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Bobby has loved Kenny since they were teenagers. Kenny pushed him away for his own good. Now they have a second chance, but will history repeat itself? More...
Blaine is a well dressed, high priced attorney, and George is a hairy mountain of an auto mechanic. Can this odd couple put aside their misgivings and do what opposites do best? More...
Sparks fly between a gruff football coach and a young sports psychologist in Janey Chapel's TLC 101 More...
When you're choosing between right and wrong,
sometimes love is just an afterthought. More...
Gardener Alejo isn’t thrilled to work together on a neglected garden with Fane but both men discover they have two things in common: a love for working with the natural world and loneliness. More...
Both rejected for being who they are. Can these two people, rejected by those they love most, build their own family? The Best Revenge... More...
Admin-in-Chief: Mel Keegan
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Art Editor: Jade
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Jade
As many people reading this will know, I'm not (much of) a writer ... I'm a digital artist and what some folks call a "webpage guru" -- in other words, I can take warped, twisted, misguided and misbehaving webpages and whack 'em till they straighten up and fly right! But if I tell you the truth, staring at code is not the thing I enjoy most in life. (I'll do it if you pay me enough; I'm not cheap, but I can be had.) I'm an artist by choice, so it makes sense if this page is a gallery of my work. The images will speak for themselves far better than I'm going to write. In the last few months I've been busy in 3D art, using the DAZ Studio 3 software plus Serif X3 and so on. I finally found the time to update my page here, and the new art reflects what I've been doing lately...
What can I say? Check out my portfolio and my blog -- links at the top of the page...!
Click to see this at 800 pixels wide...
In fact, there's so much artwork, I'll probably have to do several pages on this wiki ... and will rotate them, so the same pieces are not up so long that they have the chance to get boring. I've been asked many times, how is it done? And all I can tell you is, it takes a lot of practise. You need to be running three or four key programs ... and you really, REALLY need to be in control of them. You can't afford to use the defaults and let the program do the work, or you get very "average" results.
The programs I use are inexpensive ones ... 1) because I'm on a tight budget (like everyone else), and 2) because I object. big time, to paying about 500 times more than the software is actually worth. I don't use Photoshop, or Adobe anything! I use Irfanview (which is free), and Micrographx Picture Publisher version 7, which costs about $20 including the postage! And I use Serif Page Plus 10, which is a $40 download. Everything you see on the group's websites and blogs, and on the book covers (plus the books themselves), was all done with these progs, which -- added together! -- don't come to a hundred bucks.
Right now I'm working on the cover for the new Mel Keegan novel. It's the paperback and ebook version of the first LEGENDS novel, and we can't decide what the heck we want on the cover, so I'll wind up doing several pieces till inspiration strikes. This is usually how it goes, and how come I end up with a portfolio on a subject, not just one painting.
The recent project that I really only did ONE painting for, though, is THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE. One was all it took. I used four different images as the base for the painting, and then I really did paint every pixel. It took a lot of hours, but the result is thrilling, even if I do say so myself. (I've had some very nice comments about it.)
On the other hand, sometimes I get inspired, and wind up doing a lot of work just for the fun of it. This happened with TIGER, TIGER. I'd origially done a painting -- we offered a print of it as the prize in a competition a few years ago. Mel Keegan saw it and fell in love with it, and the next thing we knew, it'd turned into a novel. My original painting was called The Jungle Book, and the novel is (obviously) TIGER, TIGER. I got into the novel so much, I did a whole set of paintings based on it. The whole thing was loads of fun.
My favorite covers so far? Well, obviously HARBENDANE, and also THE SWORDSMAN. These would be my #1 absolute favorites, but I'd also have to say AQUAMARINE and TWILIGHT -- and obviously TIGER TIGER!
I'll go to another page (this one is long enough) and will display those covers next.
Click here to see this cover at 800 pixels wide ... it's the one *I* think is the best I've ever done, and I'm sooooo proud of it, I want to share it at larger size!
KEYWORDS: gay book, gay bookstore, gay fiction, gay literature, gay writers, gay book reviews, m/m, manlove, gay romance
