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Having fun preparing for this year’s Boskone Art Show.  Of course it’s crazy to hang my crummy sketches alongside the great artists you will see there, but hey let’s face it, I’m not going to be quitting my day job…so sketching remains a completely fun hobby (thank goodness).  Below are some snapshots taken during the sketching, which I found amusing, especially the one based on a fan cosplay photo related to I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space.

Missed the premiere broadcast of Lloyd Dangle’s live streaming video feed last week, but somehow managed to tune in to the wrap up of this week’s “Big Ass Sarah Palin Episode.”    And well worth it!

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One thing that has baffled me for many years is the identity of the artist who painted the original covers of the Illuminatus! paperbacks, which were published by Dell in 1975.   The signature, clear as day, reads:  “Carlos Victor“, but I have never encountered any artist of that name in any reference.  Wikipedia credits all the paintings to this mysterious artist.

So let me say it first here:  the identity of Carlos Victor is almost certainly the wonderful painter Carlos Ochagavia!

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The recent opening of a group show at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in L.A. took me by surprise, because the “cover” painting of the group show is an amazing canvas by Kent Williams, called Mother and Daughter.

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At first glance the dark palettes and almost monochrome scenes painted by Lou Feck seem rather low key.  Compared to the startling palettes of his contemporaries in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you’d think that Feck was either taking a lot of downers or painting with deliberate understatement.  Yet the more I look at his cover paintings, the more I am convinced that Feck was using a masterful and subtle style.

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Completely gobsmacked by this painting up for auction at Heritage, I wondered who the artist was.  None other than Irving Sinclar (1895-1969), who was apparently a well-known portrait and commercial artist beginning in the 1930s.  According to the SF Chronicle (24 Feb 1969):

“Born in British Columbia on March 5, 1895. After settling in San Francisco in 1917, Sinclair worked as a billboard artist for Foster & Kleiser, and in the 1920s was art director for Fox West Coast Theatres. In 1939 he studied in New York under Wayman Adams. San Francisco remained his adopted home where he painted Mayors Rossi, Robinson, and Christopher. He became well known for portraits of Hollywood stars and other famous Americans including F. D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Summers were often spent in Canada in his Galiano Island studio. Sinclair died in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 1969.”

With such an interesting resumé, I thought that there should be plenty of material online about the artist.  However, if Google is to be believed, Sinclair is primarily known for this realistic painting called “The Poker Game.”

It’s a nice painting, to be sure, though it might have been done by Norman Rockwell, who could never have painted the bold figurative portraits in the Heritage lot.   Where the Poker Game excels in muted detail, the portrait thrives in electric, almost psychedelic colors…if you view the large resolution version at the Heritage link (above), you will see the bold, effortless brushwork.  As if dashed off in a hurry, the portrait sings with fervent, nervous energy…I’m gobsmacked by that blue and orange, I tell you!

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What a curious thread unraveled from reading the scanned issue of Telepath #1 on eFanzines this weekend. The fanzine, originally published by Arthur Haddon in Dec 1951, provided some tidbits of information about Australia’s first (if short-lived) SF pulp, Thrills Incorporated. This pulp was created by Stanley Horowitz’ Transport Publications following the the success of the weird mystery pulp, Scientific Thriller which appeared in 1948. Thrills Incorporated appeared in March 1950 and lasted for a total of 23 issues, ending in June 1952.

In the pages of Telepath, one of the Sydney Futurian Society fans, Vol Molesworth (1924-1964), interviewed the editor of Thrills Inc which helped to “clear up a number of points that fans in Australia and abroad had been debating.” This may have been a reference to a series of plagiarisations that took place in the first year of Thrills issues. As the editor, Alister Innes, confessed to Molesworth, “In the early issues we were hoodwinked by certain unscrupulous writers who plagiarised American SF stories without our knowledge. As soon as this was pointed out by our readers, we sacked those writers. Our present day policy is to give an author a title and an illustration and get him to write a story around them.”

What a curious way to run a magazine!   On the other hand, there might have been no way for the editors to have known that the stories were plagiarized.   According to Garry Dalrymple (via email), foreign science fiction magazines were treated as contraband in Australia between 1940 and 1950.   As prohibited imports,  issues of SF mags were discovered during routine inspection of the mails, and returned to sender.  This quarantine resulted in a market for locally printed SF pulps of questionable quality.    At that time, said Dalrymple, just about the only new stuff getting through to Sydney (and the Sydney Futurians) were gifts from Forry Ackerman!

