Damola Fadayomi author

The above photo was taken from the garden. It seems that everything has been in full bloom ever since summer arrived in England. Today's weather, although not the hottest, has been good. I hope for more great weather although a part of me fears I'll spend more time outside than finishing my novel!

I've always believed that Lady Luck plays a big part in our lives from the very small to matters of life and death. I am due to sit an exam on Friday which explains why my blog has been relatively quiet. I hope my hard work pays off and that luck is smiling down on me on that day. I wish the same for the other thousands of candidates who are due to sit the same exam in addition to people all over the world wishing that they were luckier. Let's hope that today and tomorrow bring a wonderful lucky day...

In this second part of the tutorial I will make some major adjustments to my source image. In my humble opinion only your imagination is the limit when making design works like this. One advice which is really important is to save your work regularly. I've had some major losses in the past when GIMP decided to act up and then shut down without saving my work. Imagine my horror to discover I've lost some great work and most importantly time which I'll never get back. On to the tutorial anyways. There's this interesting function called threshold in GIMP. At first I didn't see the point of this function but I've used it several times now and can't see why I didn't like it at first. It can be accessed by going to Colors> Apply Threshold. I had to thinker with the values in order to get the end result above but as you can see it gives an interesting image. I created a new layer underneath. I used the paintbucket tool to add a golden yellow colour to the ne...

My friends and acquintances have often asked me how I design book covers. In all honesty, I don't know myself. Just like my writing, I come up with ideas on the spot. With this tutorial I try to structure the process down. So here it goes: I often use GIMP for the time being since I can't afford photoshop right now. I've used photoshop in the past and have found it very user friendly compared to GIMP. However, at its price point GIMP is a great program to use. 1. I took a picture of myself on my mobile phone which I then uploaded onto my computer. I also had a picture of a golden drape which I've liked so much that I decided to incorporate it into my image   So I open gimp. I go to File >Open, to open up two screens of the images.   Now With the drape image I select the rectangle select tool which can be found on the toolbox on the left and select the desired area which I want to cut. Then I right click> edit> copy. I paste it on top of the second image. I resi...

A light bulb moment occurs   I believe in the importance of ideas. In fact, I almost worship ideas because that's what keeps me going when I find that the first draft of my novel is going nowhere or I am at the brink of giving up. Sometimes I get ideas at the spur of the moment and sometimes it germinates in my head, sometimes for years, until it finally blooms into a finished product. For instance, in one novel that I am working on I had the idea for it since 2006. It morphed into different forms until I had the "aha" moment and decided that this was the shape it was going to take. Ideas are really important for writers for obvious reasons. Without a good idea many of the greatest novels wouldn't have been written. I have a bad memory so I find it really helpful to jot down my ideas into a notepad or into my mobile phone since ideas often come to me in random moments. To end this post, I would like to ask my readers a question. How are you feeding and caring for your...

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office. Robert Frost Never a truer word has been said. My brain, although whizzing with ideas for my novel, stops doing this the minute I start to work.