Here’s a memorial to the projects that died. While I am grateful for and appreciative of the work I do that makes it out into the world, it does happen that projects sometime reach an untimely death. Here are several pieces that I put thought and effort into, but in the end will remain mostly unseen.
An advertising agency hired me to recreate the Blue Moon Beer label
A company working with the New York Aquarium asked me to paint sample sharks for an exhibition. Nothing came of it.
A publisher hired me to do an illustrated version of A Wizard of Earthsea. The art director and author like the work, but the author imagined details to look different. I told her I could only work from the text, not her imagination. The project ended. I declined payment.
Cover sketches for a young adult book that didn’t materialize. I was told the editors liked what I came up with but ended up wanting to go in a totally different direction. Not sure why they hired me in the first place.
Approved sketch for the fourth book in a series I’d been working on for a year.
The final artwork. A big problem with this and the other covers I did for them was that the art director and editors had wanted the images to be about one thing but they hadn’t bothered to read the books. So my convictions to honestly capture the narrative was always a losing battle.
