Book Cover Illustrations

I often experiment with 3D characters that I build from base figures, modifying them extensively according to my whims. This generally gives me some insights into lighting as well as useful painting techniques when I import the renders into my paint program. Little by little I pick up new tricks and techniques for my illustration work — while having a lot of fun along the way.

This “Plant Woman” was created last Halloween, and comes complete with green chlorophyll skin, and strange veins that carry sap through her body.

From the front, she pretty human. But as the model is rotated, her pod-like head becomes evident:

I’m not sure where my plant woman will appear in print (or even if she ever will). But I’m betting she’ll eventually be an illustration for a science fiction magazine story or book cover.

In the meantime, I’ve had a little fun, and also have a 3D character waiting in the wings should she be needed for an art project.

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When not creating artwork of mysterious plant women, Duncan Long works as a freelance illustrator for a number of large and small presses, as well as self-publishing authors. You can see more of his artwork at: Duncan Long’s Book Art Gallery

I often take time off from my illustration work to hone my skills with various subjects. Often these are animals — or combinations of people and animal traits. Some will likely never be used for my book illustration work (like Miz Piggy, above, inspired by a phrase from the 1944 song “Swing from a Star” which told listeners, “You Might Grow Up to Be a Pig”). However, the more realistic animal experiments (like the three below) will most likely eventually find their way into a book or magazine to help illustration an article or story.

I start with a 3D model for each of these critters, posing and lighting the beast, and then saving this layout so I can quickly create a new render should I have need for the creature in a future project. The render of this model then is imported into my paint program where various refinements and details are added.

Back when I was regularly creating illustrations for the Sun and the Weekly World News tabloids, I always hoped I’d get a chance to create an illustration for the reoccurring story about “Bat Boy.” Sadly, that never happened and the two publications have since discontinued their long rain in supermarkets with their flamboyant headlines and wild stories. But had I had a chance to create such an illustration, my bat boy would have looked something like this:

I did get a chance to use a modification of my “water baby” created shown below. It went into Stephen Quayle’s Little Creatures book, which was full of the mythological stories from various cultures — including sections about supernatural beings including fairies and water babies.

Hopefully I’ll have a chance to use some of my other monstrosities as illustrations in more books or magazines. In the meantime, creating these demons or genetic-experiments-gone-wrong beings is a lot of fun — and sometimes a bit terrifying as well.

It’s also good exercise so I’ll be ready when some art director needing a weird illustration for a magazine or book phones and says, “I need something a little strange… Now don’t laugh but…”

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When not creating nightmare artwork for his own amusement and exercise, Duncan Long creates illustrations for book and magazines. You can see more of his artwork at Duncan Long’s Online Gallery of Book and Magazine Artwork.

I recently created an illustration (above) for my portfolio — or a book or magazine illustration should someone need such a picture. Given the odd combination of figures and background, it seems unlikely it will only be employed anywhere other than in my portfolio, though it is hard to say, especially given that once in a while an editor will use an odd piece of artwork as the basis of a story he asks an author to write.

And, yes, the dream-like qualities were skewered with a little humor by way of the “night mare” in the background.

To create the final picture, I first created a 3D model, experimenting with both the hair and skin tones. Here’s my first work with a single 3D model, duplicated and rendered with different colors for both the hair and skin.

Since 3D models can be rotated and posed, it is easy to render a model in various lighting and from various angles once it has been created. Here’s the same model with a more traditional “portrait” pose…

And here are a couple more with identical hair color/styles, but different skin tones. I decided for this project I preferred the left version for this project, and selected it for the final picture (at the top of this article).

The background and horse were generated as separate pictures along with a third of the model in a leather jacket, and then all were imported into my paint program as layers where the various features of all were greatly modified, lighting effects added, and so forth. Hours later, I had my vision of “London At Midnight.”

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Duncan Long is a magazine and book illustrator who likes to employ 3D modeling as the starting point for his artwork. He has created cover art for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, HarperCollins, Muse Magazine, Pocket Books, Amazing Stories Magazine, and many other presses and self-publishing authors. See more of his illustrations in his Art Portfolio.

