Alex McVey

How I would describe Alex McVey: fine artist, talented, dark, and elusive.

Why elusive? There is very little information to be gleaned on the Internet when it comes to this illustrator from Texas. Sure, he's famous and many a horror fan starts salivating just at the mention of his name, but the details of the man are hard to track down.

I did find out he has been illustrating since 2004.

His work has been featured on everything from comics, to album covers, to high-end limited edition books.

On his extensive list of clients, you'll see the names of people such as Stephen King and Edward Lee (you can see McVey's cover art for Lee's "Trolley No. 1852" pictured right).

And most importantly, he likes banana shakes (ok, I made that part up. But I felt the post needed more insider information).

For those of you who love to peek into the process of an artist, I have two worthy items of interest. The first is an article featuring McVey's work. Here's the description from the article on www.ronaldkelly.com:

Given the recent release of the new Undertaker's Moon cover by horror artist Alex McVey, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the many trial-and-error steps that an illustrator goes through, taking a basic image idea from infancy to completion. In this case, Alex began with black-and-white sketches and progressed to a full-blown oil painting of the savage beast that now graces the upcoming book cover.

The second is a two-part video showing McVey creating an oil painting from start to finish. Enjoy!

• Part 1
• Part 2