They Call Me Mad-Book Cover

This is a cover I painted nearly a year ago for Penguin Group, Berkley Trade. The book won't be out officially until December 7th, but until then you can pre-order by going here.





Like most jobs, this too was a very short deadline, I believe I had a four days from start to finish? The funny thing, is that I painted this last December, 2009, and as mentioned above the book won't "officially" be available until December 2010! The more work I do, the more I feel that we, as artists are never going to have the most perfect situation or circumstance to work with? So, I do what I can and I do the best that I can with what I have to work with . . . making the most of everything!

The art on the actual cover for this book will print quite small. I believe that the characters will be 4" in height? So, no need for too much detail . . . for me, it was more important how the image looked smaller and at a distance than how it looked zoomed in and up close.
One of the challenges for a piece like this is that all the references for these two fellas are in black and white. This was also part of the fun.