When my book and magazine illustration project deadlines aren’t too pressing, I often take some “down time” to experiment and hone my skills. Yesterday was one such day. I created some characters that (hopefully) will eventually be used in future art projects. The digital painting above (and the two below) are three I created, experimenting with different facial and metallic textures that could be applied to the basic 3D model, as well as painting light effects, glows, and LED displays.

Once a 3D model like this is created, I can then pose it as needed, render the image, and export the rough version of the picture to my paint software to further modify and refine the image. One plus of using the 3D model is that it does away with the expense of hiring a human model and engage in a photo shoot (which is both time consuming and expensive). It also makes possible body shapes and clothing styles that would be impossible to duplicate in an actual photo shoot.  Basically, with the 3D modeling, I can “cut to the chase” to skip reference photos, instead posing my 3D figure(s) to render the basic layout for painting an illustration.

The two renders/paintings below use the same 3D model as the one above, only with different skin and metallic finishes (in the modeling software).

Now I’m all set for that next illustration project in need of a human-faced cyborg or space gal in a tight metal spacesuit. And in the meantime, I’ve honed my 3D modeling skills so I can work a little faster and smarter when creating artwork for my next book or magazine cover project.

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Duncan Long is a magazine and book illustrator who has done cover work for HarperCollins, Pocket Books, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Muse, Amazing Stories, and many other presses and self-publishing authors. See more of his illustrations in his Book and Magazine Art Portfolio.

For many self-publishers and new presses, the US Copyright Law in regard to who owns what rights to artwork can be confusing. Up front, let me note that while I’m no lawyer, I have been in the publishing business for about 30 years now, and have over a thousand illustrations in various books and magazines that have gone to print with publishers big and small. And I’ve signed a whole lot of contracts with publishers.

So here’s how I would boil down the book rights for those wanting to stay within the law: With the exception of “Work for Hire” (which applies if you’re running a big publishing operation and have in-house artists you’ve provided a studio for, paying into Social Security for them, etc.), artwork becomes copyrighted the moment it is created and all rights to it belong to the artist under current US law. To protect the copyright, the artist may wish to register your work with the US Copyright Office. But whether he does or not, he owns all the rights to whatever he creates.

Because the creator of artwork owns all the rights to it, he can license some or all of those rights to his clients. These rights can be “split” any number of ways; the artist might sell exclusive book cover rights to a publisher, sell the t-shirt rights to someone else, and maybe license the picture for use in a magazine article.

On the flip side, if you purchase limited rights from an artist, you can legally only use it for a limited purpose. If you think you might have a market among fans for t-shirt, mugs, etc., then you’d want to buy not only the book cover rights from the artist, but also these other rights. All of these can be (and should be) spelled out in a contract between you and the artist so you know exactly what you can use the artwork for once you’ve paid for it.

There are some strange twists to this. For example, if you buy a painting at a gallery, you can hang the picture in your home, sell it to another buyer, and so forth. But — here’s the twist — you don’t automatically own the rights to use it as a book illustration just because you own the physical painting. Under US Copyright Law, the artist retains those rights even if he’s sold you his painting. So you can’t just buy a painting and then use that for a book cover. You must pay for the book cover rights as well.

Obviously a contract is key because how the rights are licensed can be spelled out in a contract. If you fail to use a contract, generally courts are going to rule in favor of the creator of the work. That means if you pay an artist for a book cover illustration, you’ll only secure the right to use the artwork on your book cover — but will have no other rights, even if you thought you did. If it isn’t in writing, courts will assume you only paid for the minimum number of rights.

Obviously if care isn’t taken, a self publisher or small press can get into hot water in a hurry. Always be sure you have rights secured before you use them.

For a more detailed look at the ins and outs of book cover illustration rights and licensing, check out these articles:

Copyright Law and the American Artist

The Cover Artist/Illustrator Contract.

Glossary of Book Cover Illustration Contract Terms

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See Duncan Long’s book cover artwork portfolio here: Duncan Long’s Book Cover Portfolio.

The last couple of weeks, during my free time, I’ve been updating my art portfolio with an eye toward gaining some new clients needing book cover and magazine illustrations and/or an agent (the “which” of the two being up in the air at the moment).

These are a few of my reworkings/updates/new pieces that will likely go into my final portfolio.

Or not.

It’s a winnowing process.

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You can see more of my book and magazine illustrations — as well as artwork that may end in my portfolio — at Duncan’s Online Gallery.

