Are you ever curious about the process of creating a book cover image? I’ve been having a great time working with my father, Charles Doucet, in the creation of my Color of Heaven series book covers.
My dad is a talented photographer and can make his photos look like paintings. Sometimes it’s difficult to choose a photograph from his collection because they’re all so gorgeous, I can’t narrow it down.
Once I finally settle on a photo, he gives me exclusive rights to use it (meaning he won’t sell the same image to another author, so my covers will be unique and there won’t be any copies). Then he works his magic on it to make it look “painterly.” Here is the image I used for THE COLOR OF HOPE, before the title and my name was added. My dad made it yellow (it is the “Color” series after all :)).
Then I sent the image to Kim Killion, the designer I love to work with, and she created a book cover out of it.
If you are an author and you would like to contact my dad about an exclusive book cover image, here is his website: www.BookCoverArt.ca. He has different categories of photos to suit different genres – such as spooky houses, seasides, landscapes, and Christmas images, among others. And here is a link to Kim Killion’s website where you can check out more of her work: www.HotDamnDesigns.com.
Now let’s take a look at another transformation. For my upcoming book in August, I went to my dad’s site again at www.BookCoverArt.ca and selected a beautiful photo of a gazebo on a lake. This is what it looked originally, along side the next step in the process where I asked my dad to make the sky purple. He also darkened the grass slightly and added some flowers in the foreground.
The final step was sending it to Kim Killion to turn it into an attractive book cover. I always leave it up to Kim to choose the font styles and colors because she has great taste. I love the final product. What do you think?