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Illustration


Book cover art and book cover design from many different categories.


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David Morrell's wistful story, "The Hundred-Year Christmas" was a deeply satisfying and also an intensive project. All aspects of the book were open for my design... the foil-stamped slipcase, cover design, eleven full color illustrations and endpapers and the decorative page frames. It's still available from Overlook Connection Press in various signed and limited editions.
The Hundred-Year Christmas		This is the limited edition slipcase I designed for Overlook Connection Press. It holds Stephen King's "Under the Dome." It's foil-stamped, with a dome-shaped die cut in the slipcase to reveal the dome which is on the book cover itself.
Under the Dome slipcase		This is the cover painting for "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, published by Greenwich Workshop and Hallmark. My model for this was a little girl just leaving for karate class so she posed with her karate gi at her front door. The art reproduced as a tiny 2 5/8 inch color print mounted into a velvet embossed cover.
A Little Princess		This is the wraparound dustjacket to Rick Hautala's "Chills" coming soon from Cemetery Dance Publishing. We're looking out into a ferocious blizzard as we're marooned inside a shopping mall in Maine, cut off from most everything... except from those... things approaching through the whiteout.
Chills - dust jacket
The book cover I painted for "The Essential Freud" from Wilder Publications. It was fun to research the details of Freud's original office in Vienna to get information about the carpets, his famous couch, the pillows on that couch and even the art on his walls, just seen at the edge of the cover. As I was finishing the painting, I almost neglected to research and include his wedding ring which had a large, dark green stone, and was worn on the fourth finger of his right hand, as was a Central and Eastern European Jewish custom. A fun painting to do. I liked playing with the "picture-within-a-picture" idea.
The Essential Freud		The cover for Elizabeth Massie's novel, Wire Mesh Mothers. If you look closely, you can see that there's some drama going on in the cab of the pickup.
Wire Mesh Mothers		For Elizabeth Massie's short story collection, I created this photo-manipulation. Using elements from the Virginia countryside... various houses in good repair or in near ruins, hillsides, roads, pathways, trees, etc. I created a unified image of a house so corrupt that the real character of the building and its inhabitants is revealed the further one looks toward the rear of the structure.
The Fear Report		The cover painting for "Sundown," a collection of short horror fiction by Elizabeth Massie. That's Elizabeth poised on a wall overlooking the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.
Sundown
I wanted this symbolic painting for "Naked on the Edge," a collection of dark fiction by Elizabeth Massie, to contrast with the font used for the title and author. Where the scene depicted is perilous and insecure, the font is calm and stable. Each element is in opposition to and magnifies the other.
Naked on the Edge		Originating as an endpaper design, this art was promoted to cover status and also has enjoyed a further incarnation as an art print. The book is "Matinee at the Flame," a horror anthology by Christopher Fahy, from Overlook Press. The title and text design was by Overlook Press.
Matinee at the Flame		I had in mind that this painting for a dear friend's book would hopefully evoke the author's love of the Virginia countryside. It was published as a wraparound book cover by his friends posthumously so it meant a great deal to me to do justice to his writing. That's Duane, the author, walking his little pup, Teddy who I'm guessing misses Duane very much, as we all do.
Looking Through the Rain		This brief, warm and humorous biography by Steven Britt required me to invent an art style just for this cover... a sort of "New Yorker" cartoon style. I illustrated an event from the author's life when, as a small boy, he marched solo in a small town parade wearing a "Music Man" style uniform with his pet rabbit on a leash.
Looking Over My Shoulder
This is the front section of a wraparound cover for Elizabeth Massie's "Homegrown" a wonderful mainstream "coming of age" novel. The location is an actual children's home here in Virginia.
Homegrown		The elements within this cover for "Afraid," Elizabeth Massie's collection of dark fiction, was based on dingy doorways, ragged windows and bleak hallways in a local derelict and deserted mental institution that Beth & I explored with some friends and a little trepidation.
Afraid		Along with the center painting of Holmes, I created a series of cover designs with decorative frames that varied in hue from title to title for this reprint series of the classic stories. The roundel at the bottom of the frame had an iconic image that varied with each book.
Sherlock Holmes