Book Cover Illustrations

Picking the right typeface for the lettering on a book cover can be key in getting sales as well as presenting a professional appearance to potential buyers. One of the mistakes many cover designers make (and especially self-publishing authors) is to select type that calls attention to itself. At first blush this seems a good […]

I got word a few days ago that Joan C. Wrenn’s Young Lords of Siyah Chan: A Novel of the Ancient Maya is now in print (and available from Amazon). I painted the cover illustration for this book, and it was a unique challenge. The author wanted a picture that reflected a Mayan mythological story, […]

Digital painting presents almost unlimited possibilities for variations on a theme. The picture above is one such variation, a more painterly version/portrait of the figure from yesterday’s post. ===================== When he’s not creating artwork for his own enjoyment, Duncan Long is a freelance book cover illustrator. You can see more of his book cover illustrations […]

Sometimes an artist just has to create what’s rattling around in his brain. This is such artwork… An illustration without a home (as of yet). Binary suns. The suns are mirrored in the glowing globes in the forgotten mechanism at the base of the painting, and in the broach and forehead jewelry of the heroine. […]

I recently read an interesting blog posted by Jo-Anne Vandermeulen (here). Vandermeulen was a bit taken aback by a “reviewer” on Amazon.com who suggested the author tooted her horn too much in her book Promotional Tips for Authors. What an odd criticism. If ever there was a books in which an author should “toot her […]

There’s often confusion as to what is being purchased when a publisher or author buys the rights to an illustration. Part of that confusion comes from the fact that rights to a picture can be divided up almost endlessly: Magazine, book, movie, poster, mouse pads, T-Shirts, mugs… The list can go on and on. And […]

It isn’t rare to read a book and discover that the cover illustration didn’t have much to do with the story. One reason for this is that with many publishers cutting back with their budgets, cover artwork often suffers either in how well it is done (you do get what you pay for) or in […]

I’m currently working on a book cover illustration for author James Johnson. There are some real challenges in this since the light for the returning Christ needs to be ultra-bright — yet we still need to be able to see details in his face and figure as well as hints of a Heavenly army behind […]

I keep seeing this suggestion that with technology, all change is good, that new is always better. Perhaps slow-to-adopt-new-technology folks simply have a sense of history. They’ve perhaps read about (or experienced) changes that were technological dead ends: Eight tracks, Betamax, the latest Hi-Def standards… These new technologies arrive with glowing promises that often fail […]

Leonardo da Vinci once noted that “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” In the digital age, that might be modified to, “Art is never finished, only stored forever.” Or maybe not. At any rate, this is one of my digital paintings that seems never to have been finished. It started as an exercise in creating […]