For a limited time, I'm offering a selection of original art from the many book illustration projects I've done over the years
This aspect of my career is unknown to most comics fans, though I've illustrated quite a few books over the past 20 years -- one or more a year!
This particular piece of original art is from the hardcover signed limited edition of my Maine amigo
Rick Hautala's hungry bigfoot novel
The Mountain King (CD Publications, 1996).
As previously noted in Myrant's "SpiderBaby Sketchbook" archival posts, Rick and I had previously collaborated with Michael Zulli on an expansive proposal for a four-issue miniseries based on Rick's Little Brothers short stories. Alas, we never found a home for that project. So I jumped at the opportunity to illustrate Rick's then-latest novel.
You can still find copies of the rare Cemetery Dances Bissette-illustrated hardcover signed-and-numbered edition online -- here's the abebooks.com link, check it out and don't dawdle if you're interested.(The current unillustrated paperback edition is widely available and super affordable -- still a fun summer and winter read!)As you can see, Rick's take on Bigfoot is far afield from Harry and the Hendersons.
With every book illustration project, I choose a different media to work in to establish a distinctive identity for the project. For The Mountain King I used various colored paper for the interior illustrations (soft earthy colors: tan, brown, warm grays) and brush, pen, crayon and various white marking tools, sticking to a limited palette of tones that seemed appropriate to Rick's novel. The cover (above) was painted on black board. This illustration is on 2-ply tan board.
The black ink on this original art registers as true black. The scan, however, reveals the brush strokes -- this isn't as apparent to the eye, but I didn't want to lower the contrast and lose detail on the scan.
This illustration measures approx. 7 3/4" x 10" image area, on a 8 1/2" x 11" board that's still in excellent condition. There's clean white border tape around the illustration to cleanly define the image area, and it still looks razor sharp. It can be yours for $110 plus shipping ($7.30 Priority Mail anywhere in the US, more for foreign shipment) -- first to email me at [email protected] wanting to buy wins it.
Artwork ©1996, 2009 SR Bissette, all rights reserved.
