Book Cover Illustrations

I recently saw an article (that will go nameless to protect the guilty) which claimed that since Central Americans tended to like bright colors while those in North America on the average prefer muted colors, people living in the north were “fearful of bright colors.” Hello? Let me be clear: I’ve spent most of my […]

I was conversing with a fellow graphic designer recently and mentioned how today we enjoyed the many benefits of DTP (desktop publishing). The designer was somewhat taken aback (with good reason – as noted below). And I realized that the term DTP is almost never used any more, having slowly vanished from the lexicon of […]

Those who follow the comments on this blog will recognize Rosanne Dingli’s name. She regularly offers sage advice and commentary, and I’m always interested to learn what she has to say about my work. Recently she created The Versatile Blogger Award for blogs that she says, “Are all fascinating, informative, funny, brilliant, and very enjoyable. […]

This is a sort of spin off from my book cover project for Dale Allan’s novel Me Not Not Into Temptation. Initially I did a sketch of the priest with his back to the viewer and one with his front — the latter being the one chosen for the cover since it was easy to […]

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.

In one of the schools where I taught (in St. George, KS), I discovered that neither the teachers nor the custodians wished to remain in the building by themselves after dark. After asking around, I learned that those who were in the building alone at night sometimes saw a young woman walking down the hall […]

Life may imitate art, but it can’t copy it very precisely. Human beings can strive for perfect in their appearance, but as the old saying goes, in the physical world we are seen “warts and all.” People aren’t like artwork where major and minor flaws can be removed with a few flicks of a paintbrush […]

In ancient times alchemists wrote incantations in lost tongues; today they apparently design icons and control interfaces.

The brain tends to simplify memory storage needs by employing “icons” of images we see. This is what causes confusion when one is confronted with an actual object that hasn’t been seen for many years. The icon and the actual thing can be subtly different. The lamp we are sure is brass with a green […]