Meghan’s Dragon

Tags

book cover, Cover Art, Dragon, E.M. Foner, Fantasy Art, illustration, Keith Draws, Magic, medieval, medieval girl, Meghan's Dragon, Mort Drucker, Todd Lockwood

I’ve been working with E. M. Foner for a few years now.

He writes science fiction and Fantasy with a light comedic twist. In this case the cover for “Meghan’s Dragon” was to feature a young girl and her Dragon (who happens to also be extremely hungry all the time). And I have to indicate the humor found in the story.

Comedic illustration is never the easiest thing to do but when it’s done well it can be hilarious.

Mort Drucker

For me there is nobody better at this than Mort Drucker (famous mainly for his work in Mad Magazine).

So when faced with this challenge I looked at what he does. And what he does is incredible, he sets up situations and then punctuates the joke using the characters facial expressions. I also looked at the Dragons  created by Todd Lockwood, which are all pretty scary and used that as a direction to avoid!  So with that in mind I set about working on ideas and after several roughs and some to and fro between the Author and I/we finally settled on this.

My indicator that it works is that my kids laugh at it and immediately make up stories about what’s going on.. Mind you, They are both under 9 years old and they laugh at my jokes too, so maybe that’s not the best guide.. Anyway..

It’s probably the first time ever that I’ve welcomed people laughing at my work! Maybe I’m dragoning this post out a bit so I’ll end it here.

Here’s where you can get this book: https://goo.gl/iuLvGb

And posters are available here: http://keithdraws.deviantart.com/gallery/

Twelve Foot Ninja – Outlier cover art

Tags

Comic, Comic Art, Cover design, DC, Fantasy Art, golden ratio, illustration, Keith Draws, Liam Sharp, Magic, Outlier, science Fiction, Silent Machine, Smoke Bomb, TFN, Twelve Foot Ninja, TwelveFootNinja, Wonder Woman, WonderWoman

Today “Twelve Foot Ninja” Release their New album “Outlier”

And I produced the cover art. Credit where credit is due though, TFN always have very strong ideas and without their direction this cover would not have worked half as well.

Outlier

You can get it here http://twelvefootninja.com/

And this is their new single which I also did the cover for:

I’ve been working with TFN since 2010 and in fact they were probably the main reason I was able to move my focus to illustration.
Initially they asked for artists to send a couple of comic panels as samples since they were intending to produce a comic and or graphic novel. I don’t normally do this, but for some reason I had a good feeling about this work and so I produced the following.

TFN sample P1

 

Two incredible things happened. First the amazing Liam Sharp (currently the lead artist on Wonder Woman for DC) and blew my mind with this comment on my deviant page and I have to say that is probably one of the most inspirational moments of my life. A moment when it felt like all the effort was worth it after what seemed like an eternity of losing battles. I’m happy to say that we also became friends (even if it is only on social media). If Liam had not left that message I suspect I would have gone down another path.

Me feeling awestruck. Liam Sharp

It only gets better… After I’d given up on hearing back about the samples, Stevic from TFN got in touch with me and told me I’d got the Job.

From that point on I worked with the band mainly through Stevic and Dave MacGregor (their manager who they work very closely with). things went well. I worked on a lot of concept with them, finally deciding on the look of the Twelve Foot Ninja and we produced the cover for their second CD

Now we moved on to the next major project. The album “Silent Machine”

Silent Machine Cover

It had 12 tracks and each would have it’s own 6 page comic making up a graphic novella to go with the album.

I produced all the art and wrote the adaptation from the original plot/novel. But I had to tie the stories in with the songs. They pretty much gave me a free hand so long as I stuck to the plot; and the songs are very inspiring which made it a lot easier. It was a hell of a job, on a tight deadline, but we did it!….And I’m very proud of this work. Here are some pages.

I’ve worked on lots of other projects with them over the years and they have done a lot to help me out through some difficult times. They are great people and I doubt I’d even be doing this if it wasn’t for them.
Oh and I’m also working on another new project with them right now so watch this space, it’s going to be awesome!

Twelve Foot Ninja

Outlier

 

All art produced for “Twelve Foot Ninja” is copyright “Twelve Foot Ninja” and is reproduced with permission.

Frank Frazetta Inspired

Tags

book cover, Cover Art, David A Brogdon, Fantasy Art, Forest, Frank Frazetta, Frazetta, illustration, Keith Draws, KeithDraws, Magic, Sword and Sorcery, The Dark Forest

Frank Frazetta has always been a hero of mine.

