Book Cover Illustrations

Leonardo da Vinci once noted that “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” In the digital age, that might be modified to, “Art is never finished, only stored forever.” Or maybe not. At any rate, this is one of my digital paintings that seems never to have been finished. It started as an exercise in creating [...]

Another “book cover illustration exercise” done last weekend for entertainment — and hopefully to either inspire the commission of a book cover illustration or even to serve as a book illustration should it match an author’s vision of a story in search of artwork. Or maybe some concept art or a character design. At any [...]

A “just for fun” piece I did over the weekend; a good demo of concept art and/or a book cover illustration (and, yes, all rights are still available as I write this). Since the cloaked figure is supposed to be traveling (through deep space) incognito, I placed the figure on the left, causing it to [...]

Two nice things about digital illustrations are that the artwork can be stored easily, and that it can also be reworked very easily. For someone who’s going through a decade-long “learning curve” (like — uh, ME!) this makes it possible to go back to concepts that were good, but not executed too well, and revise [...]

This is the concept art I did to create the background for my Tree Clan illustration. Actually, it’s two or three sketches combines… First, I got the sky figured out, then a separate layer forming the tree-like structures and bridges, another for the small figures standing on the structure (useful for giving it some “scale” [...]

Concept art can take a variety of forms, but basically it’s a sketch an artist creates to give a customer (or 3D designer) an idea of what is needed in the final product, be it book cover, game character, or movie scene (or character). Concept art is of necessity quickly done. And that rapid turnaround [...]

As can likely be seen by studying some of my previous posts, I’ve been working on creating “starscapes” of cultures that might (in a science fiction sort of way) exist far from Earth. This is my latest exercise (and another book cover illustration without a home) that I hope will eventually be employed for a [...]

While most of my bread-and-butter work comes from creating magazine artwork and book cover illustrations these days, I occasionally still write and also create CD covers. The picture above is this week’s project, for a CD album produced for a Christian band led by Mario Moreno. A small band of angels may be added to [...]

I’m continuing to work on my black and white illustration techniques and thought I’d post some of my latest undertakings. A few are modifications of old work that was originally in color; others are new. While these are likely to appear in magazines or at web sites, I am hoping they may make their way [...]

Space surfing… Riding the wake of energy released from a ship dropping out of hyperspace… Doubtful physics, but fun to think about what such a surf board might look and how it would need to have its own (here invisible) bubble of gravity and atmosphere. I went ahead and gave it the ability to conform [...]