Book Cover Illustrations

A character sketch created for the book cover I’m working on for Suzy Dingle’s YA novel Shamazan. We needed a “girl next door” look – and hopefully this works for that.

The book cover itself is proving challenging due to the variety of light/dark areas, including a glowing liquid. Getting everything to work is a juggling act – and a lot of fun with a lot of surprises and experimenting along the way.

Hopefully I’ll have a cover layout or two for this title that I can share before too long.

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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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I recently wrote a small article for Dr. Shelley Carson’s blog page.

For those unfamiliar with Dr. Carson, she teaches an award-winning (and very popular) course “Creativity: Madmen, Geniuses, and Harvard Students” at Harvard.

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure to exchange emails with her, discussing how my various experiences have influenced my own creativity. Needless to say, I’ve gained some useful insights (and perhaps she’s gained more insight into the “madmen” side of creativity along with a few stories for her class presentations).

My article addresses how one of my book illustrations (for the cover of Lead Me Not Into Temptation by Dale Allan) recently influenced my outlook on life. The entry has also picked up some interesting comments.

So, hopefully of interest… Here’s the link: Your Creative Brain: Duncan Long

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When not serving as an example of madness and creativity, Duncan Long labors as a freelance magazine and book artist for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book artwork at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Some in the art community fear that Washington DC politicians may cut funding to the arts (NEA, etc.) in an effort to get the budget in check.

My take?

Please make the cuts.

Right to the bone.

Every April 14th I send the IRS a big chunk of my earnings. Probably you do, too. I personally would like an end to funding the arts with tax money (and ditto with the many, many, many other boondoggles) so I might keep just a little more of my own cash and “fund” myself or give to the charity of my choice.

This would cut out the leaching middle man, put money into the pockets of people producing something the public wants to buy rather than to cronies of those ladling out the funds, and avoid forcing people to contribute to projects they may be morally opposed to.

What’s so wrong with that?

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When not grumping about high taxes, Duncan Long labors to get enough capital to pay the IRS. As a freelance magazine and book illustrator, his work has appeared in publications from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See Long’s magazine and book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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A book cover illustration and layout that I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks for Dr. David Gelber’s non-fiction book Behind the Mask.

The colors in the illustration were a little tricky since normally hospital surgeries are well lit in spotless white environments — which dictated either boxing a whitish picture in a dark frame or making a white cover, either of which didn’t give the cover the richness that was needed.

Finally I tried making the doctor and surgical area light with a black background and a beam of light illuminating the area. Somehow (and against all logic) this works and opened the way for the rich black cover that we needed. Employing an attractive typeface (Saboni) with its nice contrasting italic set created the finishing touch with the design.

All proving that with book design, nothing is easy or necessary logical. But with results like this, it sure is a joy when the destination is reached. And working with clients who appreciate good design when they see it certainly helps as well.

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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Dr. Shelley Carson has been researching creativity for some years now, and we often exchange emails. She recently asked me to write a small comment on how some of my artwork had influenced me on a personal level — and this is the result.

The artwork is the illustration I created for Dale Allan’s novel Lead Me Not Into Temptation. After creating the illustration, it had a rather profound influence over me.

Hopefully the short article will prove interesting to others rather than being a simple exercise in artistic narcissism.

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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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In creative endeavors, you often submitting to contests, agents, or publishers. More often than not, your work is rejected.

That’s the moment that separates the pros from the amateurs. Many a good writer or artist falls to the wayside after a few rejections. And the truth is quite simple: If you don’t submit what you’re doing to publishers or somehow put it in front of the public (with a web site, self published title, or the like) you’ll never gain a following.

The idea that the world beats a path to your door if you event the better mousetrap might once have been true (but I doubt it); it for sure is no longer truth. There is competition out there and if you don’t display your work and get it in front of potential buyers, they’ll simply buy the inferior work of someone who has got their attention.

If you hide your light under a bushel, no one will see it shining.

Here’s a trick that might help you: If you assume that you’ll have X number of rejections before winning the contest or getting published, then you can view each rejection as one step closer to your goal. See each rejection as part of the process that will get you to where you want to be. Don’t let it discourage you; let it be an encouragement.

Keep submitting to whatever market might be interested in your work.

Fight the good fight. Finish the course. Eventually you’ll realize your dream.

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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Theodora Goss recently posted an interesting entry on her blog “On Beauty.” She explores the idea of beauty and how our perceptions of beauty tend to follow mathematical fractal patterns found in nature.

