Book Cover Illustrations

One of the neat things about illustrations is that they can leave a little — or a lot — for the viewer’s imagination to “fill in.” Possibly this is one reason that an illustration can be more real and moving than a very precise digital recreation or photo which may offer more realism, yet be […]

I came into the magazine and book illustration business through the back door, first working as a writer/illustrator, creating drawings of things that couldn’t be easily photographed as well as the artwork for black and white advertisements for the books I sold through my own mail order company. Eventually I was selling writing and illustrating […]

A couple more B&W digital drawings to give a “world premier.” Hopefully this type of drawing skill can soon be put to use for illustration work with magazines and books. ================== See more of my digital drawings for books and magazine illustration at: Duncan Long’s Drawings and Paintings.

I’m continuing to work on my black and white illustration techniques and thought I’d post some of my latest undertakings. A few are modifications of old work that was originally in color; others are new. While these are likely to appear in magazines or at web sites, I am hoping they may make their way […]

The Hubble telescope has given mankind a taste of what space looks like, from exploding galaxies to beautiful dust nebulae. And graphic artists often use these pictures as references for creating the look of deep space, especially for science fiction book covers and similar illustrations and artwork. This is my latest exercise in painting a […]

I’m not sure who came up with the idea of alternate histories in science fiction; I think the first writer I noticed using it was Robert Heinlein (perhaps in part to make his stories all conform to the “history” he employed to link them together — arguably a good sales gimmick if nothing else). Steampunk […]

Space surfing… Riding the wake of energy released from a ship dropping out of hyperspace… Doubtful physics, but fun to think about what such a surf board might look and how it would need to have its own (here invisible) bubble of gravity and atmosphere. I went ahead and gave it the ability to conform […]

At least in the US, the “book return” policy of most large publishers is unlike anything in most other industries. The practice started in the Great Depression here in the US and made it possible for book sellers to sell books without fear of losing their money. It worked well in the 1930s, but has […]

My home town of Alden, Kansas, was a village with a total population under 300 (and that may have been counting a few dogs and cats). My high school had a grand total of 40 students in it. Two classes ahead of me was a kid named Norman Small, a farm kid who was quiet, […]

It’s funny how sometimes a picture can spring into an artist’s mind fully finished (for all practical purposes); no question about the layout, how the character will hold his arms, what colors to use. The vision appears full grown, like armored Athena springing from the head of Zeus. Sometimes such illustrations are triggered by a […]