Note that the first two paperback covers below are from early in Lehr’s career as a cover artist while the third one is from fairly late in Lehr’s career:
Category: Book/Magazine Covers (All)
Look Here: Three paperback covers by Richard Corben
From the library of yours truly:
Look Here: “A Game of Thrones” by Jeffrey Jones
Todd Adams of Glimmer Graphics has a beautiful new limited edition print by Jeffrey Jones available for purchase on his company’s Web site. “I have published over 50 fine art prints through the years,” writes Todd, “and this is the finest print quality I have seen to date.” Here’s a link to the order page. And here’s a copy of the image Todd sent out to promote the print:
ABOVE: Jeffrey Jones, A Game of Thrones (c. 2000), oil on canvas.
Jones created the above painting for Meisha Merlin Publishing’s deluxe limited edition of the first book in George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire & Ice” epic. The new Glimmer Graphics print is comprised of 375 signed and numbered copies, as well as 25 artist proof copies, all on 500 g/m² acid-free, ultra-smooth paper. Sheet size is 22 x 16 inches, with an image size of 19 x 12.5 inches.
BONUS CONTENT (added 13 December 2011):
What follows are all of the images from a “work in progress” page that appeared on Jeffrey Jones’s official website, which since Jones’s death has disappeared from the Web; the images are presented in the same order that Jones presented them on the original page:
On a separate page entitled “Painting Methods,” Jones wrote:
I stretch my own canvases and prefer linen, unprimed. Two coats of gesso with sanding on each dry coat. Bristle brushes, filberts give me the texture and quality of surface I like. I use no mediums, just turpentine. My palette consists of three yellows, yellow ochre pale, raw sienna and chrome yellow. The reds I use are venetian, burnt umber, burnt sienna and cadmium. I like oxide of chromium for green, all other greens are mixed. Ultramarine is the only blue I use. When painting I consider complements and mix them together on the palette, using a bit of a complement in each mixture. For example, I might make a purple using ultramarine and venetian red and add a bit of ochre to temper it. If I use a yellow I add a little purple to temper that color. I never use black but mix it using several dark colors together. I like to paint wet in wet to keep the painting “soupy”.
I usually start a painting with a house painting brush, covering up the white of the canvas and laying in dark and light shapes. Then come some middle tones. I think in tone at first and color later. I do a lot of scraping and wiping in the beginning-at this point it’s all rather abstract.
I don’t know how many ways there are of working but what I’ve found, and it took some time, is perhaps peculiar to me. The most exciting thing is a blank white canvas or piece of paper–anything can happen. This is why I’ve long ago gotten away from scripts and manuscripts. I’m not really an illustrator. It’s probably my education in German Abstract Expressionism where whatever happens on a piece of art happens all the time. There is no real beginning and no end, there is just a time to abandon. I honestly never know what the “finish” will look like. I’ve said this before so bear with me here. The work and I have a “conversation”. There are times it listens to me and times I must listen to it. As long as it’s a “we” process there are no dull bits. There are impasses where I have to put it aside for a while but that’s not boredom. Boredom can just be another word for anger. For almost 30 years I have written my own comics, and the writing is done along with the drawing, not beforehand. It’s the same with painting. The narrative, which is often ambiguous, evolves with time. If it does indeed ever get dull then it is finished.
I always use titanium white because of it’s opaqueness and covering ability. It doesn’t matter which white you use, mixing white with any primary color will give you a pasty pastel. You have to mix the colors before adding white. Also lack of pastiness depends on which colors are next to each other.
…Howard Pyle advised his students, “Put light colors next to light colors and dark colors next to darks, then where you want the viewer to descend, put dark next to light.” This is a good rule of thumb.
Please note that the above description of Jones’s material preferences and process in oil has been cut and pasted, without alteration, from the original “Painting Methods” page on Jones’s official website.
BONUS CONNECTION (added 24 February 2014):
ABOVE: Joseph Mallord William Turner, Wreckers, Coast of Northumberland (c. 1834), oil on canvas, 125.9 x 90.5 cm. Collection of Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Via Wikimedia Commons.
ABOVE: Jeffrey Jones, A Game of Thrones (c. 2000), oil on canvas.
Look Here: Six more early paperback covers by Jeffrey Jones
Yes, there are some serious creases and wear marks on some of the covers, but it is difficult to find pristine copies of thirty-nine-year-old-plus paperbacks, especially when one limits one’s search to local bookstores:
I don’t really like any of the above covers, with the exception, perhaps, of the Uncharted Stars cover, which I feel is a step up from the others in terms of draftsmanship, composition, technique, originality, and wit.
Look Here: FANTASTIC STORIES cover (August 1972) by Jeffrey Jones






Look Here: Jeffrey Jones’s “Epic Illustrated” Cover
Look Here: Three more paperback covers by Jeffrey Jones
Jones really began to hit his stride as a skilled cover artist with a distinctive stylistic sensibility in the early 1970s:
Look Here: Four more early paperback covers by Jeffrey Jones
I don’t much care for any of these covers from 1968 and 1969, but since I have yet to break out of the collector/completist mentality — and believe me, I’ve tried — here they are, scanned and posted for your “enjoyment”:
To make up for the lacklustre art this time round, my next post will feature two covers by Jones from the early 1970s that I think are very strong, along with one that I have mixed feelings about, so stay tuned for that!
Look Here: Another early paperback cover by Jeffrey Jones
If you have been following my posts over the past few days, you’ll already know why I decided the time was right to scan and post this:
If you have not been following along, click here to jump to my post on Lucian Freud’s The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer.
Look Here: Nine Paperback Covers by Paul Lehr
From the bookshelves of yours truly, here are nine paperback covers (ten, actually; a bonus image was added at a later date) by Paul Lehr, along with one Lehr-ish cover by another hand:



















































