Creating the Artwork for Book II

(Kismarc - Book Two of The Delpine Diaries)

In creating the cover design for each book, it was important that the books be easily recognizable as a series. Each book would gravitate towards one color scheme. The silhouette on the front cover would be that of the main character, and the background art would vary depending on key locations in the book. I settled on varying shades of green for book two, with Duntrac Castle, in all its cold, unfriendly glory, nestled in the mountains.

The silhouette would have to be that of Kismarc, of course. It took a little trial-and-error to find just the right pose to differentiate the silhouette from book one. The silhouettes for both books one and two are hand drawn and cut out of a piece of black cardstock. My spectacular cover design artist who does the photography and computer work to put the elements together can take that cut out silhouette and work her magic.

I have shared the steps in creating the background art for book two below. In all, the art piece took about ten hours to create. Sounds really long, but as any artist will tell you, time passes by quickly. I hope you enjoy this behind the scenes look into the creation of book two's cover.

My cold-pressed paper is stretched, dry, and ready for paint. First, I have to draw the detailed castle in Duntrac.

Close-up of the detail of the castle. Duntrac Castle was never meant to be a sparkling white castle with thin, tall towers and princess balconies.

The castle and plants are masked off and painting begins. First, the sky.

It's starting to come together. Working from back to front, I am able to get more detailed the closer to the viewer we get. I'm choosing to not add detail into the mountains as most of that part of the painting will be covered by the back blurb and it is important to not have something competing in the background.

Oops, casualty of listening to music while I paint and forgetting where I put my paintbrush down. In this case - on the still hot burner where my daughter made rice. How did I even manage that?

The tree is cut from a black piece of cardstock and glued onto the painting. I wanted that solid black - not something I could get with watercolor paints. Here, I have placed the tree on the painting to get the right placement.

And here we have the final painting. Highlights in the tree have been punched out using Prismacolor colored pencils. I have added a few details to the mountains to give them depth and have added hints of forests nestled among the mountains. Remember, the spine of the book will be down the center of the painting and the painting will only be viewed through Kismarc's silhouette on the front cover. I'm excited to see how the finished cover turns out.