I’ve started playing with the fonts for the title now.  This is close to how I’m envisioning it.  I’m still seeing something a little more with the title but this is the rough spacing and shape I’m seeing.  Maybe working in some of my texture into the title, making it more of a branding than just a simple font.

The large format scanner we use at work is a dream!  These scans turned out better than I had ever hoped they would!  I did have to scan in 4 sections and piece it together.  Guess it is a good thing I decided against going huge scale.  In any case, here is the final painted image for the cover with minimal Photoshop trickery.  I did punch up the contrast a touch and the saturation just a smidge.

I’ve taken a photo of the image and went to work doing a series of color studies in Photoshop.  I always like to have a road map for where I want my painting to end up.  It may seem like a lot of work but I know pretty much what I want and this is the way I get there.

I’ve decided to subtly merge the idea of Atlantis with the Innsmouth tale from the Lovecraftian mythos.  Being a fan of Lovecraft from my late childhood, it isn’t a stretch to see the Altanteans subtly altering into the changed folk of Innsmouth, living off the coast of Massachusetts.  I’ve made a few adjustments to the sketch and converted the work to charcoal on canvas, the first stage of my painting technique.  I always loved the luminous quality of charcoal and used to work strictly on illustration board.  I then discovered, creating paintings for another art show, that working the charcoal into a canvas added an additional layer of complexity to the texture, getting hints of the canvas throughout the image.  This stage usually takes the longest.  It has taken me about two weeks, on and off, to bring this charcoal together.

So the idea has gradually morphed into an idea for a book series… a whole host of adventures with Ruby saving the day.  Entirely self-confident and resourceful in the face of daunting odds, Ruby will take on Atlantis, then maybe we’ll move on to the moon, or Mars, or, better yet, Venus!  Then back to Earth to take on mummies and yeti and vampires.

Now that the idea is for a book, I’ve re-designed the painting as a book-cover, having to flip the placement of Ruby with the aquatic nightmares.  I also took a little time and roughed out an outline of the book.  While the idea started with a visual, I still consider myself a slave to the written word.  Writing is and always should be king.  The Title for the book is now Ruby June and the Voice of the Sea, which refers to the shell horn she is holding, a horn that can control the creatures of the ocean.

Welcome to the chronicle of my latest project, a book series for and about my daughter Ruby June.  The idea came about as a result of an art show I am taking part in on April 29, 2011.  The crew where I work are all artists and we decided it was time for a staff art show.  My original idea was to do a large scale painting of a character I created as a mascot for one of the classes I used to teach.  His name is Fifties Dad, a visual representation of that ideal dad from the fifties.  Cool and calm under pressure but a total square.  I loved the idea of this guy saving the day in a host of outrageous situations, the first being an overwhelmingly massive attack from Atlantis.

I totally saw him with the huge, transparent, fish-bowl helmet, still calmly smoking his pipe while fending off Atlantis with a firmly preventative outstretched hand.

So I did a concept sketch and sat on it for a little while.  Then the idea of changing the character to my daughter struck me.  I thought, how cool would that be to have a huge painting of her (still very stylized) on her bedroom wall, preventing Atlantis from it’s impending attack on the surface world.  So I did some more sketches.