Over the weekend, I had my first official conversation with my friend about illustrating a cover to my upcoming e-book. Suffice to say, I learned how much I don’t know about these sort of things.
I had sketched a few awful pictures of what I was considering as a cover. Honestly, it’s embarrassing how bad I am at drawing things now. I used to be okay when I was younger. I had some decent Pokemon sketches. What happened? Anyway, I sent those pictures over to her, and after looking at them, she was prompted to explain how eyes follow an image on a cover. I had no idea what she was talking about, but she gave me a very informative lesson.
After googling the covers of New York Times bestsellers, she brought them into Photoshop and traced lines on the images to demonstrate what was meant to be the focus, where your eyes were meant to look first, where attention was being called to in the image, etc. It was a new concept to me, so I was also given homework to look at covers and try to see what she was talking about. Just like in school, I’m procrastinating on that.
In addition to my lesson, she also started sketching some images of what a cover could look like, based on what I sent over. It’s pretty exciting seeing that come to life. Much better than buying a generic cover online. We still have a few details to settle, but I’m hoping to have it by May. We’ll see.
D. N. Meinster 