February 22, 2012
Mother, Crone, Maiden
Knowing the future is not about knowing the future.
February 15, 2012
Among the Silvering Herd
Protect what is yours or yield to loyalty and expectation.
February 1, 2012
Uncle Flower’s Homecoming Waltz
In the war that never ends, dreaming the future is a mixed blessing.
January 25, 2012
The Situation
There was nothing as strange as what we endure now.
So, it may be true that I am the only person onboard Stubby that wants to see this but, come on, it does look charming. No? A little? My suspicion is that Mirror, Mirror will be semi-succesful at being light fun while the Snow White and the Huntsmen version will fail at being the dark, brooding adaptation of the original fairy tale...
Pastiche? Mash-up? The best form of flattery? Whatever you want to call it, artists have enjoyed riffing on historical paintings for ages. For some, it’s a fun way to learn and explore issues of color, composition, and application of paint by intimately copying from a master. For others, it’s a means to tap into the feelings and emotions already assoctiated with the original image, (for humour or drama.) Seeing John Mattos’ great modernist takes on Star Wars made me want to seek out other views of science fiction via the classics. Here’s what I found....
A super fun animation (until the unfortunate dig at ebooks at the end) of a bookstore coming to life.
While fans and writers are busy nominating for the Nebulas and Hugos, artists and art directors should keep in mind the Spectrum deadline is January 27th.
This year, Spectrum has extended their award to include a medal for the art directors involved in the winning illustrations. Seen here is the piece-in-progress, sculpted by Tim Bruckner, well known for his DC Universe inspired collectibles. (And, yes, I’ll be more than a little jealous of anyone that gets one of these.)
For the first time, this year’s awards will be given at the first annual Spectrum Live event, which looks to be “the” art convention of the year.
I recently had the honor of judging the Society of Illustrators annual book exhibition. Among the award winners we chose was an entry nestled within a stunning set of illustrations done by Italian artists Anna and Ellna Balbusso for an upcoming editon of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The edition is comming out from the London-based Folio Society, publishers of many drop-dead gorgeous books, including a lot of science fiction and fantasy.
Donato Giancola just released a trailer for his latest “how to” video, Painting Joan of Arc. While I’m sure the artists out there are anxious to see the full video, this short is a really sweet overview of the process for non-artists among us.
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” — Andrew Wyeth
I’m no fan of the cold and yet winter images and Christmas are among my favorite things in life. There is a calm about winter that is beautiful, harsh, and mysterious.
So, on this Solstice Day, with so few hours of sunshine to warm us, I asked a number of artists to send me some of their favorite winter paintings. I asked nearly 20 people, expecting about half to respond. In fact, everyone responded, often multiple times. Clearly, I am not the only one that finds both comfort and mystery in these images.
Without further ado, here are some of the images that some of today’s finest illustrators think of when they think of winter.
It is with tremendous sadness that I report that Darrell K. Sweet passed away this morning. Since the mid 1970s, Darrell’s illustrations defined many of fantasy’s most beloved series—including Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time—among literally thousands of genre book covers. An avid history buff, Darrell also spent much of his time painting frontiersmen and the American West. His paintings evoked the classic storytelling narration of the Golden Age illustrators. A Sweet cover promised an adventure to be had.
Darrell was one of the first painters I called when I started my career at Tor, eighteen years ago, and we’ve worked together continuously throughout these past near-two-decades. He was the 2010 World Fantasy Guest of Honor and I was very grateful to spend a full weekend with him and his son, after so many years of talking on the phone and trading notes through express mail. Regardless of how many years he had in the business, or how many paintings off the easel, he was as eager to talk about technique and craft and his passion for painting as any student at the beginning their career.
The cool part about being an art director is that it’s your job to spend lots of time looking at cool stuff. Of course, it means looking at a lot of terrible stuff, too. And the hard part, knowing the difference. And the heartache part, finding cool stuff you can’t use. But it’s still, you know, really cool. Here are a few things I ran across this week. (And maybe I’ll do it again next week.)
Come join us on Twitter this Monday, November 14th, from 1:00-2:00 EST, and chat with Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson.)
The chat will be loosely moderated by Justin Golenbock (@jgolenbo), Brandon’s publicist at torbooks, and Laura Fitzgerald (@Laura_FitzG) of Tor’s digital marketing department, who claims to know a thing or two about Ter’angreal.
