Now that you've seen the final cover for my novel The White Door, I thought I'd share the stages that went into creating it...with images.
So, the first step of the process was to come up with an idea for the cover, something I could convey to prospective artists. As a writer, I
use words to depict what I want, while most artists think more visually. Because of this, I
decided to do a quick cover sketch, which ended up scribbled with
writing to convey my poorly rendered visuals anyway. It
was then time to find an artist, and I turned to longtime comics artist
Tom Derenick (DC Comics' Action Comics, INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US), who
is extremely versatile and always delivers a quality product.
Here is that first sketch I made for Tom. Try not to snigger too much...and don't strain too greatly in an attempt to read my atrocious handwriting.
Yes, that image, along with a synopsis of my ideas was what I gave to Tom. Needless to say, when he delivered the initial thumbnails for the concept sketches, I was happy not to have to refer back to it. Below are images of the three thumbnail sketches Tom did for me, the first being a direct translation of my idea and the other two his own interpretations.
The only idea I had any issue with was B, and that was for entirely thematic reasons.
A was, of course, the closest to my original idea, so I felt slightly partial to it, despite C being the real attention grabber.
This was one of Tom's original concepts, and the pick of anyone whose opinion I trusted. The only aspect I didn't like was the extreme angle, thinking it would appear narrow on the front of a book.
With that in mind, and my inability to entirely let go of my original idea, I asked Tom to do two new thumbnails with some small revisions and he obliged.
Despite a touch of confusion concerning one of my notes about the placement of the arm reaching around the door, when I saw the second revised sketch, I knew it was the winner. It captured the character's struggle and was the most interesting visually. I informed Tom of my decision, and he went to work.
Some time later, he delivered the finished pieces to me, one in pen & ink and one fully shaded.
I was thrilled. The artwork was exquisite and conveyed all I could wish of my book cover. Tom's work made it so easy to be pleased, but I had work of my own ahead of me if I was going to be able to finish the book cover in such a way as to honor his original art.
I wanted to lessen the shadowing on the girl's face because I thought it made her appear slightly older than the character of Alice. To this end, I simply overlaid the image from the pen & ink piece with that of the shaded one, letting a smaller amount of the shading show through from beneath. When that was finished, I set to coloring the image, something I'd never attempted before. In the end, I wound up with something I was pretty happy with. In all honesty, Tom's shading work made the coloring process much simpler than it otherwise would have been. The final task was a simple matter of laying the image into my final cover layout, which had been finished prior to receiving the art.
And because I was feeling playful, I also altered the colors as an experiment. I made all the color paler with a higher degree of delineation. The only exception was the nightgown, which I made a darker, striking blue. I call this my "EC Comics" cover. I would have also changed the character's skin and hair if I was doing it as more than a lark.
Off to the printers!
That was my journey from original concept to finished artwork for my novel The White Door. I hope you enjoyed the insight into this process, and remember the release date for the novel is next Tuesday, October 15th.
Thanks for your time,
-gj
