Covers, Covers, Everywhere...

...or what I've been doing for the last week. Still a bit snowed under, but things are starting to get caught up and the schedule is coming back into line. We might get some sketching done, yet. In the meantime, I've done a few more covers for short stories, and I will have covers coming up for collections and longer works soon. Covers done in the last week are as follows:

New Cover: The Stars to Guide

I put together another cover for a science-fiction short story, today, using excellent art from Ezumeimages and Agsandrew, both pieces sourced from Dreamstime. With a little twitch on the contrast and brightness settings, the piece came together all right, although I can't help but feel it might be missing something...

Getting Back into the Swing

I know I've been away a while; I've been trying to balance things out so I get done what needs doing most, but I've been neglecting all my blogs - and this one most of all. I've also been neglecting my photography, so I'm going to try to stop doing that, mostly because I need good photos for things like Linked-In articles and book covers, but also because I really need to brush up on my art skills.

First things first, though, I'll start with the photographs, and then try for regular sketching. After that, we'll see. Baby steps, right?

Today, I started in the garden. It's autumn in Australia, my favourite time of year, but I was surprised by the sight of one of my rose bushes covered in more flower than I've seen for a couple of years, and decided to start there.

My first few shots were fuzzy, but three yielded this surprising shield (or stink-) bug. I'll be using it as a reference photo for sketching. We'll ignore the fact I'm rusty and was aiming at the roses, okay?

After that, I spotted this bud, all by itself.

That was followed by the discovery of this budding Molongolo grevillea flower - for the first time!

And I decided that the birds visiting my garden needed to get used to seeing me around with a camera. After this afternoon, I have hopes they'll relax enough to let me get closer. First, the magpies came to visit.

And then this rosella came, and surprised me by stopping long enough to visit the seed box, even though I was outside, and then it hopped down to forage in the grass. By far the most relaxed little bird of the afternoon.

Later, this sulphur-crested cockatoo stayed around for a few shots

 ... and the seed.

But the yellow-rumped thornbills were not at all cooperative, so I had to content myself with this lovely array of autumn foliage, instead.

And that's the start of it. Wish me luck.