So when I get the chance to produce work in the genre of Sword and Sorcery Fantasy Art I jump at the opportunity.

Now I don’t want to just copy the style of Frank, no, I want to pay homage by creating a piece of work that is clearly inspired by him, while being essentially my work. And it also must sell the book it is painted for by reflecting the atmosphere, characters and excitement contained therein.
David A. Brogdon gave me that opportunity recently. I read the book and discussed the concepts with him and above is the result.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express my appreciation for the impact Frank has had on my life but this  kind of work goes someway toward that.

The Book is now up for sale here: www.amazon.com/dp/B01AQNRG7U
Posters are here:
http://keithdraws.deviantart.com/art/The-Dark-Forest-Landscape-613475874
and here:
http://keithdraws.deviantart.com/art/The-Dark-Forest-613477764

Magic Times

Tags

book cover, Fantasy Art, Harvey Click, illustration, Keith Draws, Magic, typography

This was something of a challenge

…and getting all the key element’s in place turned out to be a lot of fun.
Harvey Click always manages to overheat my brain cells in the best possible way!

I’m even thinking it might be cool to make a complete set of Tarot cards.. If only I had the time.

DEMONS are you scared yet?

Tags

book cover, Cover Art, Cover design, Demon, Demons, Fantasy Art, golden ratio, Harvey Click, illustration, Keith Draws, kindle, Magic

Well I Was!!

… after getting commissioned to produce the covers for the Demon Frenzy series by Harvey Click. He gave descriptions of Demons that were incredibly challenging, but lets face it. I love doing stuff like this so what really scared me was would I be able to stop!
Here are the first two. More to come soon

“Weapons of Power” By David J. Normoyle.

Tags

book cover, composition, Cover Art, Cover design, design, Fantasy Art, golden ratio, illustration, Keith Draws, Magic, Wizard

“Weapons of Power”, Book 1 “The Silver Portal” and Book 2 “The Black Bearer” By David J. Normoyle.

This is the first and second part of an exciting young adult fantasy trilogy for which I am producing the covers.

Obviously when designing a series we have to think about how we are going to keep a consistent feel through out all of the covers. They need to look like part of a series while at the same time looking exciting and new. Not as simple as it sounds.

David gave me the synopsis of the books and after some discussion we decided to go for a kind of classic film poster format, featuring the main characters and locations that appear in the particular books. It’s also a good idea to hint at the kind of adventure the reader will experience when reading the books.

The intention when designing covers like this is to create a kind of film trailer effect on the viewer, leaving them with a mind filled with excitement and questions they want to know the answers for.

With that in mind it’s essential to achieve a good balanced layout, as well as a pleasing tonal and color balance, in order to draw the viewers eye in.

David designed and provided me with the excellent“Weapons of Power” Logo for the series. It’s always important to ensure that the space allotted for title and Author is going to work well and be readable at all viewing sizes. Segregation of the cover using the rule of thirds or as I did for these covers, the more complex (but also more aesthetically pleasing) Golden ratios is always a good way to determine the best location for the Typography.

The color can really set the mood and it also works on many other subconscious levels. The use of complimentary colors balancing out across the layout, and the tonal contrast variations in these paintings all help to draw the eye in creating depth movement and flow across the image. (more about color here)

Finally when it comes to the actual image (especially for this kind of genre) it can be useful to implement quite a lot of detail in order to keep the viewer engaged and anther trick is to try to add glimpses in to landscape of the world in the fantasy that create the desire to enter the image and see more. Although these covers are paintings it’s quite possible to do this with photo montage.

David’s  Website is  http://www.davidjnormoyle.com/ and facebook is http://www.facebook.com/DavidJNormoyle

Prints and posters of the paintings are available here:

“Weapons of Power”, Book 1 “The Silver Portal” Front and back

“Weapons of Power”, Book 1 “The Silver Portal” Front only

“Weapons of Power”, Book 2 “The Black Bearer” Front and back

“Weapons of Power”, Book 2 “The Black Bearer” Front only
Thanks to http://skydancer-stock.deviantart.com/ for the great reference of Wizards.
Thanks to Marcus Ranum who provides Great Stock photography FOC on DevaintArt which I used for Reference;
Also Thanks to the Model Laura Preciado who posed for the character of
Suma – the woman with the Axe.