Meet the Team Tuesday: Angelina

Apparently I need to do a better job taking pictures of people by themselves, most of my pictures have multiple people in them.

Anyway, today's meet the team post is about my cover artist! This gal is just so talented! I can't wait to post pictures of the finished cover (coming soon!!!) I asked her if she would be willing to design a new cover for my books back around Christmas of 2010, and was so delighted when she said she'd be interested in that.

Over Christmas, I mentioned liking Alan Lee's stuff he did for The Lord of the Rings, so she taught herself how to watercolor and painted me a superb cover for my book. (I really didn't mean she had to use watercolor, as I have no understanding of/preference for art mediums, but that's the sort of attention to detail she puts into her work). The time-consuming part lately has been adding the text and getting the colors/fonts to go well with the colors of the painting. Also, she sometimes forgets to put her name on the back (e.g. "cover art by...") and I have to tell her that it's important to me that she gets credit. :) Especially since I. Cannot. Draw. Really, just ask any of my former students, they'll tell you something about how Mrs. Schmidt can't even draw convincing stick figures. So the cover is DEFINITELY not something I could ever create for myself!

I really just cannot wait to show you the new cover. The original cover was awesome, but there's something about knowing that this cover was hand-painted specifically for my book that is just priceless. And the best part of all this is, Angelina is my sister-in-law! :) So not only do I love her because she's talented and willing to design my cover-art, but I also love her because she's my sister! Having a supportive family is by far one of the most important aspects of my writing process.