Adventure Time parody of Durer's The Knight, Death and the Devil. Original art at 11 inches by 15 inches, on Denril. It enlarged nicely for a poster issue from Cartoon Network's poster division, a cool enterprise that died a premature and unjust death.

Amongst typesetters, "follow the copy out of the window" was once axiomatic.

For illustrators, "follow the concept out of the window" still makes a good Prime Directive.
#bookpub #illustration #conceptualillustration #adventuretime #posterart

The demon Zyk in superhero spandex, very hip beard and quadrocorni, his arm protectively draped over the shoulders of damsel in distress. She has the head of a deranged goose and a badly awry wig. This is an illo for the insanely talented and funny Martin Olson's "Conquest of Heaven" from Feral House, the sequel to "The Encyclopaedia of Hell". Both books are indescribably funny in a non-stupid way that only indy publishers like Feral House bother to do right anymore. The team involved in these books went on to do the Adventure Time Encyclopaedia and Enchiridion for Abrams, a NYT-bestselling bit of bizness that demonstrates once again the value of supporting indy publishers. No Big 5 publisher will take a chance on this sort of material without someone else taking the initial risk. I believe that the guy behind AT, forget his name, sorry, was the one who demanded quality take precedence over everything else. Otherwise, it would have been the same old licensing dreck. That's why Zyk's crotch bulges. He senses $$$, Lord Satan's bread and butter.

Ripping off my illustration work? That would be a real step up for me.

#illustration #bookpub #penandink #conceptualillustration

Tompkin's Bookstore, wherein literary wallahs gather to drink tea and palaver. Semiotic glyphoids adorn the bookshelves and pee atop the books heaped up everywhere. One of many interior illos for "The Gentleman" by Forrest Leo, edited by Ed Park, ADed by Claire Vaccaro, published by PRH. This delightful novel is catnip for lovers of steampunk, Victorian poetry and Satanism.

There once was an artist named Singh,
Who insisted on doing his thing.
He drew that-which-is-not,
For such was his lot,
That impecunious wretch of a Singh.

#bookpub #bookillustration #penandink #steampunk

Thinking of publishing in the US? Your main paths:

🔹 Traditional: Get an agent & a deal. Publisher handles everything. Slow but prestigious.
🔹 Self-Pub: Use Amazon KDP, Kobo, etc. You keep control & royalties. Fast but you do the work.

#Publishing #AuthorTips #BookPub

Baby-faced priest with beard and priestly vestments sports a halo. Illo from American Candide, published by Rosarium Publishing.

Behind every cassock is a Cossack who just wants to have fun.

#penandink #bookpub #illustration #bookillustration

Illo of Alice and the White Rabbit from AAiW. Alice is posed as Dame Fortuna atop a golden sphere, holding a golden fan and door key in her hands. The White Rabbit takes his ease on a pebbly beach, a beach festooned with semiotic glyphoids smoothed by the passage of time and maya. So far, no one's offered me a gig illustrating either of Carroll's Alice books. I did a few pages of an unabridged GN version of AAiW, set it aside, mostly because Alice's face wasn't working out plus the usual Zeichnungenangst. Send me a DM and I'll send you the pencilled dummy so far.

Happy Alice Day to all enthused ones.

I did a few pages of an unabridged GN version of AAiW, set it aside, mostly because Alice's face wasn't working out plus the usual heebie jeebies. Send a DM and I'll send you the dummy so far.

#illustration #bookpub #lewiscarroll #bookillustration #GN #WiP

A knight wearing all his armour, his burgeoning moustache growing through the breathing holes of his helmet. Done for Poets Ranked By Beard Wight, by Gilbert Alter Gilbert (Skyhorse). A very strange book that could never get into print just 15 years later. So much for progress.

"I love a mustache. They are attractive, they're hot, they're sexy," she said.

#penandink #bookpub #bookillustration

Crosshatched portrait of William Cullen Bryant, a poet whose beard inspired a nice bit of inking. It's almost the Wall Street hedcut style but powered up with the good ol' Line of Beauty, the crosshatching gains snap.

Crosshatched portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His beard's a piss-ant compared to Bill Bryant.

A barboscope in action. The device is fitted to the subject's beard and the cyclindrical rollers squeeze the ethereal Soul out of the follicles and onto a sheet of paper. In this case, the anonymous poet realizes that he possesses a Satanic soul. Or something like that. Read the book and find out. Would it surprise you to know that some illustrators never read the texts they're illustrating? This lends a certain insouciance to the drawings, a sort of cheekiness that lesser-minded illustrators can only aspire to. In any case, Gilbert's explanation of the barbascope is canon. There was talk of making the book into a Broadway musical, a worthy idea which would have made for a genuinely insane theatrical experience, worthy of Artaud AND Busby Berkeley.

A beard field station. Two labourers are feeding infant beards, one of them pauses to admire a passing areostat.

"Poets Ranked by Beard Weight" by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert, pubbed by Skyhorse.

The book's what the title promises, which made it a snap to illustrate. I did a lot of art, Gilbert's a great comic author (and art critic) & fellow acolyte of Alberto Savinio, our Obscured Master.
#bookpub #illustration

Panel from a work in progress, a GN version of Eliot's Waste Land. From left to right, a recently-famine-starved Good Soldier Schweick, the anonymous Narrator, Sammy Beckett, Robert Walser, Langston Hughes, Marie Larisch, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Franz "The Joker" Kafka, and James Joyce. Beckett and Walser are my favourites of this lot. And Gombrowicz, should have put him in but he's too post-war for this panel's intentions.