I recently had the priveledge of designing the layout and creating the cover illustration for R. L. Gray’s science fiction novel, Paradox, which is book two in the author’s Ming Realities series. Like the first book, the art for this one features a stylized star nebula. The trick with such a picture is to make it realistic, yet allow the viewer to recognize some element in the picture which wouldn’t be there in real life.

In this case, we used the “Cat’s Eye Nebula” (NGC 6543) as a starting point. After painting the starfield and dust to pretty much match the real thing, I then took the name to its logical extreme, painting a cat’s eye right in the center of the nebula.

The author also wanted an aurora borealis effect blending into the starfield; this is tricky because of the colors generally seen in the Northern Lights: red and green. These don’t readily blend with either real paint or its digital paint without problems. Also, there’s the danger of viewer confusing the aurora borealis with the nebula itself rather than seeing it as an effect within a planet’s skies.

The first problem was dealt with by being very careful to avoid blending the reds and greens in the aurora borealis area. Bringing the effect to the planet’s atmosphere was accomplished by adding tree silhouettes at the ground level, which had the added plus of permitting a black background on the lower portion of the picture for letting to appear over, while still giving the illusion that the view was from the surface of a planet.

Here’s the result of all this:

Since this is the second book in the Ming series, the next hurtle was to make the general layout match that of the first book. Here’s that first cover that the second had to match up to:

As first glance, it would seem simple to make the second cover layout match the first: Just replace the picture, change the names, and voila, mission accomplished.

Only…

The title of the new book is much longer than the very short “MING” of the first. So things rapidly get complicated if the front lettering of each book is to remain close to the same size.

One fortunate happenstance was that when working on the first book, I had put extra space between the lettering of the title so it didn’t become extremely large/tall on that first cover. So simply having regular spacing with the second got things into the neighborhood. I bought a little more space by using lower-case capitals after the initial full-size letter of “Paradox.” This matched the same effect used for the author’s name so it didn’t look out of place, while also giving the illusion of taller letters thanks to the height of the “P” (had I to do over, I probably would have used a capital “X” at the end of the title for a little more height illusion — especially since the “O” and “X” nestle together so well).

Since a “paradox” suggests things that aren’t quite normal, I played on that idea a little and narrowed the title a bit more by overlapping the “D” and “O.”

All these tricks bought me just enough space; while the second title lettering is still shorter than that of book one, it’s close enough that the two don’t seem at odds with each other.

The text on the back cover was also a bit of a problem since the word counts weren’t identical, even though the author came close. Fortunately, modern layout software permits “fudging” with the vertical spacing (leading) between lines as well as the width of letters and the space between them. The author’s photo was cropped/sized to make it nearly identical in the space it occupies to the original photo on book one, with a little juggling of the “about the author” blurb to make things fit. Finally, the logo, press info, and bar code box all were the same on each book, thereby helping make the entire back covers appear more identical at a quick glance.

And so…  the final layout of book two in the Ming Realities series:

You can learn more about R. L. Gray and the Ming Realities at RobinGray.com.

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Duncan Long is a graphic artist and illustrator who creates covers for many science fiction and fantasy novels. You can see more of his book cover designs and art in his Book Artwork Portfolio.

I recently updated my collection of science fiction, adventure, and horror short stories, Lightning War and Other Tales of Wonder” (available in print and Kindle formats at Amazon.com). It already had some artwork in it, and I decided to replace some and add a few more. Since I didn’t want to spring for color pages, these new illustrations were all grayscale (or “black and white”).

Black and white pictures can be powerful. But to work, the drawings need to be simple with little or no background clutter. Done right, they will have a real impact that is often missing from color art in a book.

Here are some of the new drawings (which are supplemented by many of the originals that were in the first printing of this book).

You can purchase a copy of Lightning War and Other Tales of Wonder” as well as read a portion of the book at Amazon.com).

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See more of Duncan Long’s book illustrations at his Online Gallery.

I had the pleasure of creating a cover illustration and layout for William Scott Morrison’s new novel Luck of the Draw. Morrison has been writing short stories and songs for many years. His second novel, Luck of the Draw, is a story about the 1960s.

Based on two men who have a much different experience in the 1960s, we see their experiences all stem from either having a high draft number, or a low number. One one with a low number goes to Vietnam to fight, while the other stays in the US, pretty much free to do as he pleases.

