Thanks to the blog posts, I was contacted about a previous piece being used for an educational book cover. I took the opportunity to update the picture digitally for this purpose. I added a different hat and a better version of the pistol. I have only had a few pieces be repurposed but it is always interesting to see how they are used differently. Additionally, it was fun to get the book delivery months after I had forgotten about it. My sons were the most excited though.
The books can be picked up at Capstone Publishing and Barnes And Noble.
Another Recorded Books Cover found in my old Portfolio. I cannot remember the series that I worked on. Only that the Detective's initials are B B. I do not remember too much about this one, except for that with this one, I was trying to work in reverse. I made everything really dark and started working the highlights out with colored pencil. Some quick airbrushing and it was done.
Yet another Recorded Books Cover. As with most of these covers, I just knocked them out as quickly as possible. They did not receive the same attention as other pieces may have most of the time due to the time constraints as well as the pay. Still it was nice to have those filter in every now and then. This was the image that was mentioned in the Vampire Recorded Books Cover Piece. Now the piece shown here is not what was on the back of that piece. The underdrawing/underpainting was on the back of the vampire illustration. What I ended up doing on this piece was doing a quick pencil sketch drawing and then laying down a wash of gouache of purple. I used water to pick of the highlights and then I was done with that. From there I just scanned the piece into the computer and colorized it. It was pretty much my first time doing that technique and served as the guide for how I would approach traditional and digital combination illustrations in the future.
This was another Recorded Books cover. Or at least it was originally used as a Recorded Books Cover. I cannot remember the title, but was a vampire related book. At this size it is hard to see that he has fangs. I guess I should have supersized the fangs. The original did not have the veining in the lower darkest part. That was added after the fact. As usually with these covers, it was pretty much a keep it simple and knock it out. The real reason I posted this, is for the fact of what I found on the reverse of the illustration board it was done on. It was another start of a Recorded Books Cover illustration. It was one of the starts of my moving towards digital illustration. It will be the next post. This illustration was the usual airbrush acrylic and colored pencil.
This was for Fahrenheit 451. I look at this and always have mixed feelings. Certain things I liked a lot, for example the coloration and lighting. The rest not so much. Another thing that cracks me up is the outfit I gave him. It was based on the old planet of the apes costumes. Probably a little too closely based. I wish I would have emphasized the books more too. Maybe made a pile of books behind him. Today I think I would have went more with an image that was very conceptual rather than very literal. Still I learned a lot from this piece. I think this one involved more actual painting than airbrushing. Still used some colored pencil for fine detailing too.
I do not remember the name of this Recorded Book cover, but I do remember the some of the stories. I used a peg board with photos of the stories stuck to them. Again this one was knocked out very quickly. I shot a couple polaroids for reference. Airbrush, Acrylic and Colored Pencil. Doing the cork board texture and photos would have been so easy to do with today's photoshop.
Another Recorded Books Audio Cassette Cover Illustration. This was on Jim Thorpe. The thing I specifically remember about this was the lack of imagery I could find on him at the time. The imagery I did find was not the best quality either. Turn around time on these was very short and the budget was lower end. For that reason, I usually tried to crank them out as quick as possible, especially when slammed with other work. This one was about 6 x 7 actual size. Acrylic and Colored Pencil.
This was for Recorded Books around 1995. The book was Stitches in Time by Barbara Michaels. Surprisingly, this is still for sale. The model was a girl I worked with doing a temp job at night to earn some more cash. This picture used a similar technique to the Jean-Claude Van Damme portrait with the exception of the Gesso. The technique was done straight on cold press Illustration board.
This was an illustration done in school for a class called Children's Book Illustration, taught by Chuck Scalin. Acrylic and Colored Pencil. We showed all the pieces at Narnia Books. This was one of the pictures that ended up being shown in the local paper that cover the exhibit. Fun piece to illustrate.
