Thus concludes another busy week! On Monday I learned that Half Her Heart has made it to the final judging for possible inclusion in Exotique 5... fingers are crossed on that one. I'd really like to make the cut for at least one book this year. I finished up a logo project on Wednesday, which will be followed up by a set of illustrations starting this weekend.
Last night I spent a totally awesome 40 minutes on the phone with a cool author about his swords & sorcery book cover while he simultaneously basted a chicken. Normally I'm apprehensive about working directly with authors, but this is one of those unique match-ups that (so far) almost seems too functional to be true. Needless to say, I'm excited about reading the chapters he sent over and starting on the sketches.
During my down time, I've been overcoming some frustrations and personal challenges with the client-artist relationship schema. For example, I work for a marketing company all day, so I have an engrained urge to marketing-direct my clients, sometimes without them asking. I need to stop doing that, unless they ask. While some people are completely open to it, some people aren't. And at the end of the day it's their project and they'll do what they want with it, even if their aesthetic choices aren't what my training would call the 'best' choices. Sometimes you just have to separate yourself a few degrees from the work to stay sane. There's a mantra in there somewhere... hopefully I'll be able to elaborate when I've put all my thoughts in order.
Signing off. Have a great weekend! -CS
