Book Cover Illustrations

When I was a kid, the light pollution from mercury vapor lamps on farms as well as street lights from nearby urban areas wasn’t too bad yet, and we could sit in our backyard, look up, and see the Milky Way in the night time sky along with innumerable closer stars. We even spotted a […]

Over the last couple of years, I’ve shifted from the (digital) painting of figures for book and magazine illustrations to employing 3D models in-house which I then use as references for painting the book cover figure. The big plus of the 3D modeling is that I don’t have to start over should a client say, […]

Sometimes I discover a variety of tidbits that aren’t quite enough for a blog entry, but which I suspect will be of interest to those connected to the publishing industry. So… Authors can now autograph their Kindlel ebooks for fans — via KindleGraph. Authors may sign onto the service via Twitter accounts or set up […]

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. […]

The growing number of self-published authors and small presses has been fretted over by many in the publishing industry. Their fear/argument has been that in the past big publishers acted as gatekeepers to preserve the quality of books. They rejected poorly written work and maintained the quality of books being produced — so the argument […]

I was conversing with a fellow graphic designer recently and mentioned how today we enjoyed the many benefits of DTP (desktop publishing). The designer was somewhat taken aback (with good reason – as noted below). And I realized that the term DTP is almost never used any more, having slowly vanished from the lexicon of […]

Even though this is a blog about book cover illustration, the ebook seems to be taking the publishing world by storm (at least in talk if not in sales) and thus it seems appropriate to express my own personal experience with these devices. Recently the ebook reader market has heated up, with at least three […]