Book Cover Illustrations

I’ve become a publishing “old timer.” Over the years, I have played on both sides of the publishing street, starting as a small publisher in the 1980s (using a fine-dot, dot matrix to print up copy for the books, no less) which I marketed by magazine ads. This went well and laid the ground work […]

Another of the B&W book illustrations I created for Victor Thorn’s upcoming book, Reality Bomb. The illustration is titled Forsake All Hope Ye Who Enter Here — with the phrase appearing in tiny print on one of the windows as well. ===================== Duncan Long is a freelance book illustrator who has done work for HarperCollins, […]

Second opinions can be good. They can also be disastrous. When it comes to second opinions, sometimes an illustrator’s clients can be the client’s own worse enemies. That’s the reason I always shudder when I hear a client start a statement with, “I asked my [son, secretary, neighbor] what they thought about the book illustration […]

I recently sold “Nuked” for use as the cover on John Backus’ post-apocalyptic adventure novel Hunter – After the Fall. I created this illustration a long time ago, and it has always been a (somewhat chilling) favorite, perhaps reflecting the fears of those of us who grew up at the tail end of the Cold […]

Here’s a “sneak peek” at the cover I finished last week for Roger St. Germain’s science fiction novel Escape from Certain. The project started out pretty straightforward, but seemed to run into several unexpected problems along the way (and it is only due to the patience of the author that I eventually worked through them). […]

Book cover illustration and cover design/layout for Dr. David Gelber’s soon-to-be-released Joshua and Aaron (Book Two in the series). In creating this cover, our first thrust was to offer a view of a human card player and only death’s hand and cards showing. Logically this made the most sense since readers tend to identify with […]

It’s usually easy to visualize what a book cover illustration should look like. And going into a project it’s always good to have an idea of what the outcome should be. Otherwise, like someone lost in the wilderness, you go in circles without positive results. However when followed too closely, a concept for an illustration […]

I’ve had the pleasure of creating the cover illustrations for the first two Stonewiser books (and am currently working on the third cover illustration). Written by Dora Machado, these books are technically fantasy novels, but have a bit more depth to them than is often seen with this genre. Machado’s extra work in crafting her […]

We live, the old Chinese curse supposedly goes, in “interesting times.” As is often the case in turbulent times, Christians tend to watch the skies wondering if perhaps, just perhaps, the End Times outlined in Revelation might be almost upon us. Some of my illustrations over the last decade involve scenes from the Bible, and […]

I recently had a student artist ask about the basic information needed to create a book cover illustration. The answer isn’t quite as simple as it might appear to be on the surface. There’s a lot that can go wrong in the process of creating a cover. The basics I need to know: cover size, […]