(Cover art by David Bowers)

Every year around November, Underwood Books releases the newest incarnation of their line of Spectrum art books. 2005 ended with the release of Spectrum 12. Every February Kathie and Arnie Fenner bring together a group of A-list artistic talent who converge on Kansas City to review submissions from artists well-known and unknown in the categories of Books, Comics, Advertising, Industrial, and Unpublished. Anyone can submit work for judging. The chosen ones are given the honor of having their work featured in the next Spectrum book. I may be biased because of the Kansas City connection but the Fenner’s and the folks at Underwood books put out the best quality art books I have seen. Their trio of books covering the life and art of Frank Frazetta are beyond compare and each year’s Spectrum title is better than the one before. The books are released in hardback and soft cover simultaneously and the quality of each is unmatched.

My Spectrum ritual, perfected over the last 6 years since I first discovered the books, is to go through the book once just to ogle the artwork. I then sit down at the computer and look up each artist on the internet to see if they have a website so I can check out more of their work. I also go through the book category to look up each book whose art catches my eye on Amazon.com to see if it is something I would like to read. I am a firm believer in judging a book by its cover as this has led to some amazing literary discoveries. It should come as no surprise that each year makes my “to read” pile grow exponentially.

Last night a new ritual was begun. I had suggested to Jeff awhile back that it might be fun to sit down together and go through our Spectrum books (I converted him to the Spectrum art cult) cover to cover and comment about the art therein. He reminded me of this recently and so we had a guys night in last night and did just that. I wondered at first if it would be weird doing that (and I can hear you now saying, ‘you’re right, that is weird’), but it was actually very cool and fun. It was interesting to see what we each liked and didn’t like about the various works. There were no artsy-fartsy arguments or battles of wit over each other’s likes/dislikes. It was a nice gentlemanly conversation about art and I enjoyed it immensely.

And, I got a gift out of the deal! I only have books 8-12 and Jeff tracked down hardcover editions of Spectrum 5 and 6 for me on ebay. Thanks Jeff!!! I haven’t seen either of these so its been fun to start perusing them and I look forward to doing my internet ritual with them soon.

If you are in any way interested in inexpensive art books you simply cannot match the quality of the Spectrum books. The hardcover and softcover versions are always deeply discounted at Amazon as soon as they are released. I look forward to Spectrum 13 coming out in November. In the meantime here are a few examples of artists included in the Spectrum books with their websites so you can check out more (click pictures for larger versions when possible):

(Apocrypha by Greg Spalenka)

(Cover to Lucifer #56 by Michael Wm. Kaluta)

(The Spark by Scott Fisher)

(Torrefaction by Terese Nielsen)

(Carrot by Omar Rayyan)

(Giant Puller by Matt Gaser…click for much better larger image)

And those are just a few samples of the many wonderful works in the latest Spectrum book. Look out for Spectrum 13 in November. I highly recommend all these books, they are true works of craftsmanship.