Heinlein Book Covers

Some thumbnail cover concepts I did last night. I've enjoyed so many of Heinlein's books, I think I could possibly write one myself. I would love to have the chance to actually produce covers for his books, but for some reason, publishers and agents I have approached for this purpose either ignore me, or tell me cover art contracts are only given to artists who have already done published cover art, which seems mighty rediculous.

A quick rant.
To show an example of the dichotomy that exsists between those that make art, and those that require art. I was once told that my CV had not been short listed for a contract, and the reason given was,"Your portfolio is great, but we are looking for somebody that can draw characters with big eyes."
another time the reason was,"Great stuff but we are looking for somebody who can draw dogs."
Obviously because I don't have a portfolio full of dogs, or characters with big eyes,
Or Dogs with big eyes? the employers assumed these were simply impossible subject matters for me to produce.

Update:

Dropped some color and texture on the thumbnails.

Topless Girls

Just a few sketches from the Hard Drive. Work has slowed down lately, so I don't have any updates at the moment, waiting on a some pieces to be published before I can show them here. I've spent the last couple weeks working on a new personal project for mobile devices, and also trying to sort things out with agents and publishers for my book.

Warhammer Illustration

Here is yet another piece I did for Fantasy Flight Games a few months back.

Environment Thumbnails

I've always prefered doing character design, compare to environments, partly I think beacause I had no formular for doing landscapes. Mountains and open fields bothered me. A large open space with nothing to focus on is extremely hard to make interesting and boring to draw. Compare that to a single character on a sheet of white paper, where the focus is unavoidable. So last week I decided to sit down and work on some landscape concepts until I had a decent method to produce them. After about 4 or 5 failures I got into the groove and punched out these 8 designs. It was well worth the day of frustration to come out the otherside with a bit more confidence in my Environment concepting.

Update

Picked a couple of the thumbnails and worked them over with a bit of color and texture.

Illustrated Novella Update

On Friday, I got an updated test print of my Illustrated Novella, still a few mistakes, mostly to do with image prep and formatting. But when compared to my first print the difference is huge. The whole thing is much tighter and actually feels like a real book now. I will have to do one final pass before the book is ready for the shelf. Agonizing work, and by this time the editing process has become completely loveless. I'm sure if the book is well recieved it will all be worth it. If not, then at least I've learnt from doing, and will be able to do better next time.