Book Cover Illustrations

When my book and magazine illustration project deadlines aren’t too pressing, I often take some “down time” to experiment and hone my skills. Yesterday was one such day. I created some characters that (hopefully) will eventually be used in future art projects. The digital painting above (and the two below) are three I created, experimenting […]

For many self-publishers and new presses, the US Copyright Law in regard to who owns what rights to artwork can be confusing. Up front, let me note that while I’m no lawyer, I have been in the publishing business for about 30 years now, and have over a thousand illustrations in various books and magazines […]

The last couple of weeks, during my free time, I’ve been updating my art portfolio with an eye toward gaining some new clients needing book cover and magazine illustrations and/or an agent (the “which” of the two being up in the air at the moment). These are a few of my reworkings/updates/new pieces that will […]

I recently had the priveledge of designing the layout and creating the cover illustration for R. L. Gray’s science fiction novel, Paradox, which is book two in the author’s Ming Realities series. Like the first book, the art for this one features a stylized star nebula. The trick with such a picture is to make […]

I recently updated my collection of science fiction, adventure, and horror short stories, Lightning War and Other Tales of Wonder” (available in print and Kindle formats at Amazon.com). It already had some artwork in it, and I decided to replace some and add a few more. Since I didn’t want to spring for color pages, […]

I had the pleasure of creating a cover illustration and layout for William Scott Morrison’s new novel Luck of the Draw. Morrison has been writing short stories and songs for many years. His second novel, Luck of the Draw, is a story about the 1960s. Based on two men who have a much different experience in the 1960s, we […]

I love creating weird and monstrous creatures and characters. Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of making a number, often with the added plus of allowing me to imagine helping authors and editors scare the socks off readers. I thought I’d show off a few of my recent experiments in this post (and should […]

A few years ago, I secured a 3D skeleton model for use in my illustration work — and as of yet haven’t been able to use it on any book covers, horror or otherwise. Thus, I’m posting a few illustrations here on my blog which I’ve created using the model as a starting point, and […]

I recently had the pleasure of creating the illustration for the front cover of Charles Waugh’s new science fiction novel Nu: Book 1, The Esss Advance. The author settled on having a cover illustration based on a scene in the story in which the hero discovers an alien space ship that has “parked” itself on […]

Science fiction stories often travel into the “uncanny valley,” using a human-like creature that is almost — but not quite — human. For some reason (probably for survival), human beings have a tendency to be more horrified by something that is almost human, than they are by something that is obviously not human. A robot […]