cover should flirt with the reader ... so a person, or an object, is fine either way on those.

Fiction, just general fiction - either historical or modern chick lit, etc should also be fun or somber, sexy or spooky depending upon the sub-genre.  Again, either people or objects look good to me.

Non-fiction can also go either way.

As for what makes a 5-star cover (to me), well ...

* The font has to match the images, and the images needs to convey/fit the genre

* The images need to actually look good together!  I can't express that enough.  Poor quality photo morphs where images of different characters are just slapped together without blending them into each other in a cohesive fashion just don't work for me.  And let's be real, there are a ton of them out there like that.

* The cover should absolutly, without a doubt, clue the reader in to the truth of the story.  There should be nothing misleading about it (unless the point is misdirection).

* The color choice needs to fit - in all details.

Like always, this post is just my opinion, so mileage can and will vary from artist to artist (and reader to reader).

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If you have a question that you would like Dear Artist to answer, you can leave it in the comment section and it will be addressed (reasonably) soon.

Dear Artist - Getting Started and Training for being a cover artist

Dear Artist,

How did you become interested in doing cover art? How did you get started?

Sincerely,

Curious To Know

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Dear Curious,

I originally started out doing cover art with my own books. I actually designed the cover for my first e-book, a short erotic story collection. I wanted to work with the publisher, but I shuddered at some of the covers. Knowing from being on lists that a lot of the time authors have little to know say in their covers, and with that particular publisher – no say, so when I was contacted with an acceptance of my work I told the publisher flat out that I wanted to design my own covers. I would provide the images and everything. Thankfully, they agreed.

After that, I went on to write longer stories, and moved to other publishers that already had cover art teams, and I basically had to take what was given to me. After a while, I felt confident enough in my sales to approach the primary publisher and say hey, I wouldn’t mind doing cover art for you – including doing my own covers. Luckily, I was able to provide a ‘sample’ cover, which was approved. From there, I took over doing my own covers for almost all of my releases. (Some however, are still with publishers that are not looking for new cover artists, have a set feel that they want to their covers, or so on.)

I also started working on covers for other authors at my primary publishing house, and from there, one of the cover artists became a good friend and asked me to start working on covers for another publisher (one that I am not with). I jumped at the chance.

I came to Books We Love because Jamie asked me if I would be interested in joining the team as a cover artist, since she knew I had the skills she was looking for in a cover artist.

I think what motivated me more than wanting to control everything (because that is apart of the appeal), is that my career field is very serious and intellectual. So cover art, and writing, gives me a creative outlet. I am a very tense person by nature, and I relax by working on graphics and either writing, or reading.

Hope that wasn't too long-winded of an answer for you!

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Dear Artist,

What training do you need to become a cover artist?

Curious To Know

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Dear Curious

Hello again!

There actually isn't any set required training. Rather it is just knowledge of graphics programs. Some publishers like artists to know how to work a program called Poser. What poser does is create 3D computer graphic images – people, places and things. When you see an image that looks like the one below, that is a poser image.

(This image is from a site called Pixel Delights that I found back in 2002 or 2003.
Not sure if the artist is still around any more or not.)

The Poser program has gained in popularity, and in graphic ability, over time. I lost my mind once and got the program and tried to use it, but I just couldn't get things to work out the way I wanted them to, so I stopped trying. But many artists do still use it, because they can create pretty much any images they can dream of.

Now, other publishers focus more on stock images, since they want their covers to have that realistic look. So for them, knowledge of a program like Adobe Photoshop or Jasc software’s Paint Shop Pro is a plus.

For myself, I use Photoshop, although I have dabbled a little bit in Paint Shop Pro from time to time. I know a cover artist who uses Paint Shop Pro almost exclusively and finds Photoshop to be difficult. It just depends on comfort level.

As for training – I haven’t had any. I just started playing around with graphics, working on things for my website and for my short story collections, and gradually got more and more confident with the program. I read a lot of tutorials, asked a lot of questions of friends in the field, and did a lot of trial and error to figure out what works for me. And I am still learning. Jude has often gotten emails from me saying flat out that what she is asking for is outside of my skill-set. So we modify things, or I just sit down with a good chunk of time and start playing with things until I learn that skill.

So really, anyone who is patient could theoretically teach themselves how to do cover art. It just depends on how motivated you are.

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If you have a question that you would like Dear Artist to answer, you can leave it in the comment section and it will be addressed soon.