"there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion" Sir Frances Bacon, "Of Beauty, Essays" 1625
This is an illustration for one of Caitlin R. Kiernan’s short stories in the recently published Houses Under the Sea (Centipede Press). I’m showing the image in its original state because I like the warmth of the off white Arches paper (the file submitted to the publisher was altered for printing). The finished book is beautifully made. Below are a few snaps so you can see how the artwork was incorporated into the design.
– Richard
The good folks a PS Publishing posted an announcement in this week’s newsletter for a new edition of To Charles Fort With Love by CRK. It included my cover art – Entomologist’s Daughter.
Richard.
This is a second illustration for Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Houses Under the Sea, forthcoming from Centipede Press, and the last that I can show for now. It goes with a story called Houndwife and was also done with carbon pencil.
In this post, I also want to give a shout out to my friend Steve Venright who has a new book (November 2017) called The Least You Can Do is Be Magnificent
From the Anvil Press Website –
For over thirty years, Steve Venright has devoted himself to the liberation of the imagination, documenting hallucinatory trips through Southwestern Ontario’s deliriomantic landscapes with his signature puns, portmanteaus, and spoonerisms. The Least You Can Do Is Be Magnificent: Selected & New Writings is a generous gathering of Venright’s most enduring and extraordinary poems, including the revised and expanded “Manta Ray Jack and the Crew of the Spooner”— the most outlandish and hilarious seafaring tale since Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. This volume also features an in-depth examination of Venright’s work by scholar Alessandro Porco.
I am showing you an illustration I did for the forthcoming Houses Under the Sea by Caitlin R. Kiernan (the image is shown as a crop in the link). This is the first time I have illustrated a book using carbon pencil instead of ink. It was an interesting process as the medium took the drawings in a different direction. I will definitely play with this in future projects.
I’m still working on illustrations for my own book, Magpie’s Ladder, which will be published later in the year.
In May, I will have work in a show at Copro Gallery in California. The show is Roadside Attractions III, curated by Cris Velasco.
Lots more to come.
PS Publications will be publishing my illustrated short story collection Magpie’s Ladder in 2018! I’ll post news about that project here as details become available. In the meantime, have a look at these two forthcoming titles from PS featuring my artwork and great cover design by Michael Smith. Give the PS site a visit if you have a few minutes, the catalogue is fantastic.
Following a very busy autumn, I’m now finally sitting down to plan creative work for 2017.
My new novel Necessary Monsters is scheduled to be published by Resurrection House/ Arche Press in May. I thought I’d share the description from the distributor’s website.
Lumsden Moss is an escaped thief and an unrepentant bibliophile with a long-suffering desire to foist some karmic retribution on those who have wronged him. But when the opportunity to steal a rare book from the man who sentenced him to prison puts him on the wrong side of the wrong people, Moss finds himself on the run. And it’s not just the book he stole that these people want, it’s also the secrets of a long-forgotten location on Nightjar Island, a place cursed and abandoned since the Purge.
When Moss falls in with Imogen, a nimble-fingered thief who has taken a traveling bookcase filled with many secrets, he starts to realize how much of his unsavory past is indelibly tied to a frightening witch-child and her nightmarish pet monster.
In a fantastic world, still recovering from a war where magic and technology were fused together, Moss and Imogen must decipher the mystery of their mutual pasts in order to illuminate the dark heart that still lurks on Nightjar Island.
Caitlin R. Kiernan has posted this illustration to her blog, so I guess I am okay to share it here as well. This is for the forthcoming Houses Under the Sea, Mythos Tales. Caitlin has provided details about this book on her blog. The book also features amazing art by John Kenn Mortensen and Vince Locke. Houses Under the Sea, Mythos Tales will be available from Centipede in 2017.
