Book Cover Illustrations

Folks often ask if I use paints (or ink) to produce my book and magazine illustrations. Short answer: No. But I started as an actual painter and later as a pen-and-ink illustrator. But digital is so much cleaner and faster (plus there’s that undo key), that there’s just no contest between it and real paint. […]

I have a nice interview by Dara Girard about my book cover illustration work (as well as my writing and music); you can read it at the Novelists, Inc. Blog. The interview was a lot of fun and the result is one of those ego-boosting bits of recognition that artists seem to need in order […]

This was my weekend project — a speculative “book cover” that as yet doesn’t have a client interested in buying the illustration. But hopefully before too long it will find a buyer (and my experience has been that such artwork eventually finds a home — and I also have a whole lot of fun creating […]

Just thought I’d quickly post the finalized version of Joan of Arc (for Marcia Quinn Noren’s Joan of Arc: The Mystic Legacy). The key change from previous versions is in her hair. The razor-cut look I’d originally given her looked a bit too much like a punk (or to some goth) hairdo. After a whole […]

I recently landed a contract to do the book cover illustrations for a YA trilogy from Enslow Publishers, Inc. Written by Paul B. Thompson, the series is “The Brightstone Saga,” with the first book titled The Brightworking. The final cover is shown above. But it took three stabs before we arrived at it. The basic […]

Over the last week one of my book cover projects has been creating the cover for Joan of Arc: The Mystic Legacy by Marcia Quinn Noren. This carefully documented non-fiction book takes a new look at some of the history and experiences behind Joan of Arc. As such, it was important to take pains in […]

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 […]