I used Adobe Photoshop to combine the oak tree illustration with the oak roots illustration and e-mailed a low resolution copy to Jim. He placed the new illustration in a comp and e-mailed it back to me...

Hi Michael, I wanted to show you the comp, using the tree with the roots and a border. We want to use several illustrations inside the book as we stated before. As for the cover art, can we get an exclusive rights for the illustration of the tree with roots? If you are willing to do that, I can get some more money for it. Let me know.

The publisher and author wanted exclusive rights to the cover illustration. I agreed to grant them exclusive rights to the new derivative piece. However, I retained all rights to the original oak tree and oak roots drawings. In addition, I retained the right to make new derivatives from those two illustrations as long as the new derivative is not exactly like the one used by The Purpose Driven Life. This agreement was highly unusual, as I rarely offer exclusive rights to any of the stock illustrations on my web site.

They also used several other illustrations of mine in the interior of the book. I retained all rights to those illustrations.

Dear Michael, My pastor was very thrilled that we were able to purchase your artwork for his devotional book... He did ask me to confirm that "one time reproduction rights" [referring to the interior illustrations] means that we can only use those images in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, not anything else, right? That is fine with us. Pastor Rick doesn't intend to use them in anything else. He just wanted to make sure that if his book is reprinted, he can still use the same art in the same book. Please confirm this technicality. It has been a pleasure working with you Michael. You are gifted and we prayed for God's blessing on you today. Jim Dobbs

Go to page 3 to see the pencil-sketch stage.