Which logo did they choose? Well this one is the one the client has chosen to go forward with. We are still working on the fonts.
Although it is said that you cant judge a book by its cover, the cover is the first thing customers see. Especially in the digital world where increasing numbers of people purchase books online. So how do we translate the message within the book to the cover? its like a mini-billboard or ad or clue for the inside.
Well for this book,,,the client asked for a shocking and attention grabbing design. They provided wine label as samples of a “look and feel”. I presented the bottom 5 designs. The book’s subject is offering opportunity to believers to return to the church. Although they liked the other covers they felt that they were too shocking and too attention grabbing for their conservative market. We even made a couple of client driven tweaks to get it to final approval.
(oil on canvas 4’ x 4’)
This is the under painting it is not complete – I will post the final as an update
Working on this painting has been a labor of love. Crime in my community is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Still as I sit here and paint, during the shelter in place presidential order… still my people are dying in our streets. Their deaths not from the virus but from stabbings and shootings. People say that African Americans ignore the violence in their own communities and only focus on other issues. My answer to that is in the form of a renaissance style war painting.
A painting in which there is a nuclear family in the middle of a battle going on around them. The family is unaware of the purpose of the war. The family and both sides of the fight are dressed in the same clothing because, after all, they are all from the same community, the same team, the same side. As a widowed mother of a male teenager, I am perplexed by the number of our men that die night after night. As in the painting, I am living amid the violence. I am trying my best to raise a young man unaffected by the world that surrounds us. We are In It, But, Not of It. I point to the positive as we I cut through the racism of others and the violence of my very own community just to give my son and me the best opportunity. But we cannot ignore it, its bold and brazen and purposeless.
But are we any different?
I took art history at Bradley University, Peoria, Il where I studied the fine strokes of battle scenes at length. There were hundreds of war type paintings to choose from as a reference for this concept. Ones from other cultures and other points though-out time. I for one don’t think there is anything romantic about weapons, battles and people dying in the streets. Yet, battle paintings such as this hang in places of honor on our museum walls. What were they fighting over in those paintings? African Americans are no more or no less than the people of history. Our media doesn’t target those people of the renaissance and called them violent by nature. I know it is of the past and not sensational, anymore!
Yet I am here to respond. What about black on black crime? We march about it! We talk about, we meet about, we plan and plot about it. We paint about it. Stop that shit! I’m tired of being in it because I am not of it!
Style wise
I’m trying something new. I started with a sketch as usual, but, I flooded the background with blue to unify the entire painting. Then I am working up the atmosphere by building color from the blue. I am learning as I go. In desperate need of a group critique, but with our current circumstances, I am left to journal alone.
Although I have a smartphone and computerized timekeepers; I still have a special affinity for desk calendars. Personally, I have a desk planner that I can sketch and doodle in. So when I was given the opportunity to design a desk diary I got excited. Unlike my doodling planner this project was for a much more conservative end user. This handsome piece is being created especially for pastors. It's a beautiful hard cover, spiral bound with a full color interior. Any pastor would love to have this companion on his desk or at his side.
Features of this calendar are:
* Full two page spread monthly calendars
* Special church holiday pages
• Weekly calendar pages
* Bullet Journal pages
* Special designed prayer pages
The client asked me to design the pages clean enough for pastors to take notes in and still leave room to accommodate pre-printed holidays. The final product will be a streamlined calendar with a beautifully designed cover.
For more information: http://books.cph.org/pastoral-desk-diary-coming-fall-2017
Client Concordia Publishing House
Designer Tamara Bishop
Image © 2017 Concordia Publishing House
