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 […]

For many self-publishing authors, sales have tanked due to the huge number of authors, and the fact that many are giving away their products to get a higher “sales” position (arguably 50 percent of zero is zero). One way many authors have employed to get their books above the maddening crowd of mediocre, self published […]

Dragons, like the water dragon above (about to snatch a pair of pirates), are not easy to paint. Their complexity makes an artist devise painting shortcuts and hone his skill. And while dragons may be mythical creatures, everyone seems to have a pretty specific idea of what they should look like. And if the artwork […]

Lately, I’ve been employing 3D character creation for realistic book cover and magazine illustrations — sort of “photographs of the impossible.” The obvious big plus here is that I can offer the realism of a photo while creating art that would be impossible (or very expensive) to photograph. This process of creating science fiction book […]

I’ve spent the last few days creating illustrations for the fun of creating them. As such, they don’t have “homes” yet on the cover of a book or magazine — but I’m hoping they will soon. Even if they don’t have the fortune of gracing a cover, the plus is that I have a lot […]

The Kindle version of Anthony Pacheco’s science fiction novel The Wælcyrie Murders is now available for pre-order from Amazon. The ebook will be available on January 30, 2015. The Wælcyrie Murders is book two in the Lexus Toulouse science fiction/mystery series. Here’s a bit about the plot: Out of the Gifford-Pinchot Forest stumbles a wælcyrie, […]

I was happy to learn several of my illustrations have been featured in the “For Writers: Publishing Tips and News” section at EveryWriterSource.com. The pictures are also slated to appear in its magazine. (If you’re an author, note that the electronic version of the magazine is available for free, and is a great source of […]

The third book in Stuart Jaffe’s Max Porter paranormal mystery series is now out. The mystery Southern Belle can be found at Amazon in both Kindle and print formats. There were several interesting challenges in creating this book cover illustration. Foremost was the need to make it appear similar to the previous two book illustrations […]

I recently had the pleasure of creating the book cover illustration and layout for Anthony Pacheco’s novel Wælcyrie Murders, the second book in the Lexus Toulouse science fiction mystery series. Here’s the blurb that sets up the story: “Out of the Gifford-Pinchot Forest stumbles a wælcyrie, shot with irradiated bullets, and radiation poisoned unto death. […]

Creating the cover for Kerry D. King’s novel HIM was one of those journeys that seemed to take those involved into several different worlds, each prettier than the last. Based on actual events that happened in 1974, the book has a magical view of the world and, as such, needed a somewhat mystical or even […]