Tiny Art

My coworkers are participating in this cool event where local artist create art on a 5" square canvas and then turn it in and then they sell the art and use the profit for a good cause. They asked if I was interested and I jumped at the chance. Here's my contribution:

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Tiny #art. 5” x 5” canvas.

A post shared by Dan Absalonson (@dandantheartman_author) on Aug 23, 2019 at 2:56pm PDT

Things Dads Do | Web Comic

Hey guys! I started a silly little comic called "Things Dads Do." If you follow that link you can go to the website for it. It's made entirely on my iPhone with my fingers. So it's pretty much finger painting. Here is the first one:

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Darth Vader Drawing

Well that was fun. Making birthday cards for my son to bring to his friend’s birthday party. #DarthVader @STARWARS . Used this great #DragoArt tutorial: https://www.dragoart.com/tuts/14898/1/1/how-to-draw-darth-vader-easy.htm

A post shared by Dan Absalonson (@dandantheartman_author) on Apr 21, 2018 at 1:41pm PDT

New Illustration for "The Case of the Missing Snowman"

This weekend I inked a new illustration for my chapter book "The Case of the Missing Snowman." I also posted a spread of some of the other illustrations I've completed for it. This one is in a chapter where the main character is watching a documentary about ancient Egypt. I have many more to go, but I'm getting there. Thanks for stopping by!

Finally inked an illustration for the children’s chapter book I wrote called “The Case of the Missing Snowman” tonight. 4 down, 20 to go! Scroll for pencil sketch and ink sketch from further away. #art #illustration #drawing #inking

A post shared by Dan Absalonson (@dandantheartman_author) on Jan 20, 2018 at 9:41pm PST

A spread of some of my illustrations for my children’s book “The Case of the Missing Snowman.” I really need to get moving on these. The book has been sitting waiting to be published for way too long. I have a lot more to do! :) . #art #illustration #ink #inking #drawing

A post shared by Dan Absalonson (@dandantheartman_author) on Jan 21, 2018 at 2:19pm PST

I'm a 3D & Multimedia Artist

Below is one of first 3D scenes I ever created. It was modeled and rendered in 3ds Max, probably around 2004. I created the textures in Photoshop. It's based off of a great coffee shop called Uptown Espresso. I used to visit in Seattle. My classmates and I would sip coffee and draw in our sketchbooks there. It was within walking distance of my college, The Art Institute of Seattle. I always loved the homey feel in there, which I tried to capture in this render. That atmosphere was probably brought on by the great wood vanity they used as their table for condiments rather than a long rectangular cabinet with a flat countertop. It also had amazing huge windows which looked out to the busy street that they could open if it was a nice day.

Uptown Espresso

I've come a long way as an artist over the last thirteen years or so. Here's a render I made of a kitchen earlier this year. This one is different because I didn't model most of the 3D objects, but placed them from the library in the Chief Architect software I used to create this scene. Below that, though, you'll find a BMW I had the privelage to 3D model. Took me about 40 hours. It was a challenging and rewarding project. Anyways, just thought I'd share a little from another part of my life other than writing. If you'd like to see more of my art you can find an online portfolio here: Absalonson Art.

Thanks for stopping by!

Kitchen Design

BMW i8

More Inktober Drawings and a Writing Update

Here's a few more #Inktober drawings. I've been liking ballpoint. Also I finished the second draft of my novel "Haunted House Flipper!" I'm doing one last clean up pass and then it's off to Beta Readers!

#Inktober Day 8. Swimming baby #hippo #hippopotamus Still need to finish the one for Day 7 and catch up because it's Day 11!

A post shared by Dan Absalonson (@dandantheartman_author) on Oct 11, 2017 at 9:47pm PDT

#Inktober Day 7 #Gecko #Lizard #drawing #PostingLate

A post shared by Dan Absalonson (@dandantheartman_author) on Oct 12, 2017 at 6:33pm PDT

An Illustration for The Case of the Missing Snowman

I just finished inking the first illustration for the chapter book I'm writing. I'm excited to see it coming together. My oldest started to like reading books this year which inspired me to write a book for kids his age. Click on the image to see a larger version. Thanks for stopping by!

Merlin and the Pendragons | The Story Behind a Book Cover

I had the pleasure of creating the book cover for Merlin and the Pendragons by podcaster and author Chris Moody. We started with a castle as all fantasy stories do right? He had a certian nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival palace in mind called the Neuschwanstein Castle located on a hill over the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. So I went digging and found a great picture of it on Pixelbay that was in the Public Domain which means we could legally use it for commercial purposes.

I left the color of the photo alone and found a medieval fantasy looking font. I also tried seeing what the cover would look like without the medallion. It looked alright but left something to be desired. Chris thought so to. It wasn't there yet.

