Mark Edward Geyer has illustrated many books, including the limited edition of The Green Mile, but this wasn't his only SK project. Recently he made a signed lithograph of the Electric Chair from the Green Mile available for $25 from his website.

Mark agreed to take some time out of his day for a Q&A for the site!...He's also agreed to a 2nd Q&A with questions from YOU the fans! Simply send me an e-mail with your question(s) for Mark and I'll pick out a handful for the 2nd Q&A next month. You have until July 15th to send your questions in.

The first Q&A is below, enjoy!

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For those who don’t know you very well, can you give us a little background on yourself and how/why you decided to become an artist?

My mother was an artist and so was her father. I started drawing around age six, usually landscapes in pencil. I majored in Studio Art at FSU—not a good art school. My mother had taught me far more than I ever learned at college, and I’ve been very self-taught also. After college I got commissioned to draw a lot of historical buildings in pen & ink. This led to a couple of studio jobs in Chicago. One was for an architectural renderer, who taught me the skill of projective geometry, in which you create a perspective of a building from plans. Also while in Chicago, I did op ed pieces for Advertising Age, Chicago Tribune, Consumer’s Digest, Crain’s Chicago Business, etc. Upon moving to Atlanta, I began a business of doing architectural renderings. It is however, a very demanding and rigid form of illustration with not many rewards. I much prefer editorial and book illustration. This fall I will be illustrating a middle-grade novel, and, most likely, its sequel for Henry Holt.

I have to admit, before the limited edition of The Green Mile I was unaware of your work.  Your website mentions that you have done quite a bit of work for other companies, including big names like Pizza Hut, Hallmark Cards and Warner Brothers Home video.   Is there any of your work out there from these national companies that we might have seen, but not realize you’re the illustrator behind it?

The executives from Pizza Hut Inc. saw my work at a one-man show in Tulsa in the 1980s. Mostly they were pen & ink landscapes. My work was eventually chosen to be the only black and white artwork in an interior design prototype for all of their restaurants in the United States. When I lived in Kansas City, I did freelance work for Hallmark Cards; specifically, I worked on the Rainbow Brite project. The only thing I ever did for Warner Brothers Home video was sell them the right to use my Green Mile ink illustrations in a featurette on the GM DVD—basically, I added them on my client list because it looks good.

Probably the most obvious thing one notices about your work is that it’s black & white.  From what I can tell it’s either pen & ink or pencil.  When and why did you decide to specialize in this type of illustration?

I have always worked either in pencil or pen & ink. When I do add color, I use colored pencil over my ink work. I read somewhere that you are either a wet artist or a dry one, meaning that you prefer wet mediums or dry mediums. I hate to paint. I don’t like the mixing up of color, adding water, stirring, the clumsiness of the brush, etc. Painting makes me feel very dumb.

 

Do you create color illustrations, either in books or for other projects? Or is it all black and white?

See above.

There’s really an incredible amount of detail in your drawings.  How long does it take to make one from scratch? 

It depends on the subject matter. Actually, I work pretty fast.

Do you wind up discarding many drawings before you come up with a final piece?

This is how I work: I do a pencil layout on 90lb. Vidalon vellum. I never use tracing paper as it is too flimsy to take multiple erasing's and it is too frosty to see through. After the pencil, I do one trial ink; then, I do the finished ink.

Although I’d say that most people know your work from The Green Mile, it wasn’t your first Stephen King project.  I read that you’ve also done a frontispiece for the Viking edition of Rose Madder and a European edition of Bag of Bones.  How did you come to work with Stephen King? 

Viking and Mr. King chose me for Rose Madder.

Are there any plans for additional Stephen King related projects in the future?

I’m not aware of any such projects right now.

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A big thank you to Mark for taking the time out for this! Don't forget to e-mail me any questions you'd like to see in the next Q&A with Mark!