Today’s Friday Favorites features a couple of guys whose work I consider as representing the classic style of science fiction art: John Berkey and John Harris. Both have a unique style and yet their paintings evoke a classical feel. Neither artist has a proper website so obtaining quality pictures of their work is a task in an of itself. Hopefully the examples that I have found will give you an idea of how stunning their work can be.
(Cover for the anthology, Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown)
As promised, today’s Friday Favorite features more science fiction art, this time buy the digital master Stephan Martiniere.
(Cygnus. All images copyright Les Edwards)
As threatened yesterday, I have brought back the Friday Favorites. For the uninitiated, this category features sites from my Favorites file, mostly art, that I want to share with you. This month’s selections will primarily be science fiction artists whose paintings have either graced science fiction covers for years or are in their own unique way reminiscent of those great artists. Les Edwards (also known as Edward Miller) is one such artist.
The above painting, Cygnus, is one of my absolute favorite pieces of science fiction art. The hazy blue tone and the depth it creates gives one the sense that there is an enormity to this place that is only hinted at in the painting. I sit and stare and wonder who the person walking on the bridge is. For a long time I mistakingly thought that he was walking towards the ship when in fact he is walking away. Is he the pilot? A passenger? A mechanic? His presence gives the piece a feeling of melancholy that I find endearing.
(I left this little volunteer evergreen in the yard purposely in the hopes that I could get a Charlie Brown Christmas tree picture like this one)
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.
~William Shakespeare
(The Abduction)
Tis the Friday before Halloween (or it was when I started this but work interrupted and thus you’re getting it a week late) and so today’s Friday Favorite had to be in some way slightly disturbing. Thus I bring you Kathie Olivas’ Misery Children series. Kathie can give you her interpretation of her works here, for me, I find them both cute and creepy and thus highly appealing.