Later, I bought an acoustic guitar and because of my extreme affection for songs by The Cranberries, I was able to overlook the finger (and arm) pain and at least learn one or two of their easier songs. I learned to play “Dreaming My Dreams” and part of “Zombie” (which I later started playing on the red electric guitar). This was many years ago and definitely didn’t last long.

Lets fast-forward 10-12 years to today. My life is different and I’m different. So I thought, “why not really learn to play the guitar?” and I added learning to play to my creative life goals. This change of heart partially stems from the realization that the guitar is a complete instrument, meaning one can compose entire complex songs using only a guitar. On the other hand I’m also a musician. I learned to play instruments starting in elementary school onward and stopped playing about my 2nd or 3rd year of college. I wanted to have that part of my life back. Also, playing by ear has always been easy for me so I can imagine what I’ll be able to play when I master my new instruments of choice.

About six months ago, I impulsively set out one day to buy a guitar and strolled into Drome Sound near my home in Upstate, NY. I strolled around for a while looking at the different types of guitars and I knew I didn’t really want the average cheapo electric guitar one might pick up when first starting to play. My thoughts leaned towards getting an electric acoustic but to be honest what I dislike the most about acoustic guitars is how wide they are. I’m short and I have short arms. I remember it being uncomfortable for my picking arm because of the thick guitar body and my short arms. Just to see if that would still be the case, I tried a few acoustic electric guitars at the store and yep…still uncomfortable. I am aware that I simply could have gone with a smaller acoustic guitar to solve this issue but I guess I wasn’t that committed to using one.

During my quest for the perfect guitar I kept finding myself standing in front of the hollow and semi-hollow body electrics. I’d never liked they way they looked but at that moment, it was as if a choir were singing behind me and I knew I was going to buy one. How could I have not liked the way they looked? They are the smoothest looking guitars in existence. *Smile*

One of the employees sensed I was really digging the hollow and semi-hollow bodies and came over to tell me all about them. You know he was one of those 100 year old cats that eats, sleeps, and breathes music, who claims to have met many a fantastic musician in his day (I’m sure all true). He took some time to play several of the different guitars (hollow, semi-hollow, solid body electrics), playing different music styles so I could hear the differences.

Ultimately my choice was a delicious sounding and looking Epiphone Dot Studio semi-hollow body electric. I love it! It was well within my budget and I can practice on it without needing an amp. I did buy an amp but at night I like to sit and play a little with it unplugged.

Feast your eyeballs on my guitar:

My next quest was to learn how to play the thing. The circumstances were such that I did not arrange for lessons. I had too much going on at the time. However I made attempts to learn on my own as I did before. I was already messing up. I’m pretty good at learning things on my own and surely the guitar will be no different but I had to force myself back to the basics. I tend to naturally want to jump in at a higher level than I should because it’s how I learned to play many different instruments growing up. I had to come to an understanding that this is a different situation and process because once again, a guitar is a complete instrument as is a piano (which I also made this mistake with). Jumping in and playing a more complex musical piece on trumpet was pretty easy but then again, mechanically, so is playing the trumpet. There is simply too much to consider at once when playing the guitar; i.e. fret number, string number, chords patterns, etc..

I’m not saying this makes playing the guitar rocket science, just that I need to start from the very basics just as any one else would. Once I came to that understanding, I put away all the crazy books and videos and started with one book: Guitar Fretboard Workbook: A Complete System for Understanding the Fretboard by Barrett Tagliarino. Not only does this book have an amazing way of teaching the basics, it’s funny as well which makes learning it a lot of fun.

Now I have a sweet sounding guitar that is comfortable to play and a great learning tool from which to learn the basics of playing. I feel confident that I will learn to play the guitar for real this time!

