Results tagged “todd lockwood”

Here is the Todd Lockwood cover art for The Bear, the last book in the Saga of the First King series by R.A. Salvatore!

While visiting Todd a few weeks ago at his Seattle home, he showed me some of the things he has been working on in his studio. The Bear was one of them. As you can see it follows the same motif as the rest of the series—a character in the middle bearing a weapon. This one does differ though, in that a weapon does not split the painting in half like its predecessors but instead the background castle tower breaks up the image.

You can see closer detail at Todd’s website by clicking The Bear!

The cover artist has also updated his website with new art, so check it out, including a very cool 2010 calendar! Need a fantasy-oriented calendar for next year? Or collect Todd’s artwork with a remarque? Click here!

I also happened to give Todd a great idea for the cover of Shadowheart, the last book in the current Shadow series by Tad Williams. I have no idea if it is feasible. If the idea goes through, I’ll be quite happy to take 10% from DAW books for my contribution, thank you very much.

By the way, that was my lame attempt at internet(s) humor!

More where that came from…!

At last, here is the cover to Shadowrise by Tad Williams! It is a Todd Lockwood cover and it is moody as all hellfire.

Me likey!

As reported last week, Shadowrise is the third book in the Shadowmarch series, with an as-of-yet untitled fourth book coming soon! Why do i say untitled? Well, I don’t see anywhere on the Shadowrise cover that it is Part I of II. That leads me to believe the fourth book will have its own title.

At least that’s what my inner Sherlock Holmes is telling me.

When we will get that next title or see cover art for it, who knows, but it will likely be soon since Book 4 will be published hot on the heels of Shadowrise in 2010.

Bring on more Williams! And Lockwood! Looking forward to it!

As I showcased yesterday, Todd Lockwood is an artist.

He spends his time in the Pacific Northwest doing exactly what he loves—bringing the fantastical to visual light. When he isn’t sketching at Comic Cons, Todd has a moderate office in his home where he spends his time painting book cover art for authors, Magic: The Gathering cards, magazine covers and many other similar fantasy and science fiction graphic designs.

He does leave his home several times a year to take part in conventions all over the world. He spends a lot of his time looking over portfolios of burgeoning artists, giving his advice where appropriate, but he also takes his art to sell to his fans as well as talk about each piece he hangs on his booth.

Despite it being late in the afternoon Comic Con Saturday and both of us being reduced to wilted shadows of our true selves, I decided to put Todd on camera so he could talk about the Comic Con and highlight some of his new artwork.

Here you go:

If you love Todd’s artwork and you want it to hang it in your own home or office space, visit him at his website and order a giclee of anything you see!

More soon, including interviews with Patrick Rothfuss and Terry Brooks!

Anon!

I have returned to Seattle from the 2009 San Diego Comic Con.

I am tired. Wiped out. Done in. A stiff breeze would push me over (or destroy me like the Magic: The Gathering Path To Exile card above). And yet I also feel great gratitude for the time I was able to spend at the convention, the work I accomplished, and all of the friends I got to see and make. It was four days of high stress, high takes and high octane.

As Lev Grossman said in his recent Time article, “I don’t think humans were meant to go to all four days of Comic-Con.”

I don’t know about Lev, but I attended all four days and normalcy is at least a week away from happening for me.

Anyway, I have a lot of great posts to write about this week. I thought it would be fun to start with the original essence of Comic Con—penciled and sketched artwork. I stopped by to see my friend Todd Lockwood at his San Diego Comic Con booth. Todd is a super nice guy, extremely talented—to the point I actually do hate him at times for his genius—and I thought it would be fun to interview him and put him on the internet(s) for all of those artists either wanting to break into the field or those who are fans of Todd’s work.

Turns out as soon as I walked up two fans were requiring Todd’s attention, one of whom wanted a sketch done. I snuck into Todd’s booth on cat’s paws, his wife Rita grinning in amusement at me, and I turned on my cam without Todd knowing.

This is the sketch he produced:

It was very cool to see that pen dance over an empty white page.

