Flores De La Muerte

(c) Danielle D. Smith

BD&RR RELEASE WEEK CONTEST!!!

My second novel, the wickedly dark erotic horror tale, Black Dog and Rebel Rose, has been released by Solstice Publishing and is now available to the book-hungry masses!

BUY EBOOK EDITION HERE 
(Paperback coming on September 30th)

To celebrate this release I am hosting a week-long contest for my readers and fans! I am giving away 3 Prize Packs featuring fun and unique items that fit the Black Dog and Rebel Rose theme!

To enter the BD&RR Release Week Contest, please leave a comment on this post including your email address. You do not have to be a follower to enter, however, I am giving extra entries for Angel's Gate blog followers (see below). Giveaway will end on Wednesday September 8th at Midnight (USA Pacific Standard Time). All entries posted after that time will be disregarded and not entered in the contest. Winners will be notified by email.

To Earn Extra entries:

+1 Follow The Angel's Gate

The Prizes:

First Prize: Genny

*Handmade Skull and Blue Rose Tattoo Necklace
(Created by artist The Ring Leader)
*One copy of the BD&RR Mixtape CD
*Prize Pack of Bookmarks, Postcards, and Magnets









Second Prize: E.J. Stevens

*Handmade Hot Pink Rose Post Earrings
(Created by artist The Ring Leader)
*Copy of the BD&RR Mixtape CD
*Prize Pack of Bookmarks, Postcards, & Magnets










Third Prize: 5 Winners:
Michelle
Miranda
Pooks226
Stacey
Miss Lenore

*Copy of the BD&RR Mixtape CD
-- A compilation of music that made up the inspirational "soundtrack" repeatedly listened to as I wrote the story. This compilation includes music by Puscifer, Hank Williams III, 16 Horsepower, Alice in Chains, and much more!
*Prize Pack of Bookmarks, Postcards, and Magnets








CONGRATS TO ALL THE WINNERS!!! :D


(NOTE: Black Dog and Rebel Rose is a work of erotic fiction. This story contains graphic sexual content and is not appropriate for readers under the age of 18.)
(Disclaimer: No book purchase necessary. The songs included on the BD&RR Mixtape are the sole property of their copyright holders. Winners of the BD&RR Mixtape are strongly encouraged to support the included artists by purchasing their music. No profit is being made by Danielle D. Smith, the Author, from the giveaway of this mixtape.)

Character Design: An Artist's Perspective

Art or Writing?







For me, the question calls to mind the infamous “chicken or the egg” question. Truth be told, I don’t separate the two easily.






Because of this inability for me to “part the artistic continents” and separate the visual from the literary, physically fleshing characters out on paper, canvas or computer screen is one of my fondest activities as a creative type. Having just acquired the newest, jazziest version of Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator Suite for FREE, I have been enjoying the process of bringing characters, both published and from upcoming books, to life in two-dimensional form. Not that getting back into Photoshop was something I really planned on. I have always been very bricks-n-mortar when it comes to art, and for many years I swore that I’d never go down the evil digital road, deeming creating art on a computer to be “cheating.”






*Danielle now inserts foot in mouth.*






Friends, I eat my words, with a dash of salt and a squeeze of lemon for flavor. When I began working on my tattoo flash for my apprenticeship, I became frustrated with how the tattoo style looked using traditional methods. So when my good friend Dusty offered me this spankin’ new design package for FREE, slurp, slurp, down those “no, never, never” words went like spaghetti-o’s! The flash art has benefitted enormously, and so have my character design projects.






Case in point: attached above is an image I had a ton of fun working on. Skriker, the half-demon hero of my upcoming (soon-to-be-submitted) novella Black Dogs and Rebel Roses is depicted as a different kind of gargoyle, scrawled with his myriad tattoos (he should actually have more) and clutching his ubiquitous cigarette. The illustration is being fetaured in an upcoming hot rod/tattoo-themed art exhibition on June 5th, proof that character art and illustration are crossing over into a more fine-art arena.






The wonderful thing about being able to create these character portraits and personal illustrations is that I can put an actual face out there for my readers to enjoy and make a fresh connection with. I enjoy having control over how my characters are visually portrayed (a big reason why I do my own cover paintings if I possibly can). In future weeks I will begin to feature a gallery of these artworks (both traditional and digital) on my author site, and I hope that my reader base will enjoy this look through the window to my visual imagination as much as I enjoy creating the images.






Hell, might even snag a few new tattoo clients in the bargain! ;)
 
 
(Originally posted on Liquid Silver Book's Silver Expressions Blog on 06.01.2010)