Book Cover Illustrations

One of last week’s projects consisted of a re-working of the cover of Lawrence P. White’s novel. The new book is actually two books combined into one, giving readers a two-fer when they buy it. The original title (now the first half of the new book) was Spirit of Empire. That became the subtitle with […]

I’ve been using TinEye the last few days to discover folks using my artwork online without permission. This is a handy little search engine that compares similarities between pictures. If I find sites using my work without permission, I then write a take-down notice, ask the user to credit me for the artwork, or whatever […]

While it’s good to keep up on what the latest trends in book cover design and artwork may be (to avoid some of the cliches if nothing else), looking to the past for inspiration is often a fruitful exercise. Penguin recently made this a little easier to do by posting a wonderful collection of the […]

I got a nice little review and the display of some of my book illustrations and book artwork in the current issue of the ezine Writing Raw. It’s a little disconcerting working with an online publication. With print it often takes months for something to be published. With an ezine, I send the pictures and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

A few months ago I posted the Evil Tooth Fairy, so it seemed only fair to post a Wicked Santa. I doubt there’ll be a Savage Easter Bunny — but perhaps. ===================== When not destroying children’s idols, Duncan Long labors as a professional magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, […]

Yesterday’s work. As usual, potential book artwork waiting to be purchased for a book cover illustration or inner artwork in a book — or for use as a CD album cover, poster, or what have you. The fun thing about creating illustrations for my own enjoyment is that I never know where they will eventually […]

Yet another book illustration from my newly illustrated version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death — which can be downloaded for free from Datafilehost (in PDF format). I’ve also created the book illustrations for two other free ebooks: Poe’s “Eleonora” and “The Raven.” Feel free to share all three books with your […]