On the quality of production that went into those opportunistic Australian SF pulps,  one author put it this way:  “Very often, when the editor (Innes) was running to a tight schedule he would have the artwork already done and hand you a picture, saying ‘Three thousand worlds and a title, old boy, and I do need them by Friday.” One picture he gave me didn’t allow a lot of scope as far as the title was concerned, I thought, so I called it ‘Jet-Bees of Planet J’. He took another look at the picture when I brought in the manuscript, then looked at the title again ‘See what you mean, old boy’. He nodded approval. “Sort of self-propelled by their own farts.’

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Took a little drive to Pickety Place in N.H., thanks to a gift certificate for lunch from Jesse and Angelica.  Thanks, guys!   This strange business is based on the illustrations of Grandma’s House in the 1948 edition of Little Red Riding Hood, drawn by Elizabeth Orton Jones.   Indeed, the illustrations look just like the actual building and the amazing old tree looming right alongside. [Read more →]

It’s been a while since I posted a somewhat sarcastic note about the fine artist, Steele Savage.   Now I feel compelled to follow up those seven images with yet another appreciation, since I really would like to know more about Savage and his career, which as far as I can tell spanned from the 1930s to 1970s.   In this instance, I discovered that what I had assumed to be an amusing bit of fantasy in the cover illustration for John Brunner’s The Long Result, turns out to be the very likeness of the alien who is one of the major characters in the book.   Here is the passage describing the remarkable, Anovel, a Regulan visitor to planet Earth:

“Anovel stood some five feet eight or nine in height, and his resemblance to a horse was remarkable.  He had the same long, rather sad-looking head, and twin nostril-sheaths rose above his eyes to give the effect of a horse’s ears.  His skin was a vivid and beautiful blue, while the mane which ran down the nape of his neck was yellow as a buttercup.”

What a fine rendition of that odd being Savage provided us!  Projecting from the characteristic cloud of faces, in this case a sort of crescent arc that swirls backwards to the left, it is a wonderful picture, indeed.   Without spoiling the story for you, there is also an implication of the “crucial facts,” or kenekito, lurking in the oversized eyes of Anovel.

This beautiful illustration for the cover of Daughter of IS (1978), by Mikal D. Huber, is a wonderful example of the science fiction art of Carlos Ochagavia.  The background is rendered in a light, airy tone that fades away, with major features that become transparent (in this case, a moon) .  The main figure is also somewhat soft — a woman rising up in cloud — while the most tangible figure in the painting (a hand on fire!) is disembodied.   In the middle distance are Ochagavia’s characteristic space-vehicles, usually saucers standing on chunky legs, and arcing behind the scene is a jet that leaves a visible trail.   The image, as a whole, is strangely ethereal; is it a realistic painting, softened at the edges?  Or a surrealistic painting, with a few concrete objects for our gaze to anchor upon?   Ochagavia tantalizes us to find out…but often as not, the books being illustrated hold few clues as to what the artist was thinking.

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An interesting problem:  illustrate a cover for the fiction of Stanislaw Lem.   How would you do it?   Here is a nice little gallery of rarely seen Lem covers, collected by one of the very best tribute sites to the author.  Be sure to check out the other sections of this terrific website!

Enjoyed reading a copy of Heinlein’s novel “Have Spacesuit Will Travel,” with an especially nice cover by Steele Savage. Which made me curious to look up more covers by the same artist. He seems to have a predilection for disembodied, floating heads. Not to mention a very suspiciously unrealistic name! Gimme a break! “Steele,” with a silent “e” on the end? This has got to be a pseudonym…which led me to speculate on who Savage is, if not Steele Savage… If I had to pick a likely candidate, I would note the similarity of brushwork, the pale skies, and smoothly modeled surfaces in the work of Carlos Ochagavia, one of my all-time favorite artists (though lamentably almost forgotten today).

But since his work dates back to some World War II posters, we might have to accept the incredible name. Not to mention the incredible SF covers Savage painted in the late 60s and early 70s!

See also a listing of Steele Savage covers at ISFDB.

A few covers and illustrations on flickr.

A small gallery of Arabian Nights illustrations, circa 1932.

The interesting cover on Arthur Sellings The Uncensored Man attracted my eye in a San Francisco bookshop on Polk Street several years ago. It featured a sort of typical 1960s collage of a man’s face on a stark white background. I wondered who the cover artist was for quite a while, but it wasn’t until Boskone 2008 when I purchased a copy of West of the Sun by Edgar Pangborn, that I finally found the same artist. West of the Sun credited the cover illustration to one: Hoot V. Z. A little Google sleuthing turned up a terrific gallery of covers by the one and only Hoot von Zitzewitz, which are characteristic and interesting all by themselves. But who exactly Hoot Von Zitzewitz was remains a mystery.

img source: flickr page

a fun filled flickr gallery of classic Vargo Statten covers, and many others.