Book Cover Illustrations

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 […]

Texture can be important in achieving realism in artwork. It can also be a bear to paint if it has a regular, repeating surface. Chainmail is a good example of this. The rings of iron were meticulously made, often with each being riveted into place. And the pattern in which the links of chain were […]

Color illustrations on the inner pages of books can be expensive. Consequently, many inner illustrations for books are black and white (actually “gray scale” the two terms are interchangeable for most users today). Black and white pictures can be tricky because there are no longer colors to separate objects in the picture from the background […]

People regularly ask what software and hardware I use for creating book cover illustrations and other artwork for magazines, CD covers, and interior illustrations in books. So I will digress in this installment of my blog to answer those questions. I come from a background of working with pen and ink as a technical writer/illustrator. […]

I’ve put the new illustrations I’ve created over the last month (plus some reworked older pieces) online for inspection. A few pictures have cover rights sold (including the new cover for R. L. Brush’s Jesse Steele and the Secret of Otherworld), but most of the other illustrations have all rights still available. The URL: http://duncanlong.com/preview/ […]

Here’s somewhat of a departure (pun intended – “All aboard!”). This has more emphasis on a mechanical figure rather than the human figure. The picture was pretty bland without the lighting and atmospheric effects; painting in the headlight and fog proved pretty fast and gives it a rather ominous feel, I think. (Horror book cover, […]