Follow @TorBooks and the hashtag #TorChat to join the conversation!
What happens when all the expendable ensigns on the exploring starship start comparing notes?
When I asked Tor editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, what “Untitled John Scalzi” was, he swore me to secrecy. John had been writing a book outside his Old Man’s War universe and had been teasing his fans for months with this “secret project.” When Patrick told me the title I laughed and he quickly replied, ”yeah, but, leave it to John to take a one-liner and turn it into something touching and poignant.”
A reminder to you all you Brandon Sanderson fans (and we now there are lots of you) Brandon will be touring the next two weeks to promote his new Mistborn novel, The Alloy of Law! To read the first chapters of novel as Tor.com leads up to the release, go here.
Just a reminder: Steampunk Week may be over but there is still time to purchase these ebooks for $2.99. Tor Books is offering the following ebook titles for only $2.99 (U.S. only) until the end of October:
Visit your favorite ebook retailer and start downloading today on your ereader.
I may not be the biggest Martin Scorcese fan, but I love Brain Selznick, and I’m very much looking forward to this. If you haven’t yet, read the extraordinary 526 page picture book-novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, while waiting for this film’s Thanksgiving release.
Since Tor.com staffer Ryan Britt is too shy to mention it, let me shout it out loud. This Tuesday night he will be amongst a great line-up of writers at The Next Chapter’s Halloween edition of “Reading and Stories”! Join him and Lev Rosen, Jared Sorensen, Sean Sakamoto, and hosts Lisa Kirchner and Katherine Wessling, as they read and talk about how their stories originated.
The Next Chapter - Readings and Signings
Tuesday, October 25 - 7:00PM - $5
Bar 82, 136 E. Second Avenue, New York, NY
All October long Tor.com has been in support of All Hallow’s Read; a new Halloween tradition begun by this year by Neil Gaiman. You can read the particulars here but the idea is simple: give friends and family scary books (new or used) around Halloween time. We’ve been participating by giving away books in pairs, which means one for you, one for a friend! Though we’ve been doing this through a variety of promotions, we thought it was time for our staff and other contributors here to recommend their favorite spooky books. We’ll be giving away two copies of each of these books as part of our Halloween day sweepstakes marathon, be sure to stop by for digi-tricks-or-treats on the 31st.
Tor editor David G. Hartwell has been cooking up a cool story project for Tor.com that will launch on February 29. (A leap day!) But if you are around Westport, New York this week, you can get a special preview of Micahel Swanwick’s contribution. Swankwick, F. Brett Cox, and Jeanne Beckworth will be reading at Dragon Press Bookstore, owned and operated by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. Dragon Pres is located on Lake Champlain, you can take in the fall foliage while getting your literary fix.
A solemn goodbye to Steve Jobs. Our thoughts are with his family and those closest to him. Tor.com, along with so many others, benefits from his vision daily as we hopscotch seamlessly through our Mac laptops, desktops, and iPhones. The spaces between work, culture, and play have become so easily and intuitively navigated by his achievements. Thank you, Steve Jobs.
As an art director I get tons of postcards and mailers every day. As you can imagine, this is both a horror and delight — a visual rollercoaster ride I take with all three of our daily mail drops. Yesterday, it was teh awes0me. Sam Bosma sent sent in this super cool ode to video games. It was created as a skateboard deck to be auctioned for charity. (Bidding is on now.) Check out Sam’s blog post to see details and sketches.
And then be sure to check out the rest of his blog. Of particular interest to our readers may be his fantastic series on The Hobbit and his sketch book drawings of portraits from A Song of Ice and Fire he created in reaction to the HBO show in, “an effort to preserve my mental image of some of the characters.”
The Society of Illustrators’ 7th Art Out Loud painting demo extravaganza was held this past Saturday. Julie Bell, Rick Berry, Donato Giancola, Greg Manchess, and Boris Vallejo painted simultaneously while spectators milled about, watched, and asked as many questions as they could think of.
The doors opened at 1:00 and the crowd broke into groups around each easel. After a quick introduction the artists started to address the people around them, painted, and encouraged questions. Some viewers parked next to one artist for most of the four hours, absorbing everything they could, others took a more ala carte approach and skipped around, taking little bits of inspiration from all of them.
