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.

SF Signal is Talking to Artists

Go see how Todd Lockwood, Dave Seeley, Jeremey Geddes, John Picacio, Donato Giancola, Glenn Orbik, and Bob Eggleton answer the question:

As an illustrator, what was it that drew you to science fiction and fantasy to begin with, and what place do you feel illustration has in the science fiction and fantasy field?

Space Vulture

[Via SF Signal]

Space Vulture has a new website up, and it includes a process essay from the cover artists Glen Orbik and Laurel Blechman.

Thumbnail Interview with Glen.

Thumbnails: Glen Orbik

Thumbnails: 30 Second Interviews

I first saw Glen Orbik's work in Spectrum and have always enjoyed spotting his paintings since, particularly the great work he is doing for Hard Case Crime. His classical training and obvious admiration for the magazine artists of the 50s and 60s has given him solid narrative and painting skills and a great facility for figure work.

Favorite painting you did in the past year?
Oz/Wonderland Chronicles #3. (seen above) As much fun to paint as it was to research.

Dream assignment?
Other than the Hard Case Crime covers, which I already get to do, I'd say the John Carter of Mars books by E.R. Burroughs. The ones illustrated by Frazetta were a huge favorite of mine.

Do you have to like the book to be excited about the project?
It helps, but we generally try to think more about the themes or mythology we believe the author is shooting for and have fun aiming for that target.

What painting do you wish you'd painted?
Sorry to have missed the era of full and double page spread story illustrations in the big magazines of the the 30's - 50's.

A career highlight?
An art director I'd not worked with in a few years called and asked me to send in some new samples of my current work - I thought it was just to update their files. I few weeks later, she called back and said, "Congratulations, you've got the job." "Great" I said, "what job would that be?". "Oh, Ray Bradbury really loves your work. He's doing a new book."

How do you balance family/personal time with work?
They're supposed to balance?....

Biggest influences?
A painfully incomplete list would be: Robert McGinnis, Robert Maguire, Norman Rockwell, Bernini, Gil Elvgren, the best from the Pyle-Harvey Dunn school, Coby Whitmore, John Buscema, & Fred Fixler.

Advice to a young illustrator?
Two things actually:

1) Only put the kind of work in your portfolio which you'd like to be called for. Variety can be a great asset but don't advertise things which you don't want to be called for.

2) Focus on telling the story well. Even with the most generous of deadlines, you will probably miss something or think of a better solution later. Make sure it's nothing important enough to regret later.There are a million ways to interpret or render a sleeve or whatever. Concern yourself with the best way to get the big impact-story across - especially if the art is going to be reduced to the size of a postage stamp. Everything from the elements included in the art to the way it's rendered is part of the storytelling. To paraphrase Norman Rockwell, "Anything that doesn't help the story, it hurts it."

(Oh, and don't babble on and on like this when someone asks you for advice to a young illustrator.....)