Thursday, August 09, 2007

In the Office

Suddenly my office is full of paintings...which doesn’t happen much in these days of jpegs and ftp sites.

Update: Sorry -- getting a fair amount of email queries -- I should have done this the first time around:

Tiger and woman: John Jude Palencar for Paul Park’s The Hidden World, the last in his “Princess of Roumania” series.

Knights through trees: David Grove for David Keck’s In the Eye of Heaven

Wizard over smoke stacks: Eric Fortune for Lisa Goldstein's Red Magician. (An upcoming Starscape edition, not the version linked to.)

Polar bear: Greg Manchess’ Nanuk. Not a Tor book...just a wee painting on it’s way to the Society of Illustrators’ permanent collection.

8 comments:

Tracy Flynn Art said...

Irene,

If you are running out of storage space, jsut give us a ring, we got some room here:)

Love the polar bear one.

Tracy

Rose Fox said...

The offices at PW are completely full of books. Everyone's desk has several piles of galleys on it. Every once in a while, someone talks about a shift to digital galleys, but I can't see it catching on.

Did you ever feel skeptical that digital art might replace physical paintings and drawings?

Livia Llewellyn said...

Who did the painting of the mage (?) and the smokestacks, and what book is it for? Just curious - I really love it.

John Klima said...

I'll second Livia's questions. :)

Anonymous said...

Eric Fortune showed me his original at SDCC. Very very nice!

Howard Lyon said...

Wow! I am very jealous. The Eric Fortune piece would be so nice on my wall! :) Beautiful paintings. Fun post, what a great aspect of your job to get to see so many pieces from different artists.

Irene Gallo said...

Eric’s Red Magician is getting a lot of kudos. He was kind enough to send me a step-by-step progression of the painting. I’ll try to get that posted today.

Hi Rose,

It’s a tough question. Certainly more and more people are painting digitally these days and those that paint traditionally often to do finishing touches in the computer. Fully traditional artists tend to email a scan rather than send the painting. It’s easier, cheaper, and faster that way....But no one makes happy-shrieks with a jpeg in their hand they way they do when they see the painting for one of their books. So there is something lost, even if it’s just a bit of delight in the middle of a work day.

I should say, though, almost every digital artist I know complains that they want to get back into pigments "some day." That desire for a tangible object doesn’t ever seem to go away. But who knows if that will change as we see the first generation of artists that grew up drawing and painting on Wacom tablets entering the field.

It is very difficult to make a living doing book cover illustration these days. Some people use the computer so that they are faster and more versatile. Others have stuck to traditional painting and have been able cultivate a collectorship to great advantage. There will always be painters...but for how long we see painted illustration, well, that’ll be interesting to see. And truth be told, it makes no difference to me in terms of my job...but personally speaking, I do miss seeing all those paintings coming into my office.

Chuck said...

GAH !!!
Seething with envy.. :)

Namaste',
chuck