This reminded me of some very different experiments using software to create “beauty” by combining facial characteristics from a number of photos. The result was an “average” of the various faces. And experimenting with such composite photos, researchers find that the more averaging is done, the more “beautiful” the results are for most people looking at the photos.

This suggests (to me at least) that most of us have a hardwired “picture” or icon in our minds that we compare to any given real face. The closer the face to that hardwired icon, the more beautiful is our perception of it.

This is also how the old trick of taking pictures of women through gauze or lens smeared with Vasoline works; their features become less pronounced — averaged — and they appear more attractive. Likewise digital artists now arm themselves with plugins that add a little light scatter to photos, blurring things in a special way to create a “beauty shot.”

Makeup often also “averages” a face. Thus it’s often possible to transform a person from so-so to beautiful with careful use of makeup. You’ll see this with photos of actresses with and without their makeup.

And plastic surgery tends to work toward that golden average we have in our brains.

The result is that all beautiful people tend to look alike to some extent. Thus the growing tendency of Hollywood actors to be both beautiful while all looking somewhat alike — sometimes to the point that viewers of movies now have trouble distinguishing one actress or actor from the next. As the averaging takes place, they become both more beautiful and more alike.

Sadly it appears that the hardwired ideal can be bent by fashion or experiences.

Or perhaps that’s a good thing.

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When not contemplating his beauty, Duncan Long works as a professional freelance magazine and book illustrator for many self-publishing authors as well as larger presses including HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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One of the first steps of creating a book cover illustration is generally making several sketches for the client to inspect, hopefully starting the process toward the final cover layout. During this time, I often create one or more pictures that are rejected while another course is pursued toward the concept that will become the actual cover illustration.

The illustration above is one such “reject” (created yesterday). I liked it enough that I went ahead and fleshed it out a bit to become a more or less complete illustration on its own.

At one time I would have felt bad about having a concept like this rejected. No more. The work is good exercise that helps hone and polish skills. And often these pictures will eventually find a home with a client that sees them as an ideal picture for use in their project, so they help pay the bills as well.

So illustrations like this, though initially homeless orphans, are worth the effort in the long run.

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Duncan Long is a professional magazine and book illustrator whose work has appeared on the covers of publications from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his magazine and book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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This is a very old illustration I did years back – which recently caught the eye of a fan (and so the posting on the off chance that others might enjoy it). It’s titled “Works Without Faith” — a sort of twist of the Bible quote about “faith without works.” I figured that idea was a sort of two way street, I guess, and either way things were dead.

It is interesting that the skeleton has become symbolic of death, given that each of us carries one without our body. Perhaps a sort of ticking time bomb that we try to forget much as we do our metronome heart that relentlessly propels us closer to the grave, one thump at a time.

Artwork dies as well. Very few of my early works have stood the test of time. At their birth they seemed lovely; I had the blind eye that a parent turns toward an ugly child; proverbial babies that only a father could love. But over time I have discarded much of my early work with only a few of the best (which I hope this is) remaining on display. The lesser are buried with little or no mourning, best forgotten.

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When not twisting passages of scripture to fit his bizzare notions, When not twisting passages of scripture to fit his bizarre notions, Duncan Long is a professional magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Last week’s book cover project involved creating an illustration and titling for Duane Kolilis’ novel Henshin. Since the book will initially be released in Kindle format, we had two concerns: That the picture look good at the lower resolution of the Kindle (which is about a third of a print picture of the same size), and that it look good on screens showing only gray-scale while also still looking good in color.

This caused several false starts with our original cover concept which was to have an illustration that showed the whole body of the main figure in the story. The result was dramatic, but didn’t translate into grayscale well, lost a lot of detail in the reduction to the size needed for Kindle, and the butterfly (a key element in the story) was lost altogether in the reduction or had to be placed in odd places making the layout a nightmare.

After a little disenchantment with what my results were, I went back to the old drawing board and created a new concept sketch with just the central elements of the story: The hand of the character dressed mummy like in rags, a Bowie knife, and the butterfly motif — the latter placed into the background like some ancient stencil on a wall.

I felt it worked and showed it to the author who loved it. Best of all, it should translate well into both the Kindle format as well as a print cover should the publisher decide to go that route. (Please note that the book cover illustration above is the print version of the title; the Kindle version of the book cover has slightly different dimensions to accommodate the screen of the ebook reader.)

So… another interesting and challenging illustration project completed with happy results. On to the next. I love this job.
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Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors, including those creating Kindle versions of their title. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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