After graduating at the top of his class, Steve worked as a historical reconstruction artist at Durham Cathedral, one of the oldest cathedrals in England. Many of his works, mostly portraits of Church luminaries, are now on exhibit at churches and cathedrals across Britain. One of Steve’s most ambitious drawings was an aerial view of a cutaway of Durham Cathedral, drawn using only ancient texts and sketches as references. It took an entire year to complete the drawing, which is now the property of Durham Cathedral.
During his time at the cathedral, Steve was also working on painting samples in preparation for the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton, England. Very soon after this, Steve was so overwhelmed by book cover assignments that he gave up his job at the cathedral and went fulltime freelance as a science fiction and fantasy artist. For the next two years, Steve and his identical twin brother, Paul, who is also an artist, found themselves frequently working together as a team on the same piece of art, sometimes sharing the painting at different times of the day, or more often painting side by side. Their artistic partnership ended in December 1989 when Steve married and relocated to the United States.
Stephen Youll’s art can be found on book covers from Bantam, Warner, Tor, Avon, Ballentine, Penguin, Daw, DC Comics, and the IBM Corporation. He has illustrated covers for many famous authors, including Arthur C Clarke, C.J. Cherryh, Robert Silverberg, Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman, Ben Bova, Kevin J. Anderson, Ian McDonald, Harry Turtledove, Michael Stackpole, David Feintuch, George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Brian Herbert and Issac Asimov; Steve was also commissioned to repackage the entirety of Asimov’s Foundation series, the Robot series and the Empire novels. Steve has also illustrated six Star Wars books; the first one, Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, became the bestselling science fiction anthology of all time.
Stephen has shown and exhibited his work throughout the United States and England and has been awarded many ribbons at conventions for Best Artist, Best In Show and Best Professional Artist. He has been nominated many times by the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists for Best Paperback and Best Hardback. Steve has also had certificates of merit and been exhibited by the Society of Illustrators. He has also exhibited his art at the Illustration House in New York City. In 1996 he was presented with a gold award by the Magazine and Book Sellers News Stand cover competition for most outstanding cover of the year for Tales of Jabba’s Palace. His work may be found in all the Spectrum annuals, The Universes of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman: Realms of Dragons and Infinite Worlds: The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art. Articles on his work have been seen in Realms of Fantasy, Science Fiction Age and Airbrush Action magazine. Stephen Youll was the Artist Guest of Honor at Boscon in 1998 and at the World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia in 2001. A hardcover edition of his art is currently out, published by the British company, Paper Tiger, called Paradox: The Art of Stephen Youll. It features over a hundred of his favorite paintings and sketches.
Stephen Youll currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and cat.
