Hey gang! I hope everyone is having a pleasant week? It’s time for a free membership post isn’t it, it’s been WAY too long!

I wanted to share my new design idea for the cover for the next book – including the new title font for the cover:

Back when I started Strangehollow I didn’t even think I would be making a series, I thought it was going to be one book, and that’s it. But it has evolved and grown and now I’m having a good old adventure in the enchanted forest again and bringing you some new creatures and stories from there!

This time round I want it to be dragon scales. If I was designing a book for a bookshop, then I would make a cover that was eyecatching, not just a texture. This is something I wish I’d done when I started, but I am committed to the texture now, I wouldn’t want to change the format now this far in! However, when doing a Kickstarter, it doesn’t matter so much about the cover since that is not what is going to make people buy the book since they’re not interacting with it in the same way as if they saw it on a shelf in a shop.

A little bit of colour to give me an idea of where to go when I paint it up. It’s gonna take a LONNNNG time this one, argh!! I will regret it – I haven’t painted scales on dragons for YEARS because it is so intensive, but I think it’s worth it for this cover.

It won’t look brown when I’ve painted it up – but more red and with some purple in there too – but this gives a rough idea. I always like how different the digital rough is to the final piece, this is more a kind of skeleton for me to work from.

It’s possible I might change the design a little, but I’m going to sleep on it for a few days and see how I feel when I look at it again.

Here’s a couple of sketches in my Strangehollow sketchbook, some giants, and of course… dragons…

It’s fun leaning into the ‘savage’ part of strangehollow, I’ve got some fun ideas for scary things… not TOO scary of course, that’s not really my MO these days, but maybe a smidge…

Tiny Dragon Collection!

I’ve got another tiny dragon collection coming, those of you who are signed up to my free or paid membership and anyone who’s on my Hare Mail Newsletter will get notified when it goes live! Here they are:

Talking of Newsletters

If you’re an artist or creator and haven’t yet started a newsletter, I highly recommend it. It bypasses social media completely and is a way to reach your biggest fans directly, with no suppression of links etc too! You can start for free with a platform like Mailchimp (I used to use mailchimp) and they are free up to 2000 subscribers, then after that they charge for more, plus for how many emails you send I think too, at least that’s why I left!

I wish I’d grown mine earlier than I did and concentrated on growing it more. Now that social media is SO different from what it was 6 or so years ago, it’s worth doing. I have an affiliate link for Flodesk which is the platform I use for my emails and it gives you 50% off your first year and $19 towards my next bill! So if you’re thinking of it then here’s the link: https://flodesk.com/c/HAREMAIL

Flodesk doesn’t have a limit to how many subscribers, nor to how many emails you can send, not that I’m ever going to be sending hundreds a week, but I like that it doesn’t charge more for number of subscribers, that and it looks really nice and is really easy to use.

Everyday Original

Another heads up to those of you who like cute little dragons – my next EDO release is on the 3rd of May. You need to be signed up to their newsletter to get notified though. Sadly I am having to pause using EDO now as the fluctuating value of the dollar means that when I post the painting I am not guaranteed to get the GBP amount by the time someone buys it, if they do buy it of course. So for the foreseeable I am going to stop posting with them, which I’m so sad about.

I’m SO obsessed with dragons right now. I plan on doing more little ones like this this year and want to try making some little dragon sculpts too rather than endless pink-bottomed grinning monsters 😉

I’ll make another free membership post in a couple of months, so keep your eyes out for it.

Take care all,

Emily