Then I went and looked at book covers of the other stories in The Chronos Files for style inspiration. The medallion you see above the author name I constructed from scratch in Adobe Photoshop. I grabbed the teal color from one of the other Chronos Files books and then worked on giving it a kind of glowing effect. I added bevels to the metal parts and kept adding layers until all the parts were there. Then I made a new layer in photoshop and splashed a teal to white gradient from bottom to top on it and changed the layer style to Hue to give the whole image that bright teal look. I also added a teal gradient on the top of the image which faded into zero opacity to brighten up the sky and make the title text stand out more and which also made it clearer and easier to read. I also found a new font that looked similar to the fonts used on some of the other Chronos Files stories. Then it was almost done.

Chris mentioned that Amazon would be putting on the Kindle Worlds square logo in the bottom left which might require some things to be moved around. So I copied that off of another cover and temporarily put it on our cover. It showed me right away that Chris's author name needed to be moved to the right and that the medallion needed to be smaller and moved up and to the right. Both would have been partially covered by the square Kindle Worlds logo. Then it was done!

This was a really fun cover to work on and I gave Chris a killer price. I'd love to do the same for you if you find yourself in need of a book cover for your story. Check out my hire me page for prices. You'll find that they're incredibly reasonable if not the cheapest around. I've been on Chris's cool author interview podcast called PodioMedia Chat a couple times so he got a really steep discount as my way of giving back to the podcast community. If you see my prices and still have trouble coming up with some change I've also been known to trade for covers. Shoot me a line and I'm sure we can work out a deal. I'm always in need of people to read my stories and give me feedback and edits! As always, thanks for stopping by.

Buy Chris's Book Merlin and the Pendragons at Amazon

Visit Chris's Website

Follow Chris on Twitter

The Dumbest Comic You've Ever Seen

Ready for it? The dumbest #comic you've every seen. We all pick our nose, but when we see someone else do it? Sick!

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My Teacher is a Zombie | eBook Cover

Click on Cover to get your copy - you name the price!

I had a blast making this cover. It's part 3D, part photo manipulation, part digital painting. I constructed and rendered out the background and chair in 3D, then spiced up the apple with a photo of one blurred out. Adding the text was a fun challenge and proved to need the help of a few filters and some distortion to make it in the same perspective as the chalk board. After I added all the things J.R. had asked for I thought it was looking pretty good, but it still needed a little something more. That's when I decided to put a piece of chalk on the chalk board rail. I did so and thought it helped, but it still needed a little more - so I painted blood on it. Once I did that, I loved it and thought I was done. I put J.R. Murdock at the bottom in white, but it was hard to read so I tried it in black as well and sent them both off to the author letting him know I wasn't sure about the text of his name. He suggested red and once I made that change I knew we had an awesome cover. Do you need cover work done for your book or short story? I need editors! I'll trade you. Just message me on a social media site or send me an email (buttons to sites & email on the upper right of website). Thanks for stopping by my site and come on back tomorrow for a "TV Memories" guest blog post by the indefatigable Justin Macumber.

I Made Another eBook Cover

I did a cover for my friend Scott Roche. He's the first one to ever give me a crack at making an eBook cover, and since his first request I've been happy to do a few more for him and some eBook artwork for others. I love making art and if any of you need an eBook cover I'd be happy to give you a smokin' deal, or even trade for it. With Scott, I asked him to be a beta reader for my novel when it's done. He was happy to do it and I'm really glad to have him as one of my beta readers. On this cover I'll say that Scott had a clear idea of what he wanted which made my job very easy. An artist can ask for nothing more than a client with a clear idea of what they want. He gave me a few pictures to choose from and told me what he wanted. I picked the photo with the best composition. I found an image of an envelope, erased out the text on it and made my own new text on it. Then I added some lighting effects to it to make it blend in with the scene better. The folder didn't take up all of the space in the bottom of the picture so I copied some of the pavement, enlarged it and placed it over the blank space to make it look like the walkway kept coming towards you. I think it's a fun and awesome cover. It makes me want to read the story. Does it do the same for you? If so you can name your price and pick up a copy of the eBook in any format you need right here: Operation Barghest

I Found Artwork for my first Novel!

I'm an artist. I can do 3D and Photoshop and all that stuff. I've created eBook covers for others. So of course I'm going to make my own book cover right? Well I was going to, but at this point in my life - I barely have time to write. So I've been surfing images at Deviantart.com for the past month or so, and I finally found THE image for my first novel release. The ship is somehow exaclty what I describe in my book. The perportions are dead on, there's a huge chuck of ship that's cargo area in the back - it's perfect! I asked Eric the artist if I could use his amazing artwork for the cover of my book. He said that I could, all I have to do is send him a copy of the book when it's done. I will send him a signed copy in the mail, and email him all the eBook formats. A small price to pay for his breathtaking piece of artwork to go on the front of my novel. Click on it to see it in a larger size. If you're interested you can see the process he went through to create this piece here, something I'm always interested in being an artist myself. So thank you Eric!