Monteverdi and Modernism, they're keeping the lunacy outside my studio at bay, for today at least.

#WIP #graphicnovel #TheWasteLand #TSEliot #bookpub

Huge congratulations to Aria Aber for pubbing her debut novel, “Good Girl”!

www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/winte...

#NarrativeMagazine #Narrative #bookpub #pubday #newbook #newauthor #authortowatch

Mesa Biome in Minecraft. Too many details and I can't remember their names. From Minecraft Maps from Egmont UK, this turned out to be an exercise in isometric technical illustration rendered in 19th-century wood engraving style.

Illo for BSFA and Campbell award winning Adam Robert's "Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea," published by Gollancz, Simon Spanton editor. Adam's a genius and this book is insanely good in the finest Brit SF tradition. A submariner in an infinite ocean stands atop the wreck of his sub and contemplates the transmogrified denizens of this alternate, watery dimension.

Didn't know that #nationalillustrationday was started in the UK by the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration. Makes sense, the Brits still respect and appreciate the finer points of this ancient artform.

So here's some of my UK work: kidlit/YA and adult

#penandink #bookpub #Minecraft #SF

The infant Krishna stealing curds, stealing gulab jamuns and peeing in the corner of an auntie's house. Spread from my picturebook "The Extraordinary Adventures of Little Krishna", published by Feral House. Ontology for kids rocks!

Cover for a Boom Comics issue of Adventure Time, Finn wandering across a desert landscape composed of Jake. The moon is full and so are their hearts. This is a YA property.

Parody of Boecklin's Isle of the Dead. A Christ-like Mickey Mouse is rowed towards the Isle where pyschedelic mushrooms rear their rampant heads. Illo for an adult title, Firesign Theatre Magic Mushroom Plays.

Spare a copper, art director, for an illustrator who's seen the Psychic Wars

#nationalillustrationday #kidlit #YA #adult #bookillustraion #bookpub #penandink

The Bleat, the Bark, Bellow and Roar are waves that beat upon heaven's shore. A tiger, ram and ewe, heifer and hound vault into space above the cherubim.

One though fills immensity. A lion enters the bedchamber of a sleeping woman. This is a good example of what conceptual art means to older artists, the words are translated into an image which cannot be back translated into words.

Born OTD, William Blake, the patron saint of all Enthused Artists.

These illos are a good example of what conceptual art means to older artists, the words are translated into images which cannot be back-translated into words.

#penandink #illustration #illustratedverse #bookpub #conceptualart

Nicely inked portrait of Tchaikovsky wearing clown makeup while weeping a single, solitary tear. I read somewhere that one reviewer of a Tchaikovsky premier was astonished that so many people would pay money to hear a man feel sorry for himself. Ergo, tears of a clown. Pearls before swine, that's what we do.

Working on my brand, what can go wrong?

#penandink #Tchaikovsky #classicalmusic #illustrator #bookpub #crosshatching

A goat modeled upon Gerome's portrait of a Janissary (I think, so many pictures in my head all jumbled together) consults his Rolex sundial. One of my illos for Áloþk's Adventures in Goatland (Áloþk üjy Gígið Soagénliy): A translation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Róaž Wiðz, back-translated into English with a Glossary by Byron W. Sewell, published by @evertype.bsky.social

GOAT goat illustrator, c'est moi.

#penandink #kidlit #bookpub #bookillustrator

Hunson Aberdeer approaching the Isle of the Dead. With his over tongs, Hunson will extract the Tablets of Wisdom from the weirdo's skull. Done of Adventure Time Enchiridion, and the blue held well on press, mainly because I kept a careful eye on the numerical values of the CMYK colour build instead of relying on the monitor, as the young 'uns do nowadays. Blue is tricky in print.

Please share your blue art! 💙🖼

#AdventureTime #penandink #freelanceillustrator #bookpub #kidlit

Various medieval weirdos smoking dope while Our Lady of Perpetual Giggles occupies center stage in this charming recreation of a High Gothic donor's altarpiece. Done for the Firesign Theatre's Magic Mushroom Plays, art directed by Taylor Jessen AKA @sidfudd.bsky.social.

Opium is the religion of the masses.

#firesigntheatre #penandink #freelanceillustrator #bookpub
#duotone #pubnews #illustrationandconcept #HighGothic

William Cullen Bryant was a poet from the American mid-19th century, a heavy in his day until he wound up inside a book that I illustrated years ago: Poets Ranked By Beard Weight. That took the wind out of his very nicely crosshatched sails, if I may say so myself.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, another poetic heavy, plus a pal of Lewis Carroll, sort of. The inking on this wallah is superkool, as we used to say back in the day.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, another loony English poet who thought that Carroll's Snark was an attack upon himself. He was also into wombats. His hypnotic gaze could stun them in an instant, he was that good. The inking's pretty good also.

I draw great beards though, oddly enough, I have none! This has always baffled the critics until Poets Ranked by Beard Weight silenced their yapping. The book is that good.

#bookpub #illustration #penandink #williamcullenbryant #alfredlordTennyson #poetsrankedbybeardweight #gilbertaltergilbert