I will post the interview with Todd tomorrow. By the time the interview was conducted, he and I were both dreadfully tired, it being late in the day on Saturday and our life force slowly bled away by the pumped in air, false light and rampant misty body odor. But you will see some of Todd’s newest art as well as what he thinks of it.

In the meantime, I need a vacation from my vacation!

Until anon!

I swear, RA Salvatore is one of the luckiest authors going.

Without a doubt.

I’ve known Bob for seven or eight years. He has created arguably one of the most well known fantasy characters ever in Drizzt Do’Urden and writes some of the best battle sequences every year.

Beyond that, Bob is just a super nice guy, easy to talk to, and after two decades of professional writing loves it as much now as when he began.

A man who works hard deserves all he receives.

No, when I say he is lucky, I mean the covers he gets!

I love living in Seattle.

It is quite simply one of the best book cities in the world. The seven months of gloomy wet weather forces people to curl up inside with a warm blanket, hot chocolate—and of course a good book.

Seattle is the home to great bookstores—Elliot Bay Bookstore, University Bookstore, Third Place Books and one of the largest Barnes & Noble Booksellers. Great sci-fi and fantasy writers like Terry Brooks, Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear and Brian Herbert call Seattle home. The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is setup downtown and Amazon contributes to the local economy.

Seattle is also the home of NorwesCon!

I attended NorwesCon this last weekend. It was great fun. Begun in 1978, it is the premier science fiction and fantasy convention in the Pacific Northwest and draws some of the best writers and most talented artists from around the world. It is a smaller convention, dwarfed by Comic Con or Dragon Con, but it makes up for it with personal touches the larger conventions simply cannot supply.

I was able to see long-time friend and Author Guest of Honor RA Salvatore, attend an art demo taught by Artist Guest of Honor Todd Lockwood, and thank author Steven Barnes who four years ago gave me a good foundation for my own writing endeavors!

Pictures and words follow…

I am seeing artist Todd Lockwood this weekend at NorwesCon, so I thought it would be fun to feature one of his newest covers.

Here is the cover to The Grave Thief by Tom Lloyd!

Mr. Lloyd is a Pyr author. The Stormcaller, his first book, is quite good. I loved the two previous covers in the series but I’m sad to say this cover just doesn’t work for me.

Overall I give it 3/5 stars.

I love the artwork and especially the unique angle of the scene, but the general layout of the cover is wrong in my mind. The fonts are wrong. And the painting just seems washed out.

So, what do you think of it?

Am I just way off base here? Am I biased because of Todd and the cover art itself isn’t good? Or is there something to my opinion?

Still, the cover is better than most out there! Tom Lloyd is a lucky, lucky author to have such covers grace his US editions!

Todd Lockwood is a good friend but even better he is an amazing painter!

Todd has been responsible for some of the most beautiful artwork gracing some of the best New York Times bestselling books out there, and that is not my bias for the guy talking/typing, I promise. He has a growing base of Lockwood fans all his own, and for that reason he’s been praised for his work as Guest of Honor Artist at several conventions the last two years.

The great thing about Todd: Like many of the best artists out there, he doesn’t know how good he really is!

The publisher Wizards of the Coast does know how good Todd is, however, and uses his talents often, especially for their immensely popular RA Salvatore Drizzt covers. Todd has done at least a dozen by now—if not more&mash;and with every new one he takes his work to that next level.

Well, he’s sharing the process he goes through to paint a cover, from start to finish!

The Pirate King by RA Salvatore was released in October 2008 but the preparation and finished painting for that cover took place many months before. Each Part below has Todd explaining the steps and process he went through for the cover to RA Salvatore’s The Pirate King:

Enjoy!

I’ve been reading sci-fi and fantasy since I was 13. In the 20 years since that time and even in the last 12 years of doing this professionally, much has changed in the industry—cover prices, cover art, the rise and fall of sub-genres, the internet(s) and blogosphere, etc.

But one truth has remained in my life concerning this madness and geeky celebration we call sci-fi/fantasy:

Science fiction and fantasy has the ability to bridge gaps between people of varied gender, race, culture and age.

One such bridging took place at San Diego Comic-Con 2008 between artist Todd Lockwood and writer Tobias Buckell.