I have always been a big fan of fantasy art. I can remember the first time I saw the work of Boris Vallejo. I was in high school and was browsing through a local bookstore and stumbled across a large portfolio of his work. I looked through the prints and was stunned by the images I saw: other worldly landscapes, buff nearly naked men, beautiful women, nearly naked men, fantastical creatures, and nearly naked men.
But seriously, I owe a great debt to the fantasy artists out there because, without them, I wouldn't have a clear picture of what the heck an author is describing. For whatever reason, I cannot see images in my head.
That is not to say I have no imagination, because I do. Or at least I think I do. But no matter how clearly someone describes something to me, I cannot build an image of it in my head. This is also why I can't draw. And why I can't follow directions to places I've never been. And why I can't seem to lose weight. Okay, maybe not the last one, but it's either blame that or take responsibility for myself.
A friend of mine tried helping me to draw once, and gave me this advice. "See the picture in your head. Overlay that picture on the piece of paper and fill in the lines." Yeah, no go on that one. I was stuck at step one.
So, when it comes to fantasy worlds, people, exotic creatures, I am utterly dependent upon the artist/illustrator to show me what it looks like. And the best of these, in my opinion, is Michael Whelan.
When Anne McCaffrey described the dragons and the weirs in her Dragonriders of Pern series, I relied upon the cover art to help me "see" the fire breathing creatures. When Stephen King described Roland in his Dark Tower books, it was Whelan who let me know what the gunslinger's brooding eyes actually looked like, and when Piers Anthony told stories of the immortals in his Incarnations of Immortality series, I actually looked Death in the face.
I will always be indebted to the great science fiction and fantasy illustrators of the world, for though it is the authors who dream up the impossible, it is the illustrators who let me see.
All images in this post are the works of Michael Whelan.
