"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
From The Rook #1 (October 1979), here’s “Bolt,” with script by Rich Margopolis and visionary art by Alex Nino:
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Rich Margopolis is what is written in the credits, but I do believe that Rich’s last name is actually spelled Margopoulos.
Easy choice this morning. I scanned these a couple of days ago, so just a few strokes of the keyboard, a couple clicks of the mouse, and voilà:
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If you like what you see above, you should take a moment to check out the Tom Adams category here at RCN. I’ve posted quite a few covers with art by Tom Adams so far, and stay tuned, because I have more in my collection that I plan to scan and post in the near future.
From Heavy Metal vol. II, no. 11 (March 1979), here’s a gorgeous fantasy illustration, printed across two pages, that is identified in the table of contents by one word and a page number: “Nino, 48.”
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What to do, what to do… hmm… okay… I think it’s time for some more Agatha Christie covers with art by Tom Adams:
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To view all of the Agatha Christie covers with art by Tom Adams that I’ve scanned and posted here at RCN, start here.
Today, legendary graphic designer and illustrator Milton Glaser (b. 26 June 1929, New York City) celebrates his 84th birthday, so I dived into my stacks of old paperbacks, and this is what I came up with:
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“There is no security in the world, or in life. I don’t mind living with some ambiguity and realizing that eventually, everything changes.”
— Milton Glaser, in conversation with Debbie Millman,
How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer (2007)
“The story of how I decided to become an artist is this: When I was a very little boy, a cousin of mine came to my house with a paper bag. He asked me if I wanted to see a bird. I thought he had a bird in the bag. He stuck his hand in the bag, and I realized that he had drawn a bird on the side of a bag with a pencil. I was astonished! I perceived this as being miraculous. At that moment, I decided that was what I was going to do with my life. Create miracles.”
— Milton Glaser, in conversation with Debbie Millman,
How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer (2007)
Paul Alexander (American b. 1937) is not an illustrator whose name carries any weight with me, but I recently noticed that I have several novels with cover art by “Alexander” in my collection, and following a bit of close inspection, I began to realize why, beginning in the early 1970s, SF publishers like Ace, Baen, Ballantine, Del Rey, and Fawcett, lined up to publish his work. Alexander is a dab hand at painting spaceships and machinery in the vein of John Berkey, he handles human figures and creatures just fine, thank you very much, and he obviously knows a thing or two about brushwork, composition, colour theory, and so on.
In rummaging about for a bit information about Alexander’s career, I also recently noticed that, in his 1978 book Tomorrow and Beyond: Masterpieces of Science Fiction Art, the famous art director Ian Summers selected twelve (!) paintings by Alexander for display, but only six by Paul Lehr, six by John Berkey, and six by the great Richard Powers; second in terms of numbers was Steve Hickman with nine paintings, and third was Don Maitz with eight. Alexander, Hickman, and Maitz: solid craftsmen all, but not exactly the Holy Trinity of SF artists.
But enough grousing from me! Here are today’s cover scans:
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As computers increasingly became an essential tool in commercial illustration, Paul Alexander made a decision in the late 1990s to wind down his career in commercial art. According to an anonymous online source, Alexander now lives in Greenville, Ohio, and does not own a computer. The remaining inventory of his cover art is currently on display, and for sale, at Worlds of Wonder. Prices range between a thousand and two-thousand dollars. Alexander’s original gouache painting for the cover of Ian Watson’s The Very Slow Time Machine, for instance, is exactly two thousand; the painting for Frank Herbert’s The Godmakers is only twelve hundred; and the one for Robert Silverberg’s To Live Again has been reduced from seventeen fifty to fifteen fifty. And you know, despite my reservations about Paul Alexander’s work, if I had an unlimited budget for art, I just might buy that last one. It’s a very strong image.
BONUS SCAN:
And one with art by Alex Ebel:
Courtesy of our new 11 x 17 inch scanner/printer, my personal library, and GIMP, here are four covers that share a sort of thematic family resemblance along with a bonus cover on a slightly different theme; the artist credits, where known, are in the file names, as usual:
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The cover art for Notions: Unlimited by Robert Sheckley is uncredited, and no signature is visible, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the artist turned out to be Dean Ellis.
BONUS SCAN:
Here’s a silly post for ya…
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FURTHER VARIATIONS ON THE THEME OF PIGGYBACK:
And there you have it: the good, the bad, and the ugly…
ANOTHER (Added 01 December 2014):
ABOVE: Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585), Flight of Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius from Troy (c.1555-60), pen and brush and brown wash, 28.1 x 40.4 cm.
AND ANOTHER (Added 04 December 2014):
ABOVE: Paul Manship (1885-1966), Centaur and Nymph (n.d.), pencil and pen and ink on paper, 13.6 x 21 cm.
AND ANOTHER (Added 31 July 2015):
This morning, let us give thanks to the gods themselves for churches that organize used-book sales:
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ABOVE: Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves (New York: Fawcett, n.d.), with cover art by Charles Moll.
ABOVE: Poul Anderson, Virgin Planet (New York: Warner, 1973), with cover art by Charles Moll.
ABOVE: John Brunner, The Whole Man (New York: Ballantine, 1973), with cover art by Charles Moll.
ABOVE: Robert Silverberg, ed., New Dimensions III (Scarborough, ON: New American Library of Canada, 1974), with cover art by Charles Moll.
Ragged Claws Network 