Art Sheets

Art sheets (description of the books for the art department so they can develop the cover) are due about a year in advance -- so you should start visualizing your book asap. I've made "covers" of my own -- both for myself and the art department (mostly for Berkley). This is "creative fun" that I do. Since I've received a few questions about the "tarot" cards I used in HeartMate, I've been making the cards I mentioned in that book. I am quite an amateur, but, again, this is my fun.

Anyway, you may have noticed that I've added the front of Sorceress of Faith to my covers at the top of this blog. It is a gorgeous cover. Greeney-gray... Anyway, the following is what I sent to the art department. When you read I attached photos, I did (and I always keep this email). You can see how closely they followed my ideas...

Heroine is tall and voluptuous, Rubenesque, (i.e. plump/overweight) Auburn hair, blue eyes. On earth she has a broomstick dress in the beginning, a “little black dress” for a formal reception, and a blue pantsuit for travelling. In Lladrana she’ll wear a loose robe/gown made of heavy velvet. As an apprentice she has a jewel-toned gown (deep red/blue/green) with little yellow birds embroidered on it. As a journeywoman, she will be wearing a velvet gown with a large yellow birds around the hem and sleeve ends and on each shoulder. As an Adept, she will wear midnight blue gowns and her heraldic symbol will be a pointed-arch doorway with black inside and a silver/gold starburst in the middle.

She could hold a “crystal” ball of of one of those plastic balls with her sidekick hamster inside (attached photos), or she could have her hamster riding on her shoulder. Note, she will also have a palm/pda in Lladrana.

She has a dark rosewood staff inlaid with twining leaves nearly as tall as she is and the color of her hair. The staffs are somewhat like those Ciro Marchetti uses in his tarot decks (Dream Tarot/Gilded Tarot) http://www.ciromarchetti.com Marian will be able to command the weather, so if you want to do a long staff with “weather” stuff on it (clouds/lightning bolts) that would be fine. Maybe steam could rise from the top – any colored. I haven’t visualized her Adept staff as yet, so I’ll take what you do or tell you what it looks like when I write it.

In Lladrana she will be living in an old round tower on an island with a sorcerer I see as old and crotchety and looking like Ghandi. In Colorado, she is living in Boulder and attending the university and I am attaching photos of the Flatirons. Her apartment there is a garden level apartment….

A couple of futher notes: I got tired of writing Sorceror and Sorceress so I made my adepts Circlets, and they wear gold/silver bands around their heads -- but this, of course, was A LOT later than when I sent the art sheet. Also, the pantsuit she travels in never made it into the book...



Love to all
Robin