The Best Spaceship Artist Ever?

The Wikipedia entry for John Berkey (1932-2008) is way too brief so far as I'm concerned. That's because he painted imaginary spaceship scenes that were astonishing when they first appeared on covers of science fiction paperbacks and continued to astonish in the years thereafter.

You need to understand the context. Pre-Berkey, sci-fi spaceships were usually depicted as (1) Buck Rogers style open-cockpit jobs, (2) Flash Gordon spindle-like craft, (3) variations on the German V-2 rocket of World War 2, (4) extrapolations of Apollo-era spacecraft or (5) combinations of these with some other details added.

Berkey introduced to the genre huge spacecraft that often combined delicate equipment detail with large, smooth, reflective surfaces. His style was basically loose, yet when reduced to book cover size, gave the impression of monster machines.

As for Berkey himself, he was a Minnesotan who from age 15 was determined to become an illustrator. His training was on-the-job at commercial art studios. In 1955 he hit the big time, being hired by Brown and Bigelow, the large St. Paul calendar company. From then to 1963 he produced around 500 illustrations for the company. After that he went freelance, continuing calendar work while moving into magazine and book cover illustration -- his long-term goal. By the early 1990s he had done about 200 book covers, most in the science fiction field.

Looking at reproductions of his work, an observer might guess that Berkey worked in oil. Not so. Most of his paintings were done in casein or a combination of casein and acrylic; occasionally he used tempera.

I used to paint in casein when doing commercial art projects in college and never came remotely close to what Berkey was able to do with it; creating smooth (non-water blotched) areas was something I found difficult and illustration board curling when the paint dried was another annoyance. Clearly Berkey's work in commercial art studios allowed him to get lots of useful tips from professional artists regarding casein-handling and other needed skills.

As for the combined casein-acrylic work, my guess is that he used acrylics to block in large areas, reserving casein for the details. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

Below are examples of Berkey's science fiction art.

Gallery

Untitled - tempera - 1971

Ships

Suspended Moment - casein - 1990

Battle of the Spiral Star - casein - 1977

Intrusion, an Unpleasant Visitor - casein and acrylic - 1990

Lines Through the Horizon - casein - 1977

If your browser allows it, click on the images for larger (and sometimes clearer) views.

Tim Hildebrandt's Ultra-Detailed Fantasy Art

Tim Hildebrandt (1939-2006) was half of the Brothers Hildebrandt team of twin artists best known for this:

The Hildebrandt brothers' web site is here and their Wikipedia entry here.

I of course remember that famous Star Wars poster, but had lost touch with their work until I stumbled across

this book at a used and remaindered bookstore in my end of town. It originally dates from 1991, thereby leaving out a good deal of Tim Hildebrandt's work which evolved somewhat since publication.

Hildebrandt's style in the 1970s and 80s was both "tight" and detailed. These characteristics appeal to some folks, but not usually to me.

He normally painted using acrylics on gessoed masonite board and very fine brushes except when blocking in large areas. His palette made use of a moderately large selection of colors: four blues, two greens, a purple, three yellows, three reds, an orange, the usual four browns (sienna, umber), white and Payne's gray. A good deal of attention was paid to warm-cool color relationships, light sources and reflected light -- all this virtually formulaic, but understandable for a commercial illustrator trying to hit deadlines.

What struck me most was how different Hildebrandt's style is than those for fantasy art contemporaries such as Frank Frazetta and Jeffry Jones -- let alone current fantasy art that's mostly done using a computer. Below are a few examples of Hildebrandt's work.

Poster art for Barbarella with Jane Fonda. Click on the image for a larger, sharper view.

Concept art for a proposed theme park.

"The Elven Fortress" -- calendar art, 1983. Click on the image for a larger, sharper view.

"The Mountain" -- more calendar art, 1985. Click on the image for a larger, sharper view.

Cover art for "Fang the Gnome," 1988. Click on the image for a larger, sharper view.

Football Program Covers

The end of the American college football season is nigh. For no special reason, this brings to mind the game program publication featuring team rosters surrounded by college sports-related articles and advertising. More specifically, I think of program covers from the days when illustration -- rather than photography -- was in flower.

So without further delay, I offer a smattering of such covers gleaned from the Internet for your weekend entertainment.

The typical cover showed a football scene, as might be expected.

A slight difficulty had to do with the fact that many cover illustrations came from publishers' files and weren't specific to the teams covered in the program. Here, the team in blue does represent Michigan colors, though the helmets aren't decorated in traditional Michigan style. Their opponents are not wearing Michigan State colors.

The blackout effect on this cover is a steal from Coles Phillips who, sadly, had died two before this program was hawked at the stadium.

This is from 1928. It has a vaguely Cubist look to it -- a dash of modernity for the traditional Big Game between the Bay Area rivals.

Popular illustrator Russell Patterson contributed the art for this Yale-Army game program.

Now for some twists. Columbia University is in New York City and Yale is in New Haven, Connecticut. So here we see Lions fans descending on the Yale Bowl by car, plane and speedboat.

This 1941 Penn-Army program salutes fans rather than the teams themselves. The cadets wear traditional West Point gray -- but what about the girl? She's wearing Penn's Red and Blue and could be a real Penn student because Penn was one Ivy school that admitted women in those days.

