Book Cover Illustrations

Back in the Dark Ages when I got into the publishing business as a writer/illustrator (here’s a list of the books I put into print), a writer with any talent could send in a manuscript plunked out on a manual typewriter, full of corrections, mistakes, and perhaps bread crumbs, and stand a good chance of […]

I recently had a student artist ask about the basic information needed to create a book cover illustration. The answer isn’t quite as simple as it might appear to be on the surface. There’s a lot that can go wrong in the process of creating a cover. The basics I need to know: cover size, […]

Over the last 24 hours I’ve been contacted several times by illustrators just starting in the illustration business asking me for tips for beginners. So here’s another blog with a few tips for intrepid book cover illustrators, with the caveat that my guidance is akin to the blind leading the blind: 1) Keep on keeping […]

I’ve been in the publishing industry for several decades now, and have seen some amazing changes. When I started, anyone with reasonable talent could get into print with a big publisher. Not so anymore. Another change is the lack of promotion new books now get today. Most publishers — big and small — budget little […]

This illustration is a “closeup” of some of the detail in “Midday Dream” (posted a few days ago). Displaying book illustrations on the web is a little frustrating. First of all, the finer details of pictures are lost due to the lower resolution of a screen as compared to print (about a third to a […]

While the majority of my work these days entails the creation of book cover illustrations, I do on occasion create an illustration (and sometimes the lettering) for CD and DVD covers. With this work in mind, Unified Packaging gave me a very nice interview as their “Designer of the Week” in their Let Me See […]

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, […]

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’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 […]

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 […]