The Last Lie

A new book is out in hardback on August 1st - the follow up to Patricia Forde’s ‘The List’ (published also as ‘The Wordsmith’) which I illustrated a couple of years ago.

This cover was created for Sourcebooks USA, and was made with a combination of large, hand-drawn inky pieces and elements made in Procreate.

 I loved putting it together this way - for me, tools are tools, and I get as much out of slopping inks onto a big sheet of paper as I do creating worlds within Procreate, which I still feel like a novice with, but I’m getting there!

What Goes Up

Out today is this book by Christine Heppermann, for which I made this cover using just ink on paper for Greenwillow Books, USA.

This is a YA story told in prose, an unusual format which lends the book a slightly magical, wistful atmosphere, despite dealing with some heavy topics - secrets, regret, mistakes, break-ups. And the narrator is a teenage spore print collector - which, yes, had me bungee-jumping into an online search too.

Unusually, although I suggested seven or eight different roughs, this cover went to press almost completely unaltered from the rough that was chosen. Always a lovely thing to happen! Made with ink and pencil.

The Lady Who Paints Legs

Amy Shane is a book reviewer and special events editor for the Independent Voice Newspaper in Missouri, USA, and first came to my attention on Instagram when she recreated one of my book covers...on her own body!

I'm used to seeing my artwork pop up on people's skin via the tattooist's gun - always an unexpected thrill which fills me with admiration and curiosity for the brave human who's done it - but this was different. This was a full-on, body-paint recreation of the cover in all its detail, on a difficult and unusual surface.

Amy's recreated more of my covers since, and as someone will happily talk in public or in front of an audience but doesn't exactly embrace selfie culture let alone photographing anything from the neck down, I wanted to ask her about what she does and why. This blog's normally about what I'm doing, so I thought I would probe someone else about their strange and fascinating hobby!

We, of course have the common ground of the printed book, so I think Amy and I will be in touch for a long time to come.

 She can be found on Instagram as amy_fortheloveofbooks

Please explain what your ‘real-life’ job is, and how you came to be the amazing Amy Who Paints On Her Legs?

My “real-life” job is also book related and why I ended up with an Instagram account in the first place. I am a Professional Book Reviewer, and have a newspaper column called 'For the Love of Books'. I'm nearing on eight years now, so I guess you could say I am always surrounded by books. I started on Instagram because the publishers wanted to see an online presence; honestly, I went in kicking and screaming, afraid I would never figure how it all works. 

After about eight months and totally lost on how to find my own presence, I started thinking about what books really meant to me - when you read an amazing book it’s as if you become part of it, you fall into the story, and well that’s where the idea began. I then thought about making myself part of the story and started researching paints. To be honest, I have never painted before or have taken an art class. I just doodle when I am bored. So, I bought some body paints and started playing, and the rest is history. 

 

My ‘Forest Queen’ was one of the first ‘leg’ paintings that you posted on Instagram. The legs seem an odd choice at first but they’re the natural resting place for a book when reading. Have you painted anywhere else? With or without success?

I originally started on my arm and hand, then my chest. I enjoyed painting on my chest (and matching lipstick to the paint colors) however, I have to paint completely backwards, which at times can be a bit complicated, especially when dealing with words. It took me awhile to realize I could just paint on my legs. My legs also give me space to get in more detail and aren’t a flat surface, which is easier for me to paint on. I still can’t paint on canvas or flat paper, it doesn’t make sense to me either, lol.

Some technicals:

What do you paint with? Do you use both hands?  

I only use Mehron Paradise AQ body paints. After a lot of research, I really value the company and the ingredients they use in their paints. They include:  aloe, cocoa butter, avocado oil, lemon grass, cucumber extract, and vitamin E so they smell and feel wonderful.  

They have also been around for over 90 years, so they have to be doing something right! I also use NYX brand spray primer (Just to get a smooth surface and prep the skin) and matte sealer just as an added protection when I am done.  I just paint with one hand. When it’s nice outside I love painting on my back porch, overlooking the cornfields (where I take pictures for  my stories). My neighbors must truly think I am nuts!

How long do they take you - from x hours to…? 

An average paint takes anywhere from 2 ½ hours to 4 hours, depending on how much detail there is, or how particular I get with myself. And yes, if any of you are wondering: I have gotten so frustrated that I have scraped the whole paint and washed it of before I changed my mind.

How do you wash it off? 

Just plain water. The whole paint washes off in about 10 seconds. Which is why I have to be super careful, and why I add the sealing spray. And yes, I have spilt water on my legs and lost the whole paint. 

What’s the criteria for choosing a book cover to reproduce? 

The cover art is really the first thing I look at, and if it is it something I can attempt to replicate. I can’t do photos, or people. Parts of faces yes, whole people – no way lol. I will also choose a book if I read the book and loved it, or by the author or publisher reaching out. Sometimes I go in themes. Really there is no rhyme or reason to my brain - lol!

Is there one you haven’t done yet that you really want to do? 

There are so many that I want to do, my list grows everyday. One older title I would love to do is 'Splintered' by AG Howard. I loved the series and the cover art. 

Do you have aspirations to create covers yourself? You’re clearly creative, with dexterous skills! 

I honestly never thought about it.  

And how many books do you have lined up to paint at the moment?  

At the present moment I have a list of 13 that are lined up with upcoming release dates,  and 3 already painted ready to be posted.

~ Thanks to Amy for answering my mildly predictable but nosy questions! ~

 

 

Harley In The Sky

This golden, shining cover is wrapped around Akemi Dawn Bowman's latest work of fiction, following on from the bestselling 'Starfish' and 'Summer Bird Blue', both multi-accolade-winning novels in the Young Adult Fiction world.

