Playing around with art!

Screaming Aaron Leid

As I've been getting ready for my book release on January 5, I've been playing with pictures!

I'm thinking of starting a CafePress site for Tides-related gear. Maybe it's just my pre-release mania, though...

But as I finish up my final edits, boy have I been having fun!

The Empty Tides

The first picture, oh-so-creatively titled "Screaming Aaron Leid" (you'll get it by the end of the story, I promise), is a collage of butterflies from the cover, tinted and assembled with Photoshop Elements. I used Pixlr to create the face, starting with a photo of a long-past person screaming (wow, that seems morbid...) and generously applied the smudge and blur tools, and then added and played around with colors to get the right surrealistic look. (Yes, there was may have been some giggling and references to the joys of finger painting. What of it?)

The second was done with a generous application of the magic wand tool to my cover in Photoshop Elements. It looked pretty cool, so I figured I'd keep it around... There may be a few tweaks before it's ready, though!

Okay, maybe I'm not the next Da Vinci. But it was fun, and it kept me motivated to finish my edits on time.

Now I just have the formatting to go. Wish me luck!