First things first; when being a creative person, you must rid yourself of the social conditioning that may hinder your creativity. It is a delicate balance. On one hand you want to use the experience of others to avoid the same pitfalls and mistakes but at the same time allow yourself to go beyond what others are comfortable doing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that little social conditioning voice in my head that says “you can’t do that” or “that can’t be combined with that”. I’ve had to consistently ignore those messages until they no longer pop into my head. You have to get to that point too if you aren’t there already. Your creative projects will go much faster when you start trusting yourself and your own ability to create fabulous artwork.

With that having been said, lets take a look at the following book covers I created in fifteen minutes or less (there are several more but for the sake of time, I will go over these three). Also these are only the front covers. I use size templates provided by my printer (and you should too), which also help making creating full covers faster. So the back covers already have the area for the subject genre, publishing company info, and barcode. I don’t usually get too fancy on back covers (or I use a stripped version of the front cover design so the back cover text can be placed over it). :

 This title published by blue ocean press took about fifteen minutes to create. It is a fairly simple cover, yet very effective. Funny things is I acquired a series of royalty-free photos that were processed like the photo used for this book cover. When I bought the series, I did not like the photos at all. I didn’t like the over processed look. But I knew this image was perfect for this cover. When it was complete, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked out. I find it challenging to create book covers with predominately white backgrounds. It’s hard to find images that work with all white backgrounds if you don’t like clutter or you have to have perfect matching. But I think this image worked very well because it’s over processed.

What I did here was simply decide what image I was going to use for the cover. I like using images that cover most if not all of the cover. Because this image dealt with Japanese Kanji Radicals, I opted to use a photo of a Japanese man instead of using just text or Japanese characters which would also have been a good alternative.  I moved the image to various different spots to see which I liked best. I don’t like the hard edge created when a photo ends and the background begins. So I will usually cut it with something. In this case, the orange stripe in the center. All colors used on this cover were matched to the image. I don’t always do this (using complimentary colors instead) but for this particular cover, it was necessary.  I felt the title should be in the middle and it fit perfectly under the photo of the man. The most challenging part was deciding what to do with the subtitle. I offset it to make sure it used as much of the front cover as possible.  I put the author name next to the man and as you see it, to create yet another interesting element to draw attention to the cover. There is an acceptable amount of white space above the subtitle. I didn’t put the author name in the space where the subtitles are because when I did, it looked like “too much” text in that area.

When you noticed things that just don’t “look” right, go with your instinct. If it isn’t sitting well with you, change it! That’s very important. Make your changes and move one. It’s when you start debating with yourself about if you should put something here or there, that your projects may take a long time.

This cover took about 8-10 minutes and is one of my favorites. The book is about Micronesia (Islands) so a royalty-free image of a nice island beach was perfect. But there is nothing interesting about yet another pretty picture of an island on a book cover. I wanted to add to the book cover without covering up any of the image and I love using transfer modes in Photoshop. I think transfer modes are the best thing since Cuban sandwiches. I learned a while ago that strips of color are very useful when creating any graphics design work. I added some strips of color (all on different layers). I left the top and bottom strips black where the titles would go and used an overlay transfer mode for the two middle strips. Then I could easily add the author names in-between the two strips. I also like that blue ocean press uses all lower case for their company name. This works well on book covers as well. But this is also where those little social conditioning voices pop up saying you can’t use all lower case or shouldn’t , etc. But you can and it works well when used at the right time.

 The Last Chamorro on Guam is another favorite cover of mine that took less than fifteen minutes to create. I chose to make this book cover simple because the author wanted to be listed as anonymous. I thought “what would be a great looking cover for a book written by an author that doesn’t wish to be known?” And I came up with this all white cover that would look a bit academic and personal. The word “Chamorro” has a texture applied to is using “Layer Options” in Photoshop. The biggest challenge for me when creating any book cover is how to arrange the text. It’s quite an art.

We watched with delight as person after person slowed down or stopped to look at our books and book covers. I have to admit we had the most colorful and eye catching booth in our area because of our covers. Several people stopped just to say how amazed they were at our book covers and countless fair-goers wanted to know more about the books because the covers caught their eyes.