What does that Indian have to do with the Dartmouth-Stanford game? At the time, both teams were called the Indians. Since then, political correctness caused both schools to forgo the image of bravery and fighting ability and slink off into innocuous color-related names such as The Cardinal (Stanford).

The scene at a college football game isn't all players. Here the cover artist salutes the female fan. (There's truth to this. Back when I was in college I happened to be sitting in front of some players' wives one game and took a real beating somewhat in the matter illustrated.)

Another featured female. It's a huge stretch from football game day, but I suppose the cheesecake made it worthwhile.

First, You Put an Airship on the Cover

Science Fiction was simple when I was younger, ranging from "space opera" (cowboys and Indians plots adapted to interplanetary settings) to more genteel, literary "speculative fiction." And when I dropped by the Sci-Fi section of a bookstore, the displayed books dealt pretty much with the spectrum just noted.

Alas (as Sci-Fi writer Jerry Pournelle would preface many a remark), these days matters are a lot messier. It seems that something called Fantasy invaded and then merged with the Sci-Fi book displays. More recently, books about vampires have been added to the mix. The result for me is that I have to do a good deal of serious screening to distill a selection of books dealing with blasters, energy shields and bug-eyed monsters.

That's not all! Over the last couple of decades, a new genre has materialized: steampunk.

This is not a bad thing because I'm prone to like it thanks to my interest in history and technology. My problem is finding steampunk novels that are actually pretty good (I keep wasting money on stuff I discard in boredom or disgust after 40 or 50 pages).

A further confession: What hooks me into buying some of those substandard novels is an image of an airship on the book's cover. Apparently, there are enough folks out there who are fascinated by airships that such covers pop up with alarming regularity. Here are some examples.

The last three illustrations are by Stephan Martiniere, the final two for Jay Lake's "Escapement" and L. Neil Smith's "The American Zone."


Real-world airships come in three structural flavors. At one extreme are those where the main "hull" is the gasbag itself, what we commonly call a "blimp." A more technical name is "non-rigid airship" where rigidity refers to its structure. Opposing this are "rigid airships" that traditionally have a light aluminum frame structure within which is a set of large gasbags. There is an intermediate type called "semi-rigid."

Another term for rigid airships is "dirigible," but sometimes this is sloppily applied to blimps as well. Yet another term is "Zeppelin," but that really should be reserved for German-built dirigibles, the name coming from their great proponent Count (Graf) Zeppelin.

German dirigible LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, the most successful of its breed.
For whatever it's worth, in the steampunk book cover world, airships seldom get displaced by actual airplanes. But if a cover actually did feature a Victorian airplane, I suspect sales would comparatively suffer.

Norman Rockwell and Glamour

Several years ago on the 2Blowhards blog I wrote about illustrators and the subject of glamourous women. At one point I opined that famed illustrator Norman Rockwell couldn't really do glamour. One commenter wrote that I was wrong about that.

Recently I came to the conclusion that I was indeed wrong -- this after stumbling across some Rockwell illustrations that incorporated fine looking females.

Rockwell was, from a technical standpoint, a hugely talented artist. He could produce images of reality that were true to life and contained many nice painterly touches that are best appreciated viewing the original paintings rather than printed reproductions.

He also had limitations, and was aware of some or most of them. For one thing, he admitted to being uncomfortable about deviating from what he was able to observe. And, as someone noted (I forget who), the lighting of his subjects tended to be from the direction of the viewer. In other words, usually flat -- no chiaroscuro effects. He also tended to avoid indistinct edges, shadows that merged subjects into backgrounds and strong focal points. Focal points were more compositional than attained by painterly effects; his paintings were relatively uniform across the surface in terms of edging and detail treatment.

What I'm beginning to see as I come across more of Rockwell's work is that the characteristics just noted are found mostly in his covers for the Saturday Evening Post magazine, the vehicle for his fame. His story illustrations for other magazines and some of his advertising illustrations deviated in varying degree from the Post formulas he followed. It is here where one can find a less-familiar Rockwell.

Let's look:

No, this isn't by Rockwell. The artist is Jon Whitcomb who was 12 years younger and one of the most famous "glamour girl" illustrators of his time (in-depth information on Whitcomb can be found here). I include this as a yardstick for evaluating the glamour quotient of the Rockwell illustrations that follow.

This is from the Ladies' Home Journal issue of July, 1929. Click to get an enlarged view and note Rockwell's treatment of the woman.

Here is another story illustration, this from the April, 1935 issue of American Magazine. The woman is attractive and the painting style noticeably different from his Saturday Evening Post practice.

Now for some Post covers. This was painted for the 21 October 1933 issue.

And here's Rockwell's cover painting for 26 July 1941.

Rockwell goes Hollywood for the 7 September 1937 issue. In each of these illustrations, he goes beyond the "conventionally pretty girl next door" depiction most people associate with his work. The illustration below is conventional Rockwell.

For Saturday Evening Post, 19 November 1938.

Finally, Rockwell really goes Hollywood in this 1965 illustration of Ann-Margaret as she appears in the remake of the movie Stagecoach.


As you (and now I) can see, Norman Rockwell could indeed do "glam" when he put his mind and paintbrushes to it. Even though it wasn't often.