Book Cover Illustrations

I have no complaint about the vast majority of my clients — with perhaps three exceptions over a decade or so. And these few bad eggs had song-and-dance routines shown in this video (below). For the rest of my customers (past and future), I hope you can enjoy a few laughs. For my fellow illustrators, […]

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 […]

Another “book cover illustration exercise” done last weekend for entertainment — and hopefully to either inspire the commission of a book cover illustration or even to serve as a book illustration should it match an author’s vision of a story in search of artwork. Or maybe some concept art or a character design. At any […]

A few more black and white drawings. These were produced for the second edition of Wrong Side In. ================== Duncan Long is a freelance illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Ballistic Publishing, American Media, and many other presses and self-publishing authors. See more of his work including book cover illustrations at: DuncanLong.com […]

Robert Frost wrote the beautiful “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Back in the dark ages of my grade school learning, our sixth grade teacher had us memorize that poem. What a nice gift to give young learners. That poem has brought me joy through the years, and a tear or two as […]

The mind often tries to see faces where none are: The man in the moon being a prime example. I can remember as a child walking homeward on a crisp autumn evening and being asked by my mom if I could see a face in the rising full moon. I sure could after that question. […]

This is the original background concept art for the final Tree Clan painting (mentioned previously in this blog). Actually, this is several concept art paintings overlaid. The back layer is the “starscape” of major stars and stellar dust, another the trees and bridges, one of the small figures, another of the distant monolithic structures, and […]

Two nice things about digital illustrations are that the artwork can be stored easily, and that it can also be reworked very easily. For someone who’s going through a decade-long “learning curve” (like — uh, ME!) this makes it possible to go back to concepts that were good, but not executed too well, and revise […]

“Rich Young Ruler” is another reworked “golden older” I did some years back. I know he doesn’t look young. But the intriguing thing about the story of the Rich Young Ruler (who rejected salvation to keep his riches) is that eventually, barring accident or other early demise, he grew old. Did he die old and […]

This is the concept art I did to create the background for my Tree Clan illustration. Actually, it’s two or three sketches combines… First, I got the sky figured out, then a separate layer forming the tree-like structures and bridges, another for the small figures standing on the structure (useful for giving it some “scale” […]