The Art Of Stephen Hickman (book review).
For us in the UK, it’s unlikely that we have seen much of cover artist Stephen Hickman’s art, mostly because his biggest client is Baen and unless you order specifically or go to custom genre bookshops might not have seen his work. ‘The Art Of Stephen Hickman’ covers his work from fantasy, where he has a love of dragons and Tolkien, to Science Fiction. You get a commentary for most of the paintings, the odd artistic note for those who want to know what he used. Hickman paints in oils and, only a few times illustrated here, relied on Photoshop to modify a painting.
Interestingly, when he comes to his Science Fiction section, he relied on acrylics or uses them as the preliminary painting before working over it with oils. The selection of covers here are for stories by Larry Niven (or rather his shared ‘Man-Kzin Wars’ series), David Drake, Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein. It’s only at the end of the book that Hickman discloses he wasn’t keen on acrylics which neatly places this section earlier in his career.
There are also paintings from a fantasy book he wrote called ‘The Lemurian Stone’ in 1989. When you combine this with his drawings and some sculptures further in, Hickman shows an interesting amount of versatility. As he occasionally points out, many of his art pieces literally fall into place which does tend to suggest to me he has a very active unconscious mind using his skills. He also has a taste for yellow tones which is explained again at the end of the book where yellow ochre was added to his colour choices at a late stage when at school and became eager to use the shade. As he points out, learning from a limited palate first of all means you learn how to blend your colours.
Oddly, when I put my artistic eye on, I do wonder about some of the poses but when he hits them right they are truly right. Considering the tight deadlines imposed on doing book covers sometimes, this can hardly be surprising. His use of colour and getting the best out of it is impressive. I’ve tended to shy away from oils, mostly for the length of time they take to dry and the spirits needed to clean the brushes but this book has given me some serious thought on the subject.
Having said all that, this book certainly has a lot to offer covering a range of our genres. Did I mention Lovecraft? He says horror fans get spooked by his Cthulhu and their creator. Good thing I don’t spook easily but Cthulhu says I spook him. This is the kind of book you want to curl up and regularly look over, just be careful of the shadows.
GF Willmetts
February 2016
(pub: Titan Books. 143 page large hardback. Price: £24.99 (UK), $39.95 (US), $50.95 (CAN). ISBN: 978-1-78329-845-7)
check out websites: www.titanbooks.com and www.stephenhickman.com
