I did these custom book covers for a friend's birthday recently and I thought I would share them on the blog. They were originally designs for a card but I figured they would also look good as bigger prints. I did them in a style a little different to the way I usually work with the cards and it gave me a chance to play around with the pen and ink, one of my favourite mediums.
After drawing them and waiting a day or two to let them dry completely (our old scanner was a hotbed of black marks due to my impatience with waiting for things to fully dry coupled with my forgetfulness with removing them from the scanner) I scanned them and then turned them into vector images in Illustrator. I removed all the white so they were transparent except for the black lines then took them back into Photoshop to colour in.
Although I love working on paper and nothing really beats it, the luxury of having endless layers and the undo button really does indulge my I want to try all the colours mindset. I knowing ruining things is a good learning experience as an artist, but being able to test things out excites me a lot and the process is always really interesting. Working with a mouse however can be frustrating and I really do think it is time I invested in a tablet, so if anyone has any recommendations I'm all ears.
