{ feuilleton }

One of my Cthulhu portraits as it appears in Image Swirl, a new Google feature-in-search-of-a-purpose. Yes, I own a portion of the Googleverse, or the Googleverse owns a portion of me; the latter seems more likely. As well as being the cover of my Lovecraft volume, that picture appeared earlier this year on a reprint [...]

I won’t say this is by popular demand but after persistent requests for posters of my cover art for Jeff VanderMeer’s latest novel, Finch, I’ve opened a new CafePress shop selling exactly that. The largest of these is 58.38cm x 82.55 (22.984″ x 32.5″) which should be big enough for most appetites. There’s also a [...]

Hollywood at Night (2006).
Alexis Rockman’s paintings of swamped or ruined American landmarks present views which are a novelty in contemporary art galleries whilst being very familiar to science fiction readers. Many of these could well be illustrations for JG Ballard’s 1981 novel, Hello America, which imagined a depopulated United States reclaimed by flora and fauna. [...]

No, I didn’t go searching for this, I had my fill of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland last month. The British Library website is a lot more amenable than it used to be for the casual browser, and one of its newer sections is a small collection of what they call virtual books which enable you [...]

Yet another of the titles I’ve been working on this year—yes, it’s been a very busy time—Booklife took several months of back and forth on the part of author, editor and designer before we had something that everyone was happy with.
Offering timely advice in an era when the burden of production and publicity frequently falls [...]

So I had a bright idea at the end of September… Instead of rehashing old work for a CafePress calendar design, I thought I’d try something new. I hadn’t done any artwork for myself all year, everything I’d been working on was a commission of some sort. In addition to that, I’d spent a large [...]

National Coming Out Day is a gay awareness day which has been observed in America since 1988, and is now something of an international event if “the world” can mean the USA and a handful of European countries. With typical contrariness, the UK’s Coming Out Day is a day later on October 12th. The Outer [...]

Humpty Dumpty by EB Thurstan (1930).
A preoccupation of the past couple of weeks has been Lewis Carroll’s Alice books as I’ve been working on an Alice in Wonderland project which I’ll unveil shortly. Looking around at some of the numerous visual interpretations of the stories I came across two portfolios I hadn’t seen before [...]

Mighty Baby (1969). Illustration by Martin Sharp.

Yet another album cover prompts this post, part of an occasional series. Mighty Baby were a British rock band who formed out of psychedelic group The Action in the late Sixties, and their music is fairly typical of the period, being “heavy” without any of the psych trappings which—for [...]

Today is Outer Alliance Pride Day so let’s begin with a statement:
As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.
Various members of the Outer [...]

Yes, it’s been a busy year. These are books three and four respectively of the titles I’ve been designing for Tachyon Publications, and there are more on the way.
Kage Baker’s The Hotel Under the Sand is a charming fantasy for children concerning the hotel of the title and its curious inhabitants, which include a ghost [...]

Another work update and the second beer label I’ve done for the Adur Brewery who like to match their bespoke ales with bespoke artwork. This one is cricket-themed, as you may have noticed, Matt Prior being a cricket player, apparently, and the Ashes tournament currently in progress. I know next to nothing about the sport [...]

Steampunk: Life in Our New Century!
I’m behind on work updates again. Still being very productive on a range of different fronts—mostly book and CD design as usual—but the workload means that site updates tend to suffer. Anyway…
This new Steampunk illustration was a quick piece done at the weekend to accompany an article Jeff VanderMeer is [...]

Shared Worlds is a fantasy writing-oriented summer camp for teenagers created by Jeremy Jones and Jeff VanderMeer, and hosted at Wofford College, South Carolina. Jeff asked me to design a small booklet to be printed at the end of this year’s activities as a means of showcasing examples of the writings produced during the various [...]

In Spaces Between from The Great Old Ones (1999).
Some noteworthy pieces of news as the month draws to a rain-sodden and dismal conclusion.
• Frank Woodward was in touch this week to let me know that his excellent HP Lovecraft documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, will at last be appearing on DVD in October. This [...]

Two samples from a great Flickr set of science fiction and fantasy paperback covers. Both these titles were first published in 1976 and, unlike many Flickr postings, this set gives credit to the cover artists where known. The Moorcock book is one of his Elric volumes and while it isn’t a favourite of mine, the [...]

left: The Magus from the Thoth Tarot by Frieda Harris and Aleister Crowley (1938–1940?); right: The Magus from The Major Arcana by John Coulthart (2006).
Phantasmaphile presents another magickal art event in NYC next week. Layered Orders: Crowley’s Thoth Deck and the Tarot is described as “a personal narrative by Jesse Bransford”, an artist with a [...]

Another work update and another cover for Underland Press, this being the third volume in the Best American Fantasy series. The picture is based on a description from Jeffrey Ford’s story although I don’t know how accurate this may be since I only had a précis to go on, not the story itself; I hope [...]

The second of my book designs for Tachyon Publications is published this month and it was good to receive a copy in the same week as getting a load of new CDs. Medicine Road is a contemporary fantasy of shape-shifting and shamanic magic set in the American South West. This job was particularly pleasurable for [...]

A visit to Baked Goods distribution this week brought me a haul of new releases, all items I’ve either designed or overseen the production of. Among the new CD designs I’ve already mentioned the Tectonic Plates compilation, a really excellent collection of dubstep singles with a bonus disc of mixes by Pinch. Related to Tectonic’s [...]