Book Cover Illustrations

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 inspired by a committee meeting. Or, to be charitable, whether a committee can ever match the capabilities of a savvy decision maker who knows their own mind.

Let me be blunt: When a book cover project is under the wings of a good art director, seasoned editor, or self-publishing author with a good eye, things generally go smoothly because that person has a vision, knows what works and what does not, and has the self-confidence to decide whether the goal is being reached. Such a person picks a book illustrator because they know the artist can handle the work, they explain to the artist what they want, and things are pretty straightforward with results that everyone can be proud of. Even when snags are hit, they eventually get ironed out.

This is not to say that illustrators always turn in perfect work with the first try. Or even the second. But when artwork is less than ideal, a knowledgeable editor or art director can make suggestions that will take things in the right direction, and understand how to help the artist polish a passably good piece into a gem.

Such positive direction seldom occurs when a committee starts to “makes suggestions” about what needs to be changed in an illustration. Often the whole project will lurch in a new and often terribly misguided tangent. Outdoor scenes are moved indoors, color schemes changed, and more or fewer characters added. New poses are dictated… On it goes. And generally all to the detriment of the project.

“Without vision, the people parish.” And a committee without vision too often dictates the death of any creative spark that might once of been in an illustration.

The downward spiral can be amusing — if you aren’t a part of it. As each new revision becomes progressively worse, the committee loses its nerve and becomes desperate for a fix. Soon they are asking everyone and their cat to make suggestions for changes. The illustration gets jerked this way and that, becoming proof of the old saw that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

Having heard horror stories (and a few sad times having first-hand experience), I have come to call this process “death by committee” and it’s always sad to see an illustration that had great potential die a slow death from a thousand meaningless changes, each dictated by people that seem more intent on impressing others in the room than making things right, and/or the insecure throw their weight around.

Don’t get me wrong. Not all publishers have fallen into the committee trap. Many have not. And one must admire those publishing houses that have had the wisdom and foresight to avoid the death by committee complex altogether (Irene Gallo, art director at TOR books is one fine example of what happens when someone with artistic vision shepherds cover projects to their completion).

Hopefully the time will soon arrive when the vast majority of book cover projects will be run by a seasoned and secure art director or self-publishing visionary who can pilot book cover artwork to a safe harbor.

And then RIP, death by committee.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book cover illustrator who has created illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ILEX, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Another piece from my B&W book artwork for Victor Thorn’s Reality Bomb.

This B&W book artwork is titled A Healing in Bethesda and is based on the passage in John 5:1-15 where Jesus heals a man who is unable to walk. Obviously (as in the tradition of religious painters) I’ve updated the picture for modern times putting the guy in a wheelchair rather than on a mat. Interestingly, in the 1960s archaeologists discovered the pool that appeared in Saint John’s story.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book artist whose artwork appears in on or in books from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ILEX, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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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 of the title. I later put the sword as well as the helicopter into a TTF (True Type Font) file so those working on the spine and back cover could reproduce the sword or chopper as logo-style elements in their layout.

This project had a lot of twists and turns before we got to the final book cover illustration and layout. But the effort was worth it. This is a powerful image that should serve the book and author well as he promotes his title.

(You can read about the process of creating this book cover illustration at my previous post about this.)

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Duncan Long is a freelance graphic artist and book cover designer and illustrator. His works has appeared on titles from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Another of the B&W book illustrations created for Victor Thorn’s upcoming book, Reality Bomb. This picture also started its “life” as a colored illustration, the translation into black and white artwork worked well (I think), making another powerful (and quirky) illustration for Thorn’s book.

This B&W book artwork is titled Journey: The Thing-with-Claws.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book artist whose artwork appears in titles from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ILEX, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Another of the B&W book illustrations created for Victor Thorn’s upcoming book, Reality Bomb. Although this artwork started its “life” as a colored illustration, the translation into black and white worked well, making a powerful picture for Thorn’s book.

This B&W book artwork is titled Second Death – Last Rites.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book artist whose work appears in titles from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ILEX, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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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 idea of his standing, the other members of the panel included Ray Bradbury and Stan Lee. Yes, we’re talking big time here.)

Needless to say, I was honored to be able to create a book cover illustration for a new book Richards had just completed.

The project was pretty straightforward. The story had military elements with a central character who was a fencer. Richards (a bit of an artist in his own right) had the cover pretty well plotted out when he contacted me: Helicopters over a desert in the background with some fencers in the foreground, using regulation equipment on a regulation strip. About halfway through the project I suggested we simplify things with a solid black cover. This eventually led to the cover shown here.

It was dramatic.

It worked for the story.

Project finished.

Or so we both thought.

At the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, Richards gave the title its first real public exposure, spending over 10 hours signing copies of his books. In the process he got a lot of feedback on the cover for The Devil’s Sword.

A lot of that feedback was a shock.

The problem: Most readers were unfamiliar with modern fencing strip as well as regulation masks. Thus they perceived the strip as some sort of metal or icy thing, and the masks as space helmets. And the black background added to the confusion.

So many “saw” two fencers in space, standing on a flat sheet of ice, with helicopters somehow flying in the airless environment, and an explosion behind them.

Utter confusion.

The same sort of remarks were made by B&N reps and key distributors that Richards approached.

Not surprisingly, Paragon Press was anxious to get a new book cover illustration going ASAP and thankfully, Richards insisted that I do the rework of the illustration, since he had loved the original cover (and had been taken by surprise by the concerns of others).

The new project progressed through several ideas.

One was a return to the original desert scene having helicopters over an exploding building, dropping the fencers from the illustration since the title conveyed the idea that one or more swords must be involved in the story somewhere.

