Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime

Illustrations

edited July 2017 in Writing
Who among us does illustrations? I have an idea of what i want, and could draw it myself, but i don't want it to look amateurish and i don't know how to produce a book cover.

Comments

  • A good illustrator won't necessarily create a good cover, Lizy. You might need an illustrator and a cover designer. Getting the font right is a skill in itself.
  • Katie does it, she is very good. Can't recall her name here though... but you must know her on FB?
  • (The peeps who are doing our shape book insist the cover is ore important than anything else, so it does pay to get it right!)
  • Katie Stewart - Magic Owl Designs
  • And as Baggy says - THE FONT.
  • I've just done a cover for my next Pluto book coming out next year but the title, font etc was already done from the last book which helped. I used Photoshop, scanned in a drawing and then drew over it.
  • I'd have to learn how before i could do that!
  • It helps that my version of Photoshop is limited and about a billion years old! Not too many buttons!
  • Is Photoshop part of Microsoft?
  • Photoshop is part of Adobe, and can be quite expensive.
  • £10 per month.
  • £10 per month.
    Worth it if you are using it a lot.

    I have their Elements 9 that I bought when I got my Windows 7 computer.


  • Elements doesn't have all the things you need to do drawing stuff and book cover. You need the whole package.
  • I don't have the skills for making my own book covers.
  • Neither have I, Carol ,,I shall have to see what's out there soon!
  • I use Elements - it came free with a drawing tablet a few years ago. Limited but just about enough for my needs.
  • edited August 2017
    Hi folks, Gimp is a free program and there is also Inkscape. Gimp is very much like Photoshop but free,and you can get tutorials off Youtube.
  • I subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud - I use Illustrator and InDesign for my business - at around £forty odd quid p/m. Don't really use the Photoshop side of it though.
  • Although I've been drawing and painting for a long time, my first attempt at a book cover was our very own One Word Anthology! :)

    I produced the drawing in pen and ink, scanned it and applied various filters and effects in Photoshop.

    Here is the book for those that may be new to Talkback https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/One-Word-Anthology-collection-poetry-short-stories/1490396829
  • C2C2
    edited August 2017
    Great stuff, Marion. Nice lighting and textural effect.

    Isn't photoshop available in disk form to download on to your pc?

  • Not any more. You have to subscribe which keeps pennies (actually pounds) going into their pockets forever more.
  • Thanks, C2. My husband got a copy of Photoshop for me through work ages ago so it's probably a very old version but all I really use it for is photo haiku and doing things with my artwork.
  • My best buy to date, a desktop publisher, still finding things to do with it after year of use. It's fun to play about with art you have produced knowing the original is safe and out of harms way :)
Sign In or Register to comment.