Category Archives: Process

PaPa and Christian book cover process

Posted on by

Last week, I wrote about my new book PaPa and Christian’s Great Adventures: The Treasure Awaits! And I thought it would be interesting to show off the cover design process. After I had finished up most of the interior art, I talked with the author, Patrick Carberry, about the cover. He had a few ideas, including somehow incorporating this page from the interior:

I took his ideas and, combining them with a few of my own, worked up 4 rough cover designs.

Patrick really liked cover 4, using a variation of the interior art, but preferred the title treatment from cover 2. And so, here’s the final cover:

You can buy the book on Amazon at this link:

It’s A Sunny Life Line Art

Posted on by

As I’ve mentioned before, all my illustration work begins as black and white line art before I add the color. So I draw with the intent to color, obviously, but I love it when I can get the ink drawings to stand on their own as good drawings without the color added. Sometimes, the artwork falls flat without color. Other times, it just shines and I regret that no one will get to see it in the uncolored form. With “It’s A Sunny Life,” I was thrilled with the line art on nearly every page. So I thought I’d show off some of the inked artwork. This work was all done on Bristol paper with my trusty Rapidograph pens and PITT brush pen (although I did cheat and draw the snow in Photoshop on one page.)

lezak_14

 

lezak_21

lezak_22lezak_33

It’s a Sunny Life Process

Posted on by

I always enjoy showing off my artistic process, so I hope you don’t mind if I show off how I created a double page spread for my new book “It’s A Sunny Life.” I began with a rough pencil drawing. The grey clouds were added in Photoshop as a time saver.
SunnyLife_Process_roughAfter the rough sketch was approved by the publisher, I printed it out (with the approximate text placement) in blue onto 11×17 Bristol paper.

Why print it in blue? I can easily remove the blue line from the page in Photoshop. I also redrew some elements I wasn’t pleased with with a blue pencil. If you look closely, you’ll notice the extra blue pencil lines in the dog’s body and paws. I then drew the final linework in ink.
SunnyLife_Process_InkI scanned the drawing and removed the blue lines in Photoshop. I also filled the upper right corner with black (which I decided was faster to do on the computer than by hand.)
SunnyLife_Process_Ink2
And then I colored the spread in Photoshop. Unfortunately, I neglected to save any of the intermediate coloring stages. So I’ll skip ahead to the finished spread from the book with the text added.

SunnyLife_18-19

If you’d like to see more, you can find the book on Amazon at this convenient link:

Designing book cover for Just Let ‘Em Play

Posted on by

Yesterday, the Kansas City Star had an article about the book Just Let ‘Em Play, which I had the pleasure of designing the book cover for. It’s a really good article but, sadly, my cover didn’t make it into the print edition of the paper (it is in the online version, thankfully.)

I thought it might be interesting to show off my process and how I designed the book cover. I’ve done quite a bit of book cover design but don’t mention it near enough here.

I was given the project before the manuscript was complete and going by the working title of  Let ‘Em Play.  I discussed the book with the publisher, Ascend Books, and got a handle on what they wanted to the cover to accomplish. The book is about a philosophy for youth sports (covering all sports and ages) with an emphasis on having fun rather than winning at all costs. With that in mind, I worked up a few cover mock-ups. I usually do 3 or 4 cover mockups at a time for the publisher to choose from. This particular cover was unusual in that none of my initial drafts were quite right and I went back to the drawing board a few times. Here’s a look at some of the cover drafts and a little commentary on each one. (Please remember that these are unfinished mock-ups and there would certainly have been elements changed or adjusted had any of these covers been used. The photos are mostly unpurchased stock photos and some are watermarked by the owners)

 

Continue reading →