Sounded like an ideal cover scene. But getting the house explosion to look like something other than a campfire in the dirt proved hard; deserts (and snow) offer no easy way for the viewer to grasp the scale of things without trees or human forms in the scene. Thus it proved to be less than ideal for the cover subject. The best I could come up with was the somewhat claustrophobic scene below.

We also tried covers with swords, including several of a modern fencing foils, a more traditional one with a mask, and an old-style idealized sword.

Again sometimes (and sometimes not) “close but no cigar.”

Finally Richards asked me to try a different scene from the book; it had a group of commandos rappelling down to a blacktop road, dropping from a helicopter hovering in the night. It was dramatic. And (I think) the final illustration worked.

Now we’re crossing our fingers to see if the powers that be will sign off on the new book cover illustration.

In the meantime, The Devil’s Sword which Richards believes may be the world’s first fencing thriller, is set for an October release from Paragon Press.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book cover illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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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 however. That’s because luminosity — in print — lies at the opposite end of the scale from the old “what does a black cat look like in a coal cellar in the dark?” If care isn’t taken in the planning so that an appropriate layout is used in the book artwork, the glow in the illustration can easily be lost.

The reason?

It’s sort of a “what does white ink look like on a white sheet in the sunlight?” thing.

While the eye can adjust to a very wide range of brightness and thus see glowing effects even in daylight, the camera, monitor, and printed page are much more limited in their abilities.

For example, when you watch a sunset, you have no problem seeing both the ground and sky. But take a digital picture of a sunset, and you’ll either have a washed out sky or ground that is nearly pitch black. The camera doesn’t have the wide range abilities of the eye.

Printed magazine or book artwork offers even less contrast in brightness.

Another landmine for glow effects in print occurs with book cover artwork created around the author’s mental image of a scene in the story, because the mind can imagine things that just aren’t physically possible. What the author imagines proves impossible to create for the book artwork

One of my most aggravating book cover cover projects early in my illustration career involved a creating a picture with a glowing UFO — in broad daylight. Sounded easy enough. But in fact, there was just no way to create such a book cover picture, even though it was completely possible to imagine it, write about it in the book, and so forth.

The solution?

Take a page from Hollywood which has dealt with such problems for many decades. Directors know that for a glow to work, you need a dark background. Yes, there’s a reason UFO’s, ghosts, and other glow-in-the-dark effects take place in darkened environments in movies. Yes, it’s scarier. But mostly its about technique. Glows show up much better over a dark background.

So if you’re an author creating a scene that will appear as your book cover artwork, be sure you haven’t created a word picture that seems possible in your mind while being impossible to create in print.

Otherwise the book cover artwork may have a white-ink-on-white-paper-in-the-bright-sunlight look to it.

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When not brow-beating authors to adopt darker background in their stories so his glow effects can work, Duncan Long is a freelance book cover artist for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ILEX, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book cover artwork at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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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 sketches on a client before completing any given picture.

Otherwise there can be much wheel spinning to no avail.

On occasion one of these rejected sketches seems worth pursuing as something that might generate a future sale with another client (as yet undiscovered). This science fiction illustration is one such project. (I’ve dubbed it “Commander Carson and the Lost Space Raiders” since it seems somewhat of a throwback to the golden age of science fiction illustration work.)

The illustration just seemed like something that might one day find its way onto another client’s science fiction book cover – or at least inspire an idea or two for another project sometime in the future. (Yes, plan way ahead is the name of the game in the illustration business.)

So I went ahead and finished this illustration, polishing it with an eye toward possible future sales to the science fiction book or SF magazine market.

Now… I cross my fingers and wait for the time when this long-term investment attracts some attention from a writer, editor, or art director in the science fiction marketplace looking for such an illustration for their book or magazine.

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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book cover illustrator (and sometimes science fiction cover illustrator) for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, The Sun, Asimov Science Fiction Magazine and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Another round of “sneak previews” of the illustrations for John Chadwell’s graphic novel Werewolves of New Idria (Moonstone Books).

The illustrations have an added level of complexity in that we’re trying to keep them (as the story itself) historically accurate with the uniforms, armor, firearms, swords, motor cycles, etc., etc.

Given that the story line spans nearly one thousand years, there’s a lot of research to do in creating some of the illustrations for this graphic novel.

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Duncan Long creates graphic novel, magazine, and book illustrations for a number of publishers including HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, Moonstone Books, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See more of his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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I figured it was about time for an update on the B&W book illustrations I’m doing for John Chadwell’s graphic novel Werewolves of New Idria (Moonstone Books).

Since the story was written with a film version in mind, Moonstone settled on the “wide vision” format for this graphic novel giving each picture a movie-picture-like perspective across a horizontal page with the text above and below each picture.

I had thought that this format would be easier than working with panels – but have discovered it is not (at least not for me). The reason being that there’s easy way to accommodate more than one scene. So a lot of care and thought has to be given toward what scene will best capture the action across the story line of the page.

There’s also a tendency toward overuse of “wide shots” from a distance, or extreme closeups. While both certainly have their place, I have found it hard to avoid the temptation to get carried away with one or the other.

The limited pallet of the B&W pictures is wild to work with as well. As a guy that’s used to digital work with millions of colors, dropping down to shades of gray and black is a wild constraint that forces some careful planning and development of new techniques along the way.

Needless to say, the painting process is not as fast as I had hoped it would be. Fortunately the editor and author are patient men.

One thing for sure: It’s a trip, and little by little the pages are coming to life.

Shown here are a few “excepts” cropped from the wide format originals as well as one reduced original to give a look at how the illustrations will appear in the graphic novel.

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Duncan Long creates book illustrations for a number of publishers including HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, Moonstone and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See more of his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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