Nancy Drew Diaries, 3 and 4

Nancy Drew Diaries 4 - Once Upon a Thriller

Fun with Nancy Drew continues! These are covers 3 and 4 in the Nancy Drew Diaries series. This one with Nancy in the bookstore might be my favorite yet. Also, this cover with Nancy spying on a horse just came out this week, so yay!

Nancy Drew Diaries 3 - Mystery of the Midnight Rider

Sketches for these covers are usually a fun challenge. We aim to show some drama, but not really give away much of the story. Here are a few sketches from this round-

I looked up lots of hay lofts to figure out the angle for this one. Also, I now know what a hay loft is. Since this series has a fairly large title treatment, I always leave a lot of room for it to fit nicely. It's a challenge, but I think the type helps my compositions in the end.

And for cover 4, more fun bookstore angles! For both of these covers, I mocked up some simple geometry with the 3D Bevel/Extrude tool in Illustrator. I know a lot of illustrators use Google Sketchup for similar purposes, but I'm not tech savvy enough to use that, so Illustrator gets the job done.

In other news-







Next week I'll be attending Spectrum Fantastic Art Live along with some artist friends (Drew! Mclean! Andrew!), and I'm very excited.
I attended the first Spectrum last year and was completely blown away by the high caliber of artists exhibiting there. I've been to lots of different types of conventions (comic book cons, SCBWIs, concept art, etc) and Spectrum felt very special to me. I highly recommend it.

I won't have a booth there this year, but I did use Spectrum as an excuse to update and print a new portfolio book. Happy with how these turned out-

So say howdy if you're there!

Til then, take care!
-Erin