Jason Manley on Sidebar Nation

Another great interview from the folks at Sidebar Nation. This one with Jason Manley, founder of Massive Black and ConceptArt.org.

Wallpaper: Jeff Jones and Bruce Jensen

Can it be a week already!?

Up this week, Jeff Jones and Bruce Jensen.

Grab them while you can at Tor.com

Update from last week:

Eric Fortune made me clean my desktop. (Click here for the horrible "before.") If only someone could inspire me to do the same for my non-virtual desktop, I'd be golden.

Donato Giancola and The Last Paladin

Donato Giancola recently finished this painting for Kathleen Bryan's The Last Paladin.

Occasionally I will get a number of great sketches for one project. In this case, Donato had created a couple of sketches for the first book in the series, The Serpent and the Rose, and I hated the idea of picking just one of them. Luckily the editor, Beth Meacham, said that one would be perfect for Serpent while the other could be kept for this concluding volume. It was nice entering into a sales season knowing that we had an approved sketch a year and half before we needed the painting.

IMAGES:
Final Painting.

Initial thumbnails. The top right became The Last Paladin while the bottom thumb was used for The Serpent and the Rose.

Flushing out the thumbnail.

Final Drawing.

Greg Manchess and Dan Dos Santos Demo at RISD

A highlight of my year is an annual visit to Jon Foster's Rhode Island School of Design class. His students are great, Providence is beautiful in May, Jon's extended family of friends and artists are a delight, and Jon, himself, never seems happier than when he's playing match-maker between talented peoples.

This year Greg Manchess and Dan Dos Santos did a class crit and a demo. The object of their demo happened to be the super awesome former student of Jon's, Wesley Allsbrook. Wesley, I'm excited to say, is creating a short comic story for Tor.com. It's just a big happy circle of life thing.

Little Brother, Pablo's Take

Tor's mass market designer, Pablo Defendini, is a big fan of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. So much so, he's been working on an alternate cover, just for the heck of it. It's likely that we’ll keep the Peter Lutjen/Yuko Shimizu version for paperback -- since it is awesome and it seems to be doing a good job at branding -- but it's tons of fun, not to mention a great excersize, to see alternate takes on it.

Phil Hale on Painting Tony Blair

A BBC interview with Phil Hale on the Tony Blair portrait.

[Thanks to Robert Wiener, publisher of Goad, for the heads up.]

Mary Rickert and I at the Sugar Loaf Cafe

(Lou Anders will hate me for this one.)

I know many people in publishing love to fetishize books. While I love books carefully put together and all the details thought through, once I'm reading a book I want to live with it, hard -- dog-eared, dog chewed, fallen asleep and drooled on, spilt tea. Whatever I'm going through, my books are going through. So, when I was heading out the Sugar Loaf Cafe on my bicycle and limited pocket space, I tore out the Mary Rickert story from Fantasy and Science Fiction. But it was torn with love.

(I should note: Gordon and John cleverly scheduled the Rickert story for the one month my subscription ran out -- thus, guaranteeing that I will not let my subscription lapse again.)

Obey the Tennis Ball!

Wallpaper: Eric Fortune and Pablo Defendini

This week @ Tor.com

One of my faves, Eric Fortune. Eric just found out that this painting was selected to be in the Society’s 50 year retrospective and is justifiably proud. (I swear I had nothing to do with it.) There was only room for about 400 images in that book so each annual is distilled to just a dozen images. Congrats, Eric!

And, I'm proud to say, Tor’s very own Pablo Defendini. He is one of our paperback book designers. Turns out, he’s a pretty bad ass illustrator as well. And a much better blogger than I am. (Yes, he must be stopped.)

(RELATED: There is a quick progression of Eric's painting here.)

Speaking of Sam Weber, or, MicroVisions 3

I seem to be popular these past seven or ten days. Sam Weber and Dan dos Santos stopped by. Sam was dropping off his MicroVisions 3 painting, and it's to die for.

MicroVisions is a student scholarship fundraising auction. Each year, Dan and I ask a handful of sf/f artists to create a 5x7 painting. These are exhibited at the Society of Illustrators and then auctioned on eBay. 100% of the proceeds are put into the Society's scholarship fund.

(I really didn't mean to get into this but my fingers seem to keep typing...)

Seen here, MicroVisions 1 and 2. The third exhibit and auction will go up in June. A few paintings are done already. Once a few more are in, I'll start showing them off.

This year, our extremely generous crew includes:
Daren Bader
Jason Chan
Erik Gist
Joe Jusko
Nic Klein
Todd Lockwood
Glen Orbik
Yuko Shimizu
Shaun Tan
Sam Weber

Insanely Talented Student Spotlight: Jeremy Enecio

Jeremy Enecio: This guy is going far. If I hadn't met him myself, I wouldn't believe he's still in school.

(Thanks to Sam Weber for the intro.))

Student Exhibition at the Society of Illustrators

I know it's easy to say that the student exhibit at the Society of Illustrators is the best night in the building, but, truly, that is not lip service. The exhibit displays just 130 paintings chosen from 6,000 entries -- by the numbers, it's harder to get into this show than any of the professional illustration annuals. The work is fantastic.

The opening was last Friday. Many professional illustrators were in the audience, soaking in the good will, energy, and enthusiasm from what, in one month's time, will be their colleagues and competition. As Terry Brown noted, these young people are, "Talented, scared, and ready." Peter Hamill was there to speak on behave of Burne Hogarth, winner of the Distinguished Educator award. A second Distinguished Educator's award went to Vincent di Fate. Vin was not only one of the first people I worked with, he also took a lot of time to guide and help me learn what the heck my job was all about. I guess it should come as no surprise that a man who has spent a lifetime painting the future is so dedicated to nurturing the next generation of artists.

Congrats to Vin and the Hogarth family, and a huge congrats to all the students in the exhibition. And a hearty "thank you" to Scott Bakal for working tirelessly to put it all together.

All the paintings in the exhibit can be seen here.

PAINTINGS:
Jane Radstrom, Albert Ramos Cortes, Francis Vallejo, Tony Mantano, and Nicholas Heiny.

PHOTOS:
Vincent Di Fate. Pete Hamill. Francis Vallejo receiving his award. Jeremy Enceio by his painting. (Keep an eye on both Francis and Jeremy -- these guys are crazy good.)

Illustration Master Class Prep

Rebecca has been hard at work on all the details of the Illustration Master Class. She called for a summit meeting of all the instructors to finalize the curriculum. Here we are in Society's library doing just that. And, of course, the eating Indian food afterwards.

There are only 5 positions left for the Master Class. If anyone is debating attending, now is the time to decide.

Illustration Master Class
June 16-22, 2008
Amherst College Campus
$1,700.00 - includes meals and housing.

Instructors:
Julei Bell
Dan Dos Santos
Scott Fischer
Irene Gallo
Donato Giancola
Rebecca Guay
Greg Manchess
Boris Vallejo

Speaking of Bob Eggleton

Bob Eggleton and Marianne Plumridge rescued me from spending an entire day in a meeting, for which I am very grateful. Bob, as always, seems to have hands in a dozen differnet projects. He just delevered a children's book on dinosaurs which I'm looking forward to seeing. I'll have to hound him for a heads-up on publication date.

Wallpapers: Bob Eggleton and John Picacio

Free at Tor.com, courtesy of Bob Eggleton and John Picacio. Hugo contenders, they is.