Meet Sean Harrington

I have something fun for you today. Sean Harrington made the cover art for my first novel, Wild Concept. I found him when I discovered his wonderful webcomic, Spying With Lana. I returned to Sean and had him prepare some additional images of Lisa Burton for use on my blog. To see the first new Lisa picture check out this post. I invited him here to talk about his artwork.

Hello! My name is Sean Harrington, I’m a professional artist, I like long walks on the beach- Actually, I don’t really like to walk on the beach. I end up with sand in my socks. I probably shouldn’t walk on the beach in socks…

At any rate, I started working professionally in the art field about 20 years ago, although I’ve been drawing ever since I was old enough to hold a crayon (I couldn’t draw professionally back then, though. Three-year-olds are terrible at meeting deadlines). I’ve worked in a lot of different areas of art and illustration, but I’ve always particularly enjoyed illustrating book covers. I’m a longtime fan of the great cover artists like James Bama, Robert McGinnis, Benicio, and R. A. Maguire, and it’s been great to have an opportunity to work in this field myself. It also allows me to work with a wide range of different concepts and genres, which is a lot of fun for me as well.

My first illustration job was for a newsletter for the marching band I belonged to when I was a kid. They didn’t pay me anything, although I believe I did get a cheaply-made medal for my band uniform (and I think my parents had to pay a fee for the medal, too). It wasn’t my best business deal ever. But since then, things have been looking up! I’ve produced illustrations for the covers of novels, comic books, childrens books, magazines, and of course ebooks, including the cover for Craig’s novel Wild Concept.

Since 2008, I’ve also been writing and drawing a weekly online comic called Spying with Lana, which has developed a nice following over the years. The comic features a series of humorous and sexy spy/adventure stories following the trials and tribulations of Lana, a glamorous secret agent, who always seems to find herself mixed up in decidedly unglamorous missions.

It’s a fun comic to produce, and it has allowed me to meet and interact with my readers, as well as with other artists and writers around the world, and has given me the opportunity to work on several book covers for authors that read my comic. (Yes, surprisingly enough, they are still coherent enough to write even after reading my ridiculous comics!)

Over time, I’ve released several Spying with Lana graphic novels and comics in print, in addition to the online comics. I’ve also produced a variety of other comic strips and graphic novels and even a couple of childrens books and some computer game art over the years, as well as some stories for other book and comic publishers and magazines.

I’m a self-taught artist (We don’t need no education! We don’t need no thought control!) and I’ve worked with a lot of different mediums over the years. Currently when I work on a picture, I usually start with a pencil drawing, then scan it into my computer and finish and color the art digitally. In addition to this method of creating illustrations, I also like to paint, and I’ve been painting a lot of the book and comic covers I’ve done recently. I also paint portraits on occasion, as well as some more “fine art” oriented work when I have the spare time (that is, when I’m not wasting my spare time watching auto racing).

I do all my painting digitally nowadays with a Wacom art tablet. I used to paint traditionally using oil paints and brushes and all that, but it seemed like I spent most of my time cleaning brushes, unsuccessfully trying to mix the right colors, cleaning brushes… did I mention cleaning brushes? (I used to watch Bob Ross on PBS, and when he would finish painting with a color, he would give his brush a quick dip in some turpentine and -flip flip flip- the brush was clean as a pin. I can only assume that some sort of special effects were involved.) Oh, and did you know that oil paints can sometimes take months or even years to dry? Yes, literally years. So, digital painting it is!

In addition to art and illustration, I also do some sculpting (mostly using computer as well. Don’t get me started on the difficulties of working with water-based clay!) as well as doing some writing of my own. I mainly write poetry, plays, lyrics and the like; Nothing that would make Shakespeare break out into a cold sweat, but I have fun with it, so it serves its purpose.

I’d like to end by saying thank you for reading about me and my art, and a big thank you to Craig for giving me the opportunity to introduce myself here on his blog, as well as to produce art for him. I hope everyone will pop over to Amazon and download a copy of Wild Concept, as well as Craig’s other great books.

Here are some links for Sean:

Spying with Lana

Tumblr

DeviantArt

Sjph@cox.net

Edit: Something went haywire, Thanks to Charles for pointing out the link to the webcomic didn’t go the right place. I have remedied it, so please try again.