Michael Whelan

[Cyril Tourneur]

Michael Whelan (born June 29, 1950) is a multiple-award-winning American artist of imaginative realism, formerly working for over 30 years as an illustrator specializing in science fiction and fantasy, before devoting all his work to his fine art career.

His art has appeared on over 350 book and magazine covers, including many Stephen King novels, most of the Del Rey editions of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series, Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince and Dragon Star series, the DAW editions of Michael Moorcock's Elric books, numerous DAW editions of C. J. Cherryh's work, many of Robert Heinlein's novels including Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, the Ace editions of H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy novels, and Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Otherland, and Shadowmarch series. Whelan provided covers and interior illustrations for Stephen King's The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower, the first and last of his Dark Tower books.

Whelan's work can also be seen on the cover of the Jacksons' "Victory" album, Sepultura's Beneath the Remains, Arise, Chaos A.D. and Roots albums, Soulfly's Dark Ages, and Obituary's landmark album Cause of Death, and every album by Elric-influenced metal band Cirith Ungol.

Since the mid-1990's he has pursued a successful career as a gallery artist, selling his non-commissioned paintings in galleries in the US as well as privately through his website.

Michael Whelan was born in Culver City, California, the son of William and Nancy Whelan. As a child, he had a nomadic existence, moving nearly every other year due to the demands of his father's aerospace industry career. He thus attended eight elementary schools, three junior high schools and four high schools, and often lived for only the duration of the summer in other locations. He grew up in Colorado, several cities along the California coast, and in New Mexico (near the White Sands Proving Ground). Whelan's time near White Sands and Vandenberg Air Force Base proved a lasting influence; in a 2000 interview, he noted that he couldn't "deny that living near to missile launching sites and Air Force bases had an impact. It was always thrilling to watch them go up...and sometimes blow up" (AudioBookCafe.com).

By the time Whelan was a sophomore in high school, his family had moved to Denver. It was there that he began his formal training in art, taking summer classes at Denver's Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. By his final year of high school, his family had moved again; this time to San Jose, California, where he graduated from Oak Grove High School (San Jose, California) in 1968.

He attended college at San Jose State University, initially as a Biology major, (pre-med). While at SJSU, he worked in the Anatomy and Physiology Department, gaining a first-hand knowledge of human anatomy. According to Whelan, his job "involved all sorts of tasks related to the anatomy department, such as preparing cadavers for the classes, stringing bones together to make complete skeletons, making models of body parts, some medical illustration, etc." (Delos). Some of Whelan's college medical drawings appeared in The Journal Of Bone And Joint Surgery. Over time, however, he became disenchanted with the limited creative possibilities in medical illustration and during the middle of his junior year, Whelan changed his major to Art.

After graduating from SJSU in 1973 with a BA in Painting (as a "President's Scholar"), Whelan studied briefly at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California for nine months from 1973–1974. In 1974 Whelan exhibited his work at the World Science Fiction Convention in Washington D.C., where it was seen by Thomas Schluck, who first discovered his work and contracted to use it in European publications shortly afterwards. Donald A. Wollheim of DAW Books gave Whelan his first American professional assignment—the cover to Lin Carter's fantasy novel, The Enchantress of World's End, after seeing Whelan's artwork in a set of slides Whelan submitted in August 1974.

Since he was already receiving offers for assignments Whelan left the Art Center College of Design to pursue illustration full-time. In 1975, he moved to Connecticut so as to be near the New York City hub of the publishing industry. There he met Audrey Price, whom he was eventually to marry. Shortly after arriving on the East Coast