NOTE: You can see all my collage artwork and other graphic designs on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/seradrakethebookwyrm/ 

My two greatest artistic influences are Dave McKean and the late Vaughn Oliver. I'm also inspired by the paintings and photography of Leonor Fini. 

You won't see much of this in my early experiments, I'm afraid. I include my early work mostly so people can see how I've evolved past it. When I first started using Canva, it was purely to make a cover for the print and ebook editions of Ancilla, and to make some very basic quote tiles for my brand new Instagram account. I floundered. I took up collage-making on Canva to get myself used to using the platform; I only found out by accident that I could use it to make art, and that I loved doing so.

This first page shows the first collages I made in January 2024 for the Wattpad edition of Ancilla. These collages are no longer embedded in Ancilla. You can only find them here.

Without further ado: 

Here is a generic collage that includes both "ancilla" and "Magister." I initially used downloads of 19th-century art images (especially paintings created by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) to portray my protagonist and her dom, but then I got brave and started using Open AI, Adobe Firefly, and Canva's own AI bot to generate images of the two. The initial results were, of course, all cursed, and I didn't bother saving them. I wish I had, now, because cursed AI art is very funny, and I could have made a blooper reel... Oh, well. 

The AI descriptions that generated results that came close to matching my mental images were "Tall, thin redheaded woman, Elizabeth Siddal lookalike" and "Tall, thin man with black hair, looks like Joseph Fiennes." The results for the latter often did not look like Joseph Fiennes, but then, neither does "Magister," exactly.

I did my best to lean into a dark academia aesthetic for my book art. Ancilla does not take place on a campus or any kind, but the plot does center academic study. "Magister" gives "ancilla" Oxford-style tutorials throughout their relationship to occupy her mind. It's a gift of love. She misses being a college student, having had to give up her studies when her parents forced her to choose between "praying the gay away" and being disowned. 

Collages just for "ancilla's" character:

Collages just for "Magister's" character, a vampire and magus who has an affinity for the element of Air:

Here's a collage I made for the prologue. It focuses on "Ancilla's" past. Those of you who recognize the campus of The College of Wooster (the institution she had a full academic scholarship to before she had to leave behind everything that she knew), give yourselves a point.

The mansion is a real mansion. I've been inside it a few times. I loved the way my high school friend's massive house felt like a home, not just like some "ooh, look how rich we are" showcase, so I borrowed it for my protagonist's childhood home. Let me state this right now: I never lived there. My protagonist borrows a few characteristics from me, as does the character of "Magister," but she is not me, nor is she my author avatar. I will say that in the unlikely event that I strike it rich one of these years, I would like to live in a house like my friend used to live in. Something large, with lots of nice features (marble floor and fountain in the entryway, greenhouse, massive and well-appointed kitchen, room for all the books I could ever want to collect...) but it still feels like a home, not like a mansion.

This is a collage I made that focuses on "ancilla's" occult studies. I can't remember whether I stuffed it at the end of the Yesod chapter or the Hod chapter. It would have fit in either. 

Here's what I made to illustrate the aftermath of "ancilla" and "Magister" traveling to Cleveland to see a symphonic performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. 

The kissing lessons from the Chokmah chapter. That was a fun chapter to write. 

Something for the permanent marking "ancilla" asks "Magister" to give her soon after they've married each other in a hieros gamos, and just before they separate. And yes. Writing the Kether chapter utterly wrecked me. If that makes anybody feel better. I hate hurting my characters, especially when I've set it up that they're soulmates in Plato's original sense of the word. They do get back together later in the third book in the trilogy, Adept.

These next two collages depict minor characters who nevertheless had a massive impact on "ancilla's" character arc. "Lydia," who gets her nickname after "ancilla" sees her dressed like Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice, is a student "ancilla" meets when she starts taking classes at the University of Akron. She is, in the words of "ancilla," a "cute goth chick." She is five feet nothing, wears a size 18 to 20, and is very, very, very into all things dark and spooky. (We really need to let go of the stereotype of all goths being skeletons. Come on). She develops a crush on my protagonist, my protagonist starts to reciprocate the feelings, which she doesn't notice until she has "Lydia" in a passionate clinch, and the end result of this flirtation is, unfortunately, havoc.

"zed" has a very minor role in Ancilla - he isn't even named until Soror Mystica - but he winds up being "ancilla's" slave for several decades, so his role is far more important in the second and third books of the trilogy. At the time "ancilla" meets him, he is a history student at Case Western Reserve University. I used images of a young James Spader for him - the character played in Stargate, to be exact - because I wanted someone who was adorkable and nerdy in all the best ways. He doesn't perfectly match my mental image of "zed," since "zed" is an amalgam of two people I know in real life who are very dear to me, neither of whom look like James Spader, but he works well enough.