Cover illustration for THE CHESSMEN OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Del Rey) 4/4

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For once, the choice of which of many exciting scenes to pick for the cover was an easy one. 3/4

What scene could better illustrate this book than that of the Barsoomian "chess" game in progress, replete with pomp, decadence, and warriors battling to the death? 2/4

Subsequent conversations over the next day or two gave me time to add a moon and other details, employing the colors I had on hand at the moment.

He looks determined to make his way, and I’m betting he has a sizable appetite. Better steer clear of him! 4/4

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I sketched an outline in chalk and painted in the creature while chatting the hour or so we were on the phone. By the time we said our goodbyes, I had a beastie walking across my table. 3/4

After a while, I put aside my illustration and became fascinated with an accidental shape on my tabletop. Months before, I’d made marks with a sponge saturated with brown paint—I often use sponges to create textures in acrylic paintings—but now as I stared at it, a creature appeared before me. 2/4

"...that there are two sources for his impression. It’s that partnership of words and art invoked again.

"

Cover illustration for INVADER by C.J. Cherryh (DAW)

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8/8

"...or from my words: indeed, likely both are inextricably intertwined.

 That is the power of illustration.

I have been asked questions at times about a character’s nature or origin or attitude, and the questioner adds: 'They looked as if...'—without seeming to be aware...
7/8

"And I know that in partnership with and regardless of all the words I have laid down in the book—that will be the vision of all the readers who come to it. My people will look so to them; most readers will hardly be aware whether they obtained their vision from the cover...
6/8

"The moment brings a curious sense of affirmation—a feeling that, unlike daydreams that vanish, now they are real: someone else has seen the vision too, and others will see it after.



Aha, I say, I know these people. That’s the way they were when I last saw them.
5/8

"I look at it as into a mirror of my own mind, seeing, for the first time the thoughts of someone else casting back my own: my people reflected through other eyes and now become someone else's too.
4/8

"...the quality of the light: one moment which implies and evokes all the others. 

That, to me, is illustration.

It's a joy as a writer to open that thin envelope from my publisher...to see, suddenly, the same vision which I lived during the months of my solitary work now made visible.
3/8

"...in such elaboration and detail that the reader can live through that moment and into others, a flowing process and internal. An artist captures that same vision in an instant, wholly—freezes all the individual moments of it into the attitude of a body, the set of a hand, a face...
2/8