Berserk! Cover Design

With the end of the first draft of Berserk! in sight, I have started work on the cover design for the book:

My original photograph of one of my local woods

Work in progress on the book cover for Berserk!

Season's Greeting ~ Banksy

I took a late night drive out to see the latest Banksy artwork that has appeared a hop, skip and jump away from me this week. Despite the dark and the torrential rain I wanted to take a look at it before the perspex security screening was installed over it to protect the artwork from vandalism.

Driving out to see the new Banksy

I was not the the only one that the heavy rain and fog and the lateness of the hour had failed to deter from visiting the new attraction and quite a crowd were still gathered around the graffiti when I arrived.  

The new Banksy graffiti with a tower from the
local steelworks visible behind the shed. The fog lit up by streetlamps
make it look like a daylight sky

Unable to use flash because of the rain, I was pleased the see the artwork illuminated by the headlamps of the cars that were gathered around the site.

There was an ugly but understandably necessary metal security screen around the stencil painting, the shadows of which you can make out in some of the pictures I managed to take. But I managed to slip my phone camera between the bars to get some okay images of the piece.

There was a jovial and excited atmosphere amongst the visitors gathered around the shed. And it was great to see that art can still illicit such interest and enthusiasm amongst people in these troubled times.

Shadowy visitors at the new Banksy graffiti in Port Talbot.

Banksy has already authenticated the work has his own and you can see a video he made of the piece here. Season's greetings.

Crawley Art

June 17, 2017

Given that my first novel is, at heart, an adult faery tale, I felt that the book needed at least one drawing on its inside pages. After all, what kind of faery story does not have at least one illustration within its covers? I also wanted to give the story a sense of antiquity so felt that the image should at least give the impression of an olde worlde woodcut. Unfortunately, I am not a particularly adroit artist, to say the least, and so drawing the sketch I needed was out of the question.  Fortunately, however, I am in possession of a rather cool lamp that has a very particular quality about it - when direct sunlight hits it from across the room, the metallic tree shapes that surround its shade produces a pretty stunning reflection of an ancient tree upon the living-room wall.

Reflection from my living-room lamp

Unable to draw this reflection, I decided to take a photograph of it instead and see if I could make something useful out of it in Photoshop.

Wall reflection

Wanting the image to look menacing, I was forced to add a tiny drawing of a silhouetted figure among the branches of the tree. Hopefully my poor drawing skills will be hidden slightly by the tiny nature of the figure.

1st photoshopped version of reflection

2nd Photoshopped version of reflection, with drawn-in figure

I was quite pleased with the resulting picture as it appeared in the finished book:

I enjoyed the process of producing this image and am already looking forward to producing a suitable image for my second novel...