Book Cover Illustrations

From time to time, I get the chance to create a book cover illustration of a historic character. This gets a little tricky because often the “historic” pictures of them are another ancient artist’s notion of what the character looked like — often incorporating elements that are in fashion or vogue within the culture and […]

One final installment (for a while) to show off some of my Dieselpunk artwork. The pictures in this post are all artwork created for Stephen Quayle’s Empire Beneath the Ice. Above is the “Dorn” aircraft that the Nazis were working on during the end of WWII (and rumored to have become operational following the war […]

Dieselpunk is a science fiction genre that’s recently gained in popularity. It’s not actually new — there are throwbacks here and there, with alternative timelines and the like in science fiction movies and books. But it’s new to many readers and movie goers who are running into it today. The Dieselpunk genre generally employs a […]

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 […]

On weekends I sometimes paint a “just for fun” piece that hopefully will be sold down the road. Here’s one of these, this one with a science fiction flavor with a nod toward the Garden of Eden. I’ve titled this illustration “Eve at Empire’s End.” ===================== Duncan Long loves to create book illustrations and even […]

Got an interesting email from self-publishing author John Backus about his new novel. The book has been meeting with amazing success. I find John’s experience interesting because it paints a picture of what I think the future of publishing is soon likely to be: Authors putting their own stories into print, then shepherding them to […]

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 […]

Sometimes a sketch for a book or CD cover illustration doesn’t work for the client; often this is more a matter of whether it fits into the needs or style the client is looking for at the moment rather than the merit of the idea itself. Which is why a seasoned illustrator springs several different […]

I have no complaint about the vast majority of my clients — with perhaps three exceptions over a decade or so. And these few bad eggs had song-and-dance routines shown in this video (below). For the rest of my customers (past and future), I hope you can enjoy a few laughs. For my fellow illustrators, […]

At least in the US, the “book return” policy of most large publishers is unlike anything in most other industries. The practice started in the Great Depression here in the US and made it possible for book sellers to sell books without fear of losing their money. It worked well in the 1930s, but has […]