For those unfamiliar with how the draft worked during the Vietnam War era, large “pills” had numbers in them. These numbers were selected more or less randomly to match up with calender days. Those young men of draft age who had a low number associated with their birthday were the first to be drafted into service and, since the nation was at war, the often found themselves on the front lines in combat. Those with higher numbers were less apt to be drafted, with those on the highest end of the scale living basically a worry free existence during this time of free love, hippies, and drugs that comprised much of the 1960s for those of college age.

Obviously since the story revolved around the notion of the draft numbers the two main characters of the novel had, it (seemingly) made perfect sense to all involved in this book cover project to have the cover illustration be of the big plastic bowl of numbers, with the arm of Uncle Sam reaching in to pick a capsule with a number inside, perhaps with some icons of the war and the 1960s such as Huey helicopters, an electric guitar, etc.

That sounded like the way to go.

And after a number of sketches here’s the cover artwork and layout that I had to present to the author:

As is often the case, this “everything but the kitchen sink” approach proved less than satisfactory. We tried moving this element there, that one here…  adding and subtrating… nothing seemed to work.

Eventually, we parred down the picture by removing many of the nonessential elements, leaving only the hand, jar, and capsules.

Here’s that result:

It was not a very compelling picture. But even worse — much worse — those unfamiliar with the process of selecting draft numbers during the 1960s mistook the capsules for some sort of pill that would choke a horse. Yikes! This definitely was not what the author wanted would-be readers to “see.”

At this point, I think everyone was about ready to throw in the towel. In my experience, it’s usually best when a dead end is reached, to start over rather than try to save the original concept. A turkey will never soar like an eagle, no matter how much more time you spend on him. A new concept, or even a new artist, needs to be trotted out and everything in the original book cover concept either tossed or greatly modified.

I’d been kicking around an idea of a Vietnam War vintage helmet on an M16 rifle from the start of the project, and had even suggested maybe that was the way to go before we finally launched into the picture of the bowl and capsules. I felt a vintage helmet and rifle symbolized the loss of brave soldiers in this war, as well as what the antiwar movement was centered around (with — let’s face it — many not wanting to go to war because they expected to be maimed or killed). Additionally, many of the troops in Vietnam actually drew peace signs on the camouflage covers of their helmets, making it possible to remain historically correct while connecting both the peace movement and the war in one picture.

So I went back to the drawing board, created this picture, and sent it to the author. “Would something like this work?”

This time, the basic concept met with favor. So we were back in the game.

Traditionally green covers are avoided in the publishing industry. Even though I’ve never seen an actually study, many think that green covers don’t sell well, so you almost never see a green cover on a book. So we needed to head a different way with the color.

Additionally, Scott wanted a more realistic sky in the background (these were pretty easy to modify since I was “painting” digitally with the various elements on separate layers of the picture. After a bit of tinkering, we eventually arrived at a picture that had a more realistic sky plus some “Huey” helicopters and other elements.

Here’s the book cover picture we finally arrived at:

So, after a very circuitous journey, we finally arrived at the proper cover illustration for a novel about the 1960s in America.

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Duncan Long creates book cover illustrations for a number of small presses, indie publishers, and major imprints with HarperCollins, Pocket Books, and others. You can explore more of the covers he’s created for novel and non-fiction books at Duncan Long’s Online Gallery.

I love creating weird and monstrous creatures and characters. Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of making a number, often with the added plus of allowing me to imagine helping authors and editors scare the socks off readers. I thought I’d show off a few of my recent experiments in this post (and should note that most have NOT appeared in print, and thus available for use in a book or magazine).

Generally my art is created around a 3D model which can be easily posed with lighting effects adjusted to bring it to its best and most dramatic appearance, and then I paint the picture (digitally for faster work and easier delivery to the press). That means if you see a creature here that isn’t quite right in its look or pose for your story, it’s easily modified to create the look you need.

So…  If you need a creature for a novel or magazine illustration, please feel free to contact me for more information. I love creating monsters and weird beings, and I’d like to help you bring them to life for your story.

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When not trying to scare the socks off folks with his illustrations, Duncan Long works as a freelance graphic artist, creation art for books and magazines. You can see more of his art at his Duncan Long’s Illustration Portfolio.