Greetings, everyone.  June is Art Month at Woolaston Entertainment, and I’d like to start it off by talking about the artwork you see on the covers of my books.  I know its 2015, and most artists and graphic designers use programs such as Adobe Photoshop to create their images.  I use it, too, but I’m still a fan of the old-school method.  I have been hand-drawing my work since I was little, and I continue to do so today.  While Photoshop may help me put the images on my books, the artwork itself is hand-made.

The cover for the first edition of Valentine (last image on the bottom row) is a cut out , which I placed on top of one of my bandanas (the very same bandana Val uses to cover her forehead in the second part of the book).  The image itself, was originally intended for a different book, titled “Vengeance Angel Yuka”.  While I was coloring the image, instead of the original black for her hair, I decided to go with pink, and thus, Valentine was born.  The new cover, features a more “anime” style design for Val and Melinda, along with Val’s car.  The image of Val on the second book in the series, was taken from promotional material I created about two years ago.

The artwork on the covers of both the books in the Fortune’s Wing series were also hand-drawn.  The flashing light seen coming from the mouth of the cave on book one, is actually white-out.  Yes, white-out.  I used a pencil to spread out a large drop of white-out, to create the appearance of a flashing light. The image on the second book, is three images drawn separately, and combined using Photoshop. The clouds on the Earth, are made of stretched-out cotton balls.

The skull on the cover of Allan & Mac, is a Halloween decoration I purchased years ago from a drug store.  I admit, it remains on display in my room all year long.  For this cover, I took a picture of the skull and used Photoshop to blacken everything around the skull.

Last but not least, is Our Lady of Righteous Rage.  The cover contains a simple hand-drawn image of two of the main characters’ side profiles: Amy and Dee.  Below them, is the headstock of one of my guitars, Billie Joe, my Epiphone Les Paul.  For copyright purposes, I blackened the name “Epiphone”.  The circle around the image represents a CD or album, since the story involves the formation of a band.

If anything, I hope you can see that a variety of materials can be used to create art, from colored pencils to cotton balls to white-out. Until I blog again…

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