Photo Illustrations

I have to give a shout out to my brother, Patrick Swenson, for helping me get started with all this.  Patrick runs the successful  Fairwood Press, which specializes in science fiction and dark fantasy.  Fairwood Press now publishes novels, short story collections and more from some very fine authors.  Over the years, I've had the privilege of illustrating and designing the covers of some of these fine books.

It all started back more than fifteen years ago when Patrick decided to follow his dreams and  begin a small sci-fi magazine called Talebones. It was a labor of love for many involved.  He asked me, along with a small group of other artists,  if I would be willing to contribute pictures for the stories.  It was the kind of creative challenge that I loved. How do you capture the essence of a story in a picture, wrap it in a little bit of mystery, and tease the reader into diving into the story?  At the time I was working for a photographer, and the full on digital age had yet to arrive. For most, including myself, the concept of Photoshop was still a distant thought. At that time, though my background was in painting and drawing, I was drawn to the idea of somehow using photography to create the images.

Part of me thought it would be easier making a photographic image, than the time that would be required to make a drawing.  Yah, Right!  Take this picture for example, it's from a haunting little story called The Same Song Every Midnight. The idea behind the image above was to depict haunting or disturbing music coming in through a window.  I used the literal image of sheet music to symbolize the non-corporeal concept of the sound of music. For the window, I built the crude shape myself out of scrap lumber and duct taped broken shards of glass to the back of it to provide the illusion of shattered glass. I photographed the sheet music separately at just the right angle and collaged it onto a photographic print of the window with glue stick.  I then painted on the picture with photographic dyes to create shadows and heighten the illusion further.  I did quite a few of these photo illustrations for Talebones, and to this day many remain my favorites.