Book Cover Illustrations

Here’s the book cover for Carol Jackson’s Angel Unawares, A Novel. Carol works in a TV studio, and part of her story takes place in a studio, giving the reader some behind-the-scenes insights into the workings and politics of a station. The story is based in 1983, so with Carol’s guidance and excellent suggestions, I […]

The illustration above is for one of the projects we’ve been working this week. As you can see, this is the book cover artwork (with lettering) created for Lawrence P. White’s Spirit of Empire. series, this one titled Knights of the Chosen.. Here’s one of the early sketches which established the sky/ground pattern that would […]

Questions: How on earth do you get the intricacy of detail in your artwork? I understand how you could manage it with a fine brush or in pen-and-ink but how do you manipulate lines and curves? How do you get the gradations of color? I’m astonished, impressed, and intrigued simultaneously. Answers: All my illustrations are […]

Generally book covers result from a sketch or two, one of which strikes the publisher’s fancy, and from there the illustrator starts polishing the idea, working his magic to create the final book cover artwork. But there are projects where an seemingly endless number of ideas get tossed around before finally reaching the finish line. […]

I received word that Linda Franklin’s Rainbow In the Flames is now available at the author’s web site. Rainbow in the Flames is not only the touching survival story of young Jed Franklin’s courageous uphill battle, physically and emotionally, from a severe burn injury, but it also includes the struggle of his parents to relate […]

I’m slowly wrapping up what proved to be a huge book project: Illustrating and laying out Steve Quayle’s Angel Wars. Rather than creating only the cover illustration for the book (as is my normal assignment with book projects), I also did the graphic design and layout of the cover and all the inner pages as […]

The picture above is the final book cover illustration I created last week for movie-maker Stephen Biro’s upcoming horror novel Hellucination. (And, yes, I am finally getting work finished and hope to get back to my schedule this week — thankfully most of my customers are patient people.) This series of pictures below shows the […]

I received an email from James Day saying that some of my book cover artwork and magazine illustrations would be appearing at his Art of Day site. Day’s pages have turned into a promotional website for artists and illustrators with gallery owners (often checking it to discovered talented new artists to exhibit), as well as […]

I had a client call with an emergency need for a cover, so quickly got several sketches together today. One turned out so well that I went ahead and finished it, even though (I suspect) it’s likely low on the client’s choices. However I liked it, and so went ahead and finished it. The only […]

Over the weekend I had a short discussion with a friend about how very often a movie, article, or book can be improved by lopping off the first few paragraphs, pages, or minutes of film (depending on the medium). This is an old trick professional editors often employ to jump start an otherwise worthy creation. […]