Mort Castle

All-American Horror book cover

Here's a recent job that involved designing and illustrating the cover for a soon-to-be-published American horror anthology edited by Mort Castle and published by Wicker Park Press. It's a little different from the more whimsical style I usually work in,  so I was looking forward to taking a crack at it.

The assignment was to do something appropriately creepy but work in the Americana aspect somehow. I came up with up a few sketches, and though I kind of liked the idea of doing a needlepoint sampler with the suggestion of a skull and some macabre folk-art images, it was decided that we should go with something iconic and stark, so we settled on a weathervane topped with a ghostly raven.

It took a couple tries to get the silhouette looking OK, though the skeleton isn't quite accurate, but I was more concerned with an impression than getting the anatomy right and with enough fog, I could cover up the fact that I'm no ornithologist.

It was a fun project and I look forward to the year 2020 and volume two.