Book Cover Illustrations

Often it’s necessary to create concept sketches for a book cover design (or game, movie, or other art project). The basic purpose of concept art is to assure that everything is on the right track before it speeds toward completion. Concept art generally lacks the refinements to be found on the final project. Quick and […]

The human eye is a very sensitive organ. Coupled with our brains, the human “optical system” is capable of perceiving amazing changes and differences between objects. And the eye/brain is quick to spot a “mistake” in terms of line or light. I have often been amazed that just the change of a single degree in […]

I’ve recently started an illustration project that will create character portraits and other artwork for John Chadwell’s book Werewolves of New Idria (which is also becoming a screenplay that Chadwell is coauthoring with Ron Shusett, the writer/creator of the Alien franchise as well as Total Recall). The basic plot follows several characters through history, from […]

I recently had the privilege of creating a cover for Dr. Sharon Presley’s new book Standing Up to Experts and Authorities (The Solomon Press). Presley received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the City University of New York Graduate Center where her mentor was Stanley Milgram. (Milgram who created the classic experiment which shows that […]

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of creating a new illustration for the May 2010 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. I don’t want to spoil the story plot, so suffice to say the illustration is for one of the stories in that issue, and is a pivotal point in the […]

Last week I completed what has been declared by in-house critics as the most horrifying book cover they’d ever seen. Well, perhaps. And the best part was that we set out to make a horrifying cover (how sad if we had not -ha). So we must have succeeded at some level. The cover is for […]

In keeping with the holiday season, I’m offering a free download of the newly illustrated Edgar Allan Poe classic, “The Raven” (which illustrated and laid out this last week). Careful, the virtual ink’s still wet. Please note that in addition to the new illustrations, I also created a new typeface for this publication as well […]

Even though this is a blog about book cover illustration, the ebook seems to be taking the publishing world by storm (at least in talk if not in sales) and thus it seems appropriate to express my own personal experience with these devices. Recently the ebook reader market has heated up, with at least three […]

I was rather startled to see the news about the possibly tragic story about a small boy in Colorado thought to be in a balloon. Hopefully he will be found alive, but it looks like he might have fallen to earth from some height. It is so easy to be detached these days. Yet this […]

I can remember as a kid pouring for what seemed hours (and possibly was for hours) over the cover illustration from a science fiction pulp magazine. I am uncertain now what magazine it was – it had a monstrous cat-like creature, and 1950s-style spaceship, and men in tight silver suits with a moonscape. And for […]