I already knew about Akemi's books as their covers are the sort that seem to have existed forever in my line of sight; popping up on 'best book' and 'great read' lists and on the myriad publishing news emails I sign up to. So when I realised THAT'S whose book I was about to illustrate, I knew it had to be...

...well, different from those. This was a different story, not linked; new characters and settings. 

And by a different illustrator!

I started where I usually start, by reading the manuscript. Always feeling like a giant skive - reading books during the work day? Someone's going to grass me up any minute - this is the single most important thing I can do before starting a cover. 

And I was gripped.

~ † ~

It's a risky strategy, reading the book rather than opting for a neat summary with key points provided by the editor. You might not actually like the book, in which case you can approach the book more objectively and pick out the key elements that could inform your cover in a rather workmanlike way. You might like the story but not the main characters (let's be honest, just like in real life, you can't like EVERYONE you meet), in which scenario your job is to focus on the environment, the landscape it's set in, and pivotal objects or moments. (If the art director's asked you to focus ON the character, well. Then you just suck it up and crack on.)

The third risk is one I encountered umpteeen years ago, close to the start of my YA illustration career. You don't just like the book. You LOVE the book. LOVE it. So much that you cart the manuscript around with you to the MOT station, to bed, to the waiting room, the bathroom; you laugh (or cry or tremble) out loud in public places and feel The Sad when it's over, even though it's not a proper book yet because you haven't even drawed the front of it so it can't be a book yet.

You might think these books are the easiest to draw for, because you gel with them. And maybe it is for some - but it isn't the case with me.

When I'm this situation I want to get the cover so right it can be paralysing. I want the cover to tell the entire story in one image (which a cover cannot, and should not, ever do). I want the character to look precisely the way I visualise them. I want it to be perfect - and oftentimes, objectivity flies off out the window along with sound judgement and the necessary sense of detachment that's needed to make a cover.

After all, a cover needs to not only hint at the story and mood, and be nice and legible, it needs to be attractive and distinctive on shelves. It needs to leave enough ambiguity for the next reader - after you, you who got to read it first - to pull it down from Waterstones' shelf and go, 'OOH'. Essentially, it needs to SELL, and that little spot just there where a cover artist's personal desires Venn-Diagram their way into the Marketing Team's Monday meeting can be a hotbed of angst, difference of opinion and disappointment.

Which is why objectivity and detachment can be king when tackling a cover.

'Harley In The Sky' fell into this last category. To be really honest, a great many of the manuscripts I read DO fall into this category. I'm a reader, and I love books and escaping, and regularly fail to believe my good fortune that I'm asked to draw covers for such immersive, narratively energetic books. There's only ever been one manuscript I didn't like, and it was because it was written in a certain why that I found hard to read. As it happens, this had a surprising effect: I had to try much harder with the cover, and the end result was one of my all time faves (and I shall never tell which one it was!)

Tackling Harley therefore yielded, as often happens in this situation, a great many initial ideas. Because how on earth was one going to do the job on its own?

I started by visualising a very pretty, very ornate cover, inspired by Japanese paintings, Klimt and botanical art. Set against a pitch-black background, I wanted Harley Milano and her hoop swinging into the middle of it all; strings of jewels and ivy, trails of exotic flowers and ropes as her backdrop. The circus would be communicated through some hand-drawn lettering drawn straight from turn of the century circus posters (suggested by the cheesy placeholder font here).

In an alternative version, she's the focus of attention, her face staring purposefully out from a writhing assembly of rococo flourishes, cherry blossoms, ribbons and fellow aerial performers, her piled-high hair crowned with a mini-Big Top:

And in the third initial suggestion, she's divided by the cover; rebellious Harley who runs away to join the rival circus on the front, the Maison de Mystére, and the 'good' Harley who should stay with her family's own circus, the Teatro della Notte (even though her parents are against it):

The second batch of ideas suggested the world of Harley's imagination as a full side profile, looking skyward into her trapeze-based aspirations - of these, only the circus at the bottom was to stay, but I LOVED everything about these two. I consider these all-ink options 'The Ones That Truly Got Away':

Harley's 'stars' being added

After this, another round of ink-based approaches using dramatic shapes and silhouettes. If Harley was to be featured, she could be seen the way she might be seen from far away on the ground in the Big Top - a sharp silhouette, rolling down her aerial silks.

The background this time IS the Big Top, swirling upward into blackness, acrobatic lettering in the foreground.

(Crikey I loved that Y and REALLY wanted it to stay!)

And here's where the idea of show lighting came in - these sulphurous spots surrounding the performance:

The final cover we settled on looked like this; a combination of the more organic looking lettering, Harley as silhouette, and that big top with the lighting, the circus illustration taking centre stage not the back:

And this is how it was made!

I wanted lots of texture in this cover, so the Big Top was created with a sheet of A3 cartridge paper inked over with mono printing ink and a roller. This gave the points their aged, gnarly texture.

Cut from the centre into radial points with a scalpel, but keeping the piece of paper attached in the centre, I arranged the sheet on a scanner.

A deepening orange background was painted with layers of ink, to sit behind the 'Big Top' and create that sense of peering into the darkness. And the circus was drawn entirely with fineliners!

And the finished cover was appropriately treated to a gold under print, making it absolutely sparkle at the edges. It's a satisfyingly fat hardback, so is lovely to hold in the hands. Check the gold below in the video - and delightful surprise of the gold foil on the back spine beneath!

I insisted Akemi sign her copy for me! The 13-year-old in me is fainting.

Thank you to Heather Palisi for the careful and enthusiastic art direction, and tor asking me to do it.

"Harley In The Sky' is published by Simon & Schuster on 10th March, 2020, 

and you can buy a copy here in the US, or here in the UK.