Winter

 

Cyborgs! Aliens! Mental superpowers! Fairy tales! I am very excited to have finally gotten my little paws on Winter, the conclusion to Marissa Meyer's best-selling Lunar Chronicles.

I'm about halfway through (it is looong) and really enjoying it, but despite knowing it would be my next drawing for about two weeks, I failed to get my butt over to the art store to pick out some specific chalks. I guess I just trusted that I would have what I needed? But I'm a little bummed, because I think I could have found something neon to give it the vibrancy of the original cover.

That was the biggest challenge with this one, balancing all the dark values with the extremely bright apple in the center. I actually colored in the chalkboard even darker where it was supposed to be black (it was easier to tell the difference before I outlined the cover in white), because the gray of the chalkboard was washing out the colors.

But, it came together pretty quickly, especially once I realized I should lay down all the background first, and not worry about layering the white lettering on top of it (which was a good decision, because the lettering looks bomb-awesome).

I still have a lot of this book to get through, so I think I might throw in some past reads before I have to skip town for Christmas. (Christmas! Remember when I drew 25 chalkboard drawings in December?)

Dave's first-view reaction: Mm...very nice.... Good...shading....*


*It was late. Why do we always do these things so late??

Pretty lettering! Such a pain in the ass, so nice to look at

The apple in the original cover is like this beautiful, blown-glass, magical thing.
Mine is like HELLO. I AM APPLE.

Nice manicure!

Not nice manicure :(

I cut out the blurb, because they are the worst to draw, but it said:
"FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR"

Just realized I missed the pinky glow at the wrist. Damn.