Book Cover Illustrations

Pronouncing a work finished is often one of the most important creative decisions an illustrator, musician, writer, or other artistic person can make. If care isn’t exercised, he passes the point where changes are for the better and instead further work becomes counter-productive. Something good becomes so-so, and if the changes continue, the whole product […]

Over the last few years, too many corporations and publishers have deligated more and more decision-making to committees. I suppose this allows the proverbial buck to be passed endlessly when poor decisions are made, and perhaps this cover-your-posterior is a necessity during these rocky financial times. However it’s arguable whether anything great has ever been […]

Here’s the final version of the book cover for Douglas E. Richards‘ The Devil’s Sword. Since the illustration didn’t have a sword on it (even though fencing plays a big role in the storyline), I created a vector graphic of a classic fencing foil and then “impaled” the O and D in the “sword” part […]

A few months back, I had the honor of creating a book cover for Douglas E. Richards‘ The Devil’s Sword. (For those unfamiliar with Richards, suffice to say he’s the proverbial “up and coming author.” He was recently selected to co-panel a discussion group at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International. To give you some […]

Some very amazing book cover artwork owes a lot of its magic to the very subtle glow from metal or other flat surfaces. And more than one UFO or ghost has become a bit more frightening due to the glimmer emanating from its surface. Translating this magic to book or magazine artwork can be tricky […]

Sometimes a sketch for a book or CD cover illustration doesn’t work for the client; often this is more a matter of whether it fits into the needs or style the client is looking for at the moment rather than the merit of the idea itself. Which is why a seasoned illustrator springs several different […]

Richard Thieme’s Mind Games continues to garner good reviews. I found one posted at Amazon.com by J. M. Arrigo (who is, I am told, a professor familiar with intelligence operations). Here are some excepts: This extraordinary book of short stories draws the reader into multiple levels of reality and multiple dimensions. The settings are mostly […]

Here’s the new book cover illustration I just completed for C.A. Dawson’s Frozen in Time. The final version also has a distant spaceship (missing from this version) and a few other modifications here and there. ===================== Duncan Long is a freelance book cover illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and […]

I thought perhaps I’d been a little hard on Corel in a previous post. So, having heard nice things about Draw X5 (I’m currently using version 8), I decided to take the newer version for a spin. OK… You can probably guess where this story is headed. But just in case… I plunked down my […]

Finding just the right typeface for a book is tricky. It’s a little like adding a spice during food preparation. You want enough to give things the proper flavor, but you don’t want to add so much of the spice that it draws attention to itself. Typefaces are like that. Beginning designers, like green cooks, […]