Painters Painting Paintings of Paintings

Hard Case Crime is celebrating their 50th book by publishing Fifty-to-One, a book with each chapter named after one of their titles. Glen Orbik created this cool painting that depicts many of the previous Hard Case books. It’s amazing how so few brush strokes so completely describe the other covers.

Meanwhile...

Donato just handed in this painting for a new L. E Modesitt book from Tor, Imager. (Due out next year.)The story centers around a painter. Donato used Rueben’s studio door in the background and his own maul stick. I asked if the painting depicted was an actual one and he said that it was what just happened to be next on his easel. I also asked if it was hard to forget that he was painting a painting of a face rather than trying to depict an “actual” face. He said that there was a point at which it started to round out a little too much, taking on a hologram effect, but once he treated it as abstract shapes, everything fell into place.

UPDATE:
Now including the Imager sketch — if you look carefully you can see the work of Giancola, the Younger. And Donato tells me that the model is Gregory Peck’s grandson.