Book Cover Illustrations

This is the preliminary cover illustration I did with red lettering for the title (which, tentatively, is the final version of the cover — all things subject to change in publishing) for Dale Allan’s upcoming mystery novel Lead Me Not Into Temptation.

For a closer look at what sort of symbolism/thought went into the layout of the illustration, as well as a slightly different version of the cover illustration, please see my earlier post.

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When not contemplating how to add hidden meaning to book illustrations, Duncan Long paints book illustrations for many small presses and self publishers as well as Pocket Books, HarperCollins, Fort Ross, PS Publishing, Solomon Press, ISFiC Press, and ILEX. You can see more of his book artwork at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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This is the preliminary cover illustration I’ve created for Dale Allan’s upcoming mystery novel Lead Me Not Into Temptation.

We tried to capture the conflict in one of the key scenes in the book, in which a priest is faced with the moral dilemma of whether to take matters into his own hands, and perhaps take a life. To convey these opposing moral forces, I created a number of “conflicts” within the picture.

Obviously the gun in the hands of a man of peace is the first.

Beyond that, other conflicts are the “warmth” of love against the cold, snowy backdrop, the shadow of a cross where one might expect the shadow of the gun, and the priest in the shadows rather than in the light (Christianity identifying light with goodness and shadows with evil).

I also created a devil-like tail from the wind-blown sash and the blowing snow in the background reflects the moral storm raging within the priest.

At least that’s the theory behind it all.

The final cover version of the illustration will likely have the blue toned down a bit and the priest’s face will have more of a pained, questioning look rather than looking angry as in this version (which is hard to see at this resolution). We’ll probably have a splash of red lettering for the title.

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When not contemplating how to add hidden meaning to book illustrations, Duncan Long paints book illustrations for many small presses and self publishers as well as Pocket Books, HarperCollins, Fort Ross, PS Publishing, Solomon Press, ISFiC Press, and ILEX. You can see more of his book artwork at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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The “Woman Clothed With the Sun” is one of the few book illustrations I’ve been hired to do that didn’t go to print.

The idea for the picture comes from Revelation 12:1 “A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” The picture was one of a series of illustrations that were to appear in a Bible commentary.

While the illustration wasn’t used in the book I did it for, I retained all the rights and it now is often used as a PowerPoint slide for church presentations.

And perhaps one day it will make its way into a book.

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Duncan Long creates book illustrations for books covering a variety of subjects, from religious to fiction genres like mysteries and science fiction. Presses he has produced book illustrations for include HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See Long’s book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Got my artist’s copy of Science Fiction Art Now yesterday and have spent some time with it.

It’s one beautiful “coffee table book,” and covers the wide open territory of great science fiction. It’s a joy to have my illustrations included be in it. About the only downside is that with all the fantastic artists represented in the book, there comes that terrible feeling that I’ve somehow sneaked into somewhere that I don’t belong. It’s that strange fear captured (somewhat in its inversion) by Groucho Marx when he said, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

Inside many of us there’s a fearful child pretending to be the grownup, playing at being the cowboy, firefighter, or, in my case, the professional illustrator.

The only cure I’ve found is to look at my artwork in its best light, and hope the editor (John Freeman) was right in his assessment of my five illustrations when he deemed them fit to include in the title.

(You can see my four illustrations here, here, and here.)

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When not agonizing over how he made the cut, illustrator Duncan Long creates book artwork for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. You can find his book artwork at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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“Elfin Dreams In Autumn” is an old painting, but seems suitable for this time of the year.

All rights are currently available including book cover illustration and magazine artwork rights.

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When not racking leaves with the hope of uncovering an elf, Duncan Long creates magazine and book illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, Ballistic Media, The Sun, and many other book and magazine publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations and other artwork at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Normally I don’t feel too sorry for any woes heaped upon critics, short of seeing them step off the curb to be hit by a bus.

However art critic Brian Sherwin has started a series of blogs offering insight on what artists do in an effort to bully, browbeat, or entice critics to give them good reviews. As such, these eye-opening blog posts are worth reading for anyone in the arts, whether singer, artist, or writer.

Two of the posts are already online with more to follow.

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When not throwing stones at critics, Duncan Long creates magazine and book illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Ballistic 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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I’ve been working on a space illustration for the top back of a science fiction novel. This is one of the “exercises” I did to develop a faster way to create both planets as well as the detail on a spaceship to make it look more like the surface of something that might have been in space a while, and perhaps cobbled together and repaired in a haphazard way over time.

In this case, we’re somewhere off Deimos.

Realistic moon pictures are tricky for science fiction book illustrators because there’s no atmosphere to give visual cues of distance. That means things have to be set up so the viewer “sees” things at the size they’re expecting from all the sci-fi movies as well as NASA pictures and such that comprise the viewer’s “experiences” in space. But things are tricky at best and when the picture includes a small moon like Deimos, there’s really no way to properly offer a visual cue. At least not until we become aware of this tiny moon’s relative size and positioning to Mars — and approaching space ships.

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When not piloting spaceships off Deimos, Duncan Long paints magazine and book illustrations 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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Most people have never heard of BiblioBazaar. Yet it’s a company that has quietly been building a book catalog of hundreds of thousands of books — with 272,930 new titles last year. It coverts public domain titles into ebook and POD (print on demand) formats. BiblioBazaar’s strategy is to seel just a few of each title, but to have hundreds of thousands of titles available for purchase.

The concept of a catalog of several hundred thousand titles and selling only a few of each title is interesting and may prove a model for the future of the publishing industry. Amazon.com is already doing this with many of its titles and one has to wonder if big publishers may follow this model with their out-of-print titles in the future.

Read more about BiblioBazaar here.
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Duncan Long is a freelance book cover illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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The tears in rain scene from Blade Runner is both profound and moving.

The lines themselves aren’t so powerful without the delivery of actor Rutger Hauer – who apparently improvised by adding the “tears in rain” part to his lines (a stroke of genius if ever there was one). His lines in the movie:

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.

Beyond being a good example of what acting and science fiction movies should be, this scene taps into a great fear of human existence: Being forgotten after death. It is a theme we hear throughout literature from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when Mark Anthony tells the crowd that the good a man does is often “interred with his bones” to much of Woody Allen’s work which seems geared to the fear of death and becoming lost. As Allen noted, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying.”

I have to wonder how many of us in the arts really are at least in part motivated to create in order to say, “I was here. This is a little part of what I was”?

You can see this fear and hope in the “Singularity” (the nerd’s version of the Christian Rapture, some have suggested), life extension, and even NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center Academy which is attempting to preserve the lifetime experiences and knowledge of NASA senior scientists and engineers who are retiring. All have elements of the fear of having one’s experiences lost like tears in rain.

In the end, most of us understand our knowledge, feelings, and hopes will, upon death, be swallowed up and lost. It seems the only relief to this fear is the dark comedy of Woody Allen and others, a hope in an afterlife, and the ability to leave behind small tokens to remind people that we once walked the planet.

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When not agonizing over philosophy and the meaning of creativity, Duncan Long works as a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Here’s the back cover illustration for A. J. Vega’s science fiction adventure A. I. Offspring.

Interestingly enough, the spaceship design was created by the author who has no small talent as an artist (just don’t tell him or he’ll start doing his own cover illustrations).

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When not dreaming of piloting spaceships, Duncan Long is a freelance magazine and book illustrator for fantasy and science fiction novels. His work has appeared on book covers from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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