Undead & Unbound Cover Art by Paul Mudie

Here is the cover art for the anthology Undead & Unbound by the very talented UK artist Paul Mudie.
   

The anthology, edited by Brian M. Sammons and myself shall be released by Chaosium Inc. later this year. The illustration features elements from the included stories "I Am Legion", "Thunder in Old Kilpatrick", "Descanse En Paz", "Mother Blood" and "In the House of a Million Years".

Jupiter 32 and Scenes from the Second Storey

Two brief news items, the first being that one of my better sci fi illustrations dating back 15 years now is to appear on the cover of Jupiter 32: Eurydome. I did a lot of black and white ink illustrations through the 1990s and into the 2000s, but not so much these days when my focus is on writing. That said, my art did appear in Secrets of Kenya in 2007 and will now appear in Cthulhu Unbound 3 hopefully released soon. This illustration is amongst my favorites, of a scientist in a cybernatically enhanced all environmental suit (sans helmet) studying a herd of alien creatures. Her all terrain vehicle is parked behind her.

The other news is that Scenes from the Second Storey, which features my Australian Shadow's nominated short story, "Dream Machine", is now available as an ebook from Smashswords.

Paul Drummond Sci Fi Artwork

I just noticed the new cover art for Jupiter Magazine 30, which wil feature my novella "The Uncertainty Bridge". The cover illustraiton is impressive, by Paul Drummond, a thumbnail of which I've reproduced here. However you can see a much better reproduction on Paul's website here.
Deciding to check out more of Paul's work I went to his online galleries and discovered some very cool pictures, and realised I'd seen his work before, in Interzone.

When looking at science fiction artist's work, I sometimes find myself coming up with ideas for stories behind the illustrations, even though many of those illustrations are the result of someone's literatary imagination. Jim Burns, Tim White and Chris Moore have all drawn more than one sci fi scene that has sent my mind racing. I found myself doing the same examining Paul's work.

If you like science fiction art, Paul's site is well worth checking out. I particularly liked this one.

Cthulhu’s Dark Cults: Cover Art by Steve Gilberts

In my ongoing series of journal entries on how Cthulhu’s Dark Cults came to be, today I am focusing on the cover illustration, which was undertaken by the very talented Steven Gilberts.

Steven has been producing artwork for the small-press industry since 2003 starting with Space & Time Magazine. Since then he has been concocting odd cover and interior illustrations for a diversity of companies including Elder Signs Press, Apex Book Company, Cemetery Dance Publications, Chaosium Inc., and Shroud Publishing. Steve is going from strength-to-strength, and I’m sure it won’t be long before he’s illustrating covers for the bigger publishing houses.

I’m grateful that Steven did the cover illustration, as he captured perfectly the theme and the style of the book.

I’m also privileged in that Steven has illustrated one of my stories, “Solvent Hunger”. I’ve included the illustration here which appeared with my story in the Book of Dark Wisdom #5. The same illustration appeared on my chapbook Cthulhu Australis Part 1, where “Solvent Hunger” was reprinted.

Steven says the following about his illustration for the cover of Cthulhu’s Dark Cults:

“The basic concept for the cover was outlined to me by Dustin Wright [editor at Chaosium]. A group of figures dancing around a statue of Cthulhu in a swamp or woodland setting.

“I opted for the figures to be (tastefully) unclad and possibly attractive. After all, just because you worship a snoozing undead cephalopod creature dreaming deep beneath the Pacific Ocean doesn't necessarily mean you are homely.

“The statue of Cthulhu needed to be lit from underneath to indicate the fire that the cultists are dancing in front of. To be on the safe side I opted for a photo reference to be sure that I would get the shadows and highlights positioned correctly. It was Play-Doh to the rescue as the sculpting medium for the model to be photographed. Following in this vein I suppose I'll need to render an illustration in crayon one of these days.

"On a related note to shooting reference shots of the stature, the dancing figures were based on images from a reference source of models for artists to use. So no, I did not have a group of nudists cavorting around my studio, at least not for this particular assignment.

"I went with bright colours and a starlit night for the background to create a scene of (hopefully) ethereal beauty. As with the figures I reasoned that, though the subject matter is dark, the overall setting could be lovely. Perhaps with good looks and scenic settings the cultists would be apt to collect more members and victims alike.”

Photo of Steven Gilberts © 2009 Michael Morris.

Influences: Lightship by Jim Burns and Chris Evans

When Lightship came out in 1985, a showcase of the science fiction illustraitions of British artist Jim Burns, I was blown away by the vivid and imaginative worlds he captured in paintings. I was in high school at the time and already planning my career as a science fiction writer, and when I saw this book my imagination went into overdrive, visualising some of the stories I could tell based on the pictures that were engrossing me. Stories from books I had never read, but now felt intrigued to read.

I’d studied art in high school and had considered a career as an illustrator, but I never did much more once I was at university except to dabble. That said I did enough to have had my illustrations published in books such as Secrets of Kenya, and although I was never very good and my writing was more important for me to pursue, art did give me a great starting point in imagining the future. For example, for a long time while I was developing my space opera setting for a series of books I’m planning in the future, I used to do lots of illustrations for that setting and my art skills really helped me imagine what my universe would look like. It was Lightship that sent me down this path, influenced me to give illustration a go to develop future settings.

In a recent conversation with D.M. Cornish we discussed the merits of writers who are also illustrators, and how it can greatly enhance the creative process. I certainly see that in his Monster Blood Tattoo series he is head and shoulders above most fantasy authors in creating amazing worlds with his words alone, because he illustrated it all first. I hope my illustrating experience eventually leads me to similar success (one can always hope).

My favorite illustrations in Lightship include the covers for Downward to the Earth, Mechanismo Spaceport, The Lovers, The Deathworms of Kratos, Bio of a Space Tyrant 3 and Startide Rising, but they are all great. The accompaning text by Chris Evans was an added bonus, openning me up to a whole host of science fiction ideas I’d never considered before, including terraforming and pantropy, concepts I would have never come across just from watching science fiction movies and television shows of the time.