6 Years Ago… A New Career Began

This is a rough sketch I drew on my journal 6 years ago, when I was coming up with the idea for the cover of Greg Bishop‘s book, It Defies Language!. Little did I know at the time that the favor my friend asked me would so dramatically alter the course of my life; in a way I was literally abducted from a doomed career path, and propelled into wild uncharted territories.

The “first final” version of the cover. Since I was a total ‘N00b’ I didn’t understand the concept of ‘bleeding’ and didn’t know I needed to extend the mountain range and black terrain on the lower right corner outside the boundaries of the cover. Eventually we sorted it out.

If I had had more experience, I would have loved to paint a kitschy rendition to the 1950’s pulp magazines that printed the first UFO stories. I’ve written on several occasions how much I love the potent roughness of those illustrations, and keep trying to emulate them –but often fail miserably due to my incessant attention to detail.

In retrospect, perhaps it is because I was so inexperienced back then that this first ‘book child’ of mine has such an interesting naïve quality that many found appealing. An interesting reminder that oftentimes you ruin things by overdoing them.

6 years! Oh what a crazy ride it has been.

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