As you may have noticed we two are a bit cover art obsessed and we always swoon about the good ones more than it should actually be allowed. One cover crushing later we thought it would be nice to ask the actually artists behind our obsession about what this work is like. 

So here we are- thrilled to no end to welcome Tony Mauro here at Book Lovers Inc today. He’s one of our favorite cover artist and today he will talk a bit about his work. Please give him a warm welcome. 

Tony: After graduating from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1991, I returned to my home town of Buffalo NY and spent a few years working as an airbrush illustrator at a company that specialized in pro sports apparel. In 1994, I sold everything I owned and moved to Los Angeles, CA. I continued working as an airbrush illustrator for another several years before the computer began to overtake the illustration world. At that point I hung up my airbrush and began learning to apply my traditional skills to the computer. Like most illustrators I fought the transition to digital because of my love for painting and the desire to have an original piece of art when the process was over. And like most it didn’t take long before I accepted the advantages that working digitally offers and the realization hit that I’m doing the exact same thing as I did before but without the hazardous paints and the mess. The computer is simply a tool like any other. I spent 11 years in Los Angeles working for several different agencies in the entertainment industry. While there I did toy packaging, video game packaging, product illustration, food illustration and eventually movie posters. The vast amount of experience I gained while living there really rounded out my skill sets which led to what I do today. I moved back to my home town of Buffalo, NY a little over 5 years ago and started freelancing from home. In the beginning all of my work was still coming out of Los Angeles and I continued designing movie posters and taking on the occasional book cover in between. Today my focus has completely shifted and the book covers have taken over my business. I still do an occasional movie poster but I really prefer the book cover process over

movies. I was always intrigued by the concept of reading a book and coming up with that one image that would best encapsulate the book. The people are fantastic to work with and the whole process is genuinely enjoyable.

Tony: I come from a pretty creative family so I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember and always knew growing up that I wanted to make my living as an artist. My Father is a fine artist and used to teach life drawing, airbrush and painting at the University of Buffalo. Now he’s semi-retired and travels the country in the Summer time doing art shows with my Mother. My Brother is a musician and does a solo acoustic show at lots of local bars and private parties. My Sister designs jewelry in her spare time as well. So all of us have the creative bug in our genes.

BLI: How do you make your illustrations- digital or traditionally by hand? Or is it a mix of both?

Tony: The best way to describe my current style is photo-based illustration. I start with a basic photograph to capture the pose and expression and then I hand paint over that photo in the computer changing the outfits, hair and make-up as well as adding the setting and any other elements the cover calls for. It’s a fun process because all of the people are real people and in some cases pieces of a few different people 😉 The end result ends up being very photographic but because the amount of hand painting that goes into it the

pieces still have a very illustrative quality to them. I have a photo studio in my house where I do all of my shoots. A lot of the digital artists out there still hire a photographer to shoot the foundation photos but I prefer to do the whole process myself because ultimately I’m trying recreate the image that’s in my head before I even begin so I know best exactly what I need to make that happen.

Tony: This is a really tough one to answer because they’re all very different and I enjoy each for different reasons. I decided long ago to no longer accept any work that I don’t genuinely enjoy doing. As an artist you simply can not produce an end result that you are proud of or even happy with for that matter if you’re not into it. The movie posters are fun because they’re so high profile and my friends and family really get a charge out of seeing a movie poster I’ve done out in the “real world” especially when I lived in Los Angeles because in the larger markets movie advertising is plastered all over the city for a good 2 months. They’ll even do building sides and freeway billboards, so that can be exciting. I love doing books because I genuinely enjoy the process. I like reading the books and making notes and getting a feel for who the characters are and what they should look like. Sometimes I interact with the authors and they can tell me first hand what the tone and feel of the piece should be. Lastly there’s my fantasy art which is completely my own vision and the only real time I get to create an image that isn’t trying to sell a product. Complete creative freedom is really nice when you spend so much time creating images for other people. I whole heartedly believe that all commercial artists should have they’re own outlet to create the kind of work they really want to be doing. I got very lucky in that my fantasy art was what caught the eye of the publishers so my transition into books was very smooth and I had a lot of clients tell me “just go ahead and do what you do but do it for us”. It doesn’t get much better than that for an artist.

Tony: This is a little different for each book. The best case scenario is always to be able to read the book first. that’s how I really get a good sense of the characters and their specific style as well as the setting and tone for the book in general. Unfortunately because of time constraints and the number of titles I work on at once it’s not always possible to read the entire book. The alternative is a nice detailed synopsis provided to me by the publisher/author so that I can get the info I need. You’d be surprised but I actually don’t have any direct communication with the authors themselves with the exception of a couple that I’ve developed a relationship with over emails after doing several of their covers. All of my direction comes from an art director at the publishing house. They usually give me a loose written description of what they’d like to see on the cover and I take it from there and interpret it in my own way. I’ve been working with all of the same people for the last several years so they already know how I think and they are comfortable enough working with me to know that I will deliver them enough options to get something that everyone is happy with. Every art director is

different in how they direct their artists too. Some are very specific about what they want and some just point you in a general direction and let you run with it. Again it all comes down to how well they know you and how comfortable they are giving the freedom to do what you see fit. Both are great for different reasons. It’s nice when someone tells you exactly what they want because then it’s just about following direction and those projects tend to be a lot less stressful. With creative freedom comes more stress and anxiety that they are going to like what you come up with. However those are the jobs that you can push the envelope a little more and do something totally different than what you’ve done in the past. When I have a relationship with the author, I’ll shoot them an email and ask if there’s any specific piece of jewelry or small detail that they’d like me to add. They seem to love that because those are the kind of details the readers really love to see on the cover. If I’ve read the book I’ll make notes about certain pieces of jewelry mentioned or scars/tattoos to make sure I remember to add them in the final piece.

Tony: This is always a hard question to answer because there are many steps in the process that lead up to actually sitting in front of the computer and start physically designing the piece. First: I have to find a model based on the character description provided by the publisher. Second: I need to find any props or specific clothing items needed for the shoot and get them ordered and delivered in time for the shoot. Third: is the photoshoot itself which usually is pretty quick and painless. My shoots usually only take an hour or two just to capture the pose and expression. By now I’m probably 2 weeks in on this book and I haven’t even sat down at the computer yet. Once I have all of the materials (background shots, character shots, props) I start laying out the cover on the computer and begin piecing it all together. This process takes about 2 days. From start to finish is usually about 3 weeks. Some cases more, some cases less. 

Tony: Well it’s a visual medium so if it looks good you’re more than half way there. But for me even more importantly it has to be true to the book. I think we’ve all read books that we look back at the cover afterwards and say who was this person on the cover supposed to be? They don’t match the character description of anyone in the book. Where on the flip side I always flip back and forth to the cover while I’m reading the book to see if the details mentioned in the book about that character are on the cover. Readers don’t miss a beat, they become VERY connected to these characters and it’s like they know them personally. I love reading the comments from readers on some of the blogs where they talk about the progression of the characters on the covers through out a series. This especially happened with Yasmine Galenorn’s Otherworld series. There have been 10 books in this series already and the same 3 characters have been portrayed on all the covers. There is a visual progression to the characters on each book as they mature and get more experience and confident as well as different hairstyles and new tattoos.

Tony: Hmm….this is always a tough one to answer. I like different covers for different reasons and often the one that may be my favorite ends up on the cutting room floor. The piece below for example was originally done for a vampire book. I liked this piece because it was simple and bold and I always try to imagine if I were in the bookstore and I saw this book, would I pick it up? They went with one of the other comps I did for the vampire book but later on down the road the publisher came back to this piece and asked for the blood to be removed and it was used for an anthology. So in the end the image got used which was great but not in the way it was originally designed.

Tony: I don’t have one book in particular I would have liked to have done but I’m a huge James Patterson fan and would love to work on his Alex Cross series. Last year I got the call to repackage John Connolly’s entire line which was really exciting because I’ve read all of his books already and he’s a favorite of mine too.

Tony: I’ve always described my style as photo-based illustration. It’s a true mix of photography and traditional painting techniques applied to the computer. My years as an airbrush illustrator have proven to be extremely valuable in what I do now.

Tony: At the moment I’m working on book #11 in the Yasmine Galenorn Otherworld series I mentioned earlier as well as book 4 in Anya Bast’s Dark Magic series. Both are really fun series to be working on. I’d love to show you a sneak peak but I just can’t go there 🙁