So…Um… Cover Art

I’m speechless.  Yeah…  Never thought that I could be anything of an artist.  I still don’t.  But I do a damn fine job of making use of Photoshop’s various tools.  And boy Photoshop never cooperates with me.  I think it took me about four hours, give or take a half an hour, plus the time it takes to write this post.  I couldn’t wait until tomorrow—which I’m leaving open for homework and other stuff, so I had to get this finished tonight when I started it.

I don’t have more than one sketch or picture to show you all.  I’m afraid I only was able to scan one in, the other one got dismissed in the early stages and is now just a nice sketch, but this one I took all the way and it turned out quite nicely I think.

Here it is for all to see, the culmination of all my artistic talent with a pencil and a computer, the cover for Star Catcher:

Wow, that’s bright!

I never thought that it would turn out the way it did.  I had some sort of image similar to this in my mind, but you know how it goes.  Nothing is ever the way it is imagined.

I still can’t get over how well I did on the shadowing, or the lens flare.  That worked out unexpectedly bright.  I may have to go back and turn it down just a notch.  Then again, sunrises in space are really that bright, or close enough.  Just for comparison’s sake I’m going to post the sketch before it’s makeover.

Yeah, quite the difference, isn’t it.

So, feedback time: What do you think?  Give me your thoughts, criticism, everything. Does is make a good cover?  Is it worth a thousand words?  Or fifty thousand—I’m joking.

This is my first attempt at anything remotely like this.  I colored a sketch of Jayko way back when on Photoshop for the fun of it, but that’s the only other thing I’ve done like this.  Honestly, I’m ecstatic right now at how it turned out.  I see a few things that I may need to go back and touch up, but they are minor things and I made about a dozen different saves so I could go back and do touch-up work if I needed to.  It’s all good.

So there you have it.  Cover art for Star Catcher.  Let me know what you think.

Cheers!