It took a while but I finally knocked out a set of thumbnails I’m happy with. The only problem now is figuring out which are absolutely necessary and how to divide up the accompanying text. I’d like to bring the page count down to 12 spreads but I know that isn’t going to work for me so I’ll content myself with as close to 12 as I can get and still live with myself. Here is the thumbnail sheet of all the spreads I have to choose from.
Okay, so maybe I lied a little. Just can’t stay away from the book regardless of how much work wants to monopolize my time. Guess I’ll have to stop sleeping. In any case, my wife and I went on a little weekend excursion for our anniversary. In the car, on the way to the beach, I was hammering furiously away on the keyboard of my laptop computer in an effort to make some progress on the book. My muse was with me apparently as the written element of the book came together without too much fuss. Now, that being said, there will be rewrites, as there always are. I’m sure things will need to be tweaked and tightened up, but I believe I’m in a good place to start the dummy book.
A dummy book, for those of you who might not be up on the verbiage, is a book of rough illustration and thumbnails based on the text. Its purpose is to see how all the elements work together before finished illustrations begin. Maybe, work permitting, I’ll be able to get some of this done in the next week or two.
Here is a sample from the book…
Charter Jack then said that the green men were after a special map he had hidden in a hollow oar, safe from prying eyes. It showed the location of a treasure called the Voice of the Sea. He told Ruby June that if the Deep Ones ever got their hands on the Voice of the Sea, that would mean “a heap o’ trouble” for everyone up on dry land.
“We need to make sure the treasure is safe, then!” said Ruby June.
Charter Jack agreed. The two of them, along with Charter Jack’s pet gar, Lumpy, packed some dive equipment and set sail for the treasure.
Over the sea sailed Ruby June and Charter Jack. It wasn’t long before they found Eye Socket Island and sailed into the lagoon shown in the map.
My teaching job has ramped up and I’m going to have to be revising my course content for the next few weeks. Direction has been passed down that the revisions must be done in two months (which is not a lot of time for this type of operation.) It promises to be fun work but, unfortunately, is going to inadvertently steal time away from the book. I promise to work on it every spare moment and post as I am able, but it may be a little less frequently at this point.
I have already written the first half of the story, working from a detailed outline of the whole book, and hope to finish that soon. I’m not sure if I’ll post the whole thing or maybe just some exerpts. The real fun should come when I start thumbnailing the pages and setting up the dummy book. It is a process whereby rough compositions are arranged with the text to make sure everything is going to work as a whole before doing a bunch of finished pieces.
We had our Full Sail Computer Animation staff art show last night and it went over really well. We have such a collection of talented artists with amazingly diverse styles. Naturally, I showed my finished cover painting which went over very well. I didn’t sell it. I over-priced it on purpose as I would have to answer to Ruby June had I sold it. She is expecting it to be on her wall soon. Had I sold it, the money would have gone into her college fund anyway, which has been, and will be, the deal with any of the book art. I did sell one of my other pieces, though. Glad it was one of my others. They were ready to leave the nest. This latest one, just having given birth to it, is still my baby. It will take some time and a little more work before I’m ready to say goodbye to it.
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.
After sealing the charcoal with fixative, I set to work using a heavy gel medium to layer in my brush texture. Once that dried, I applied my acrylic washes to give myself a base color, that unifying blue-green seen in everything throughout the piece. From there, I’ve started my dry-brush and the layering of my color on top of the gel medium. This stage is taking longer than usual for me as I’ve always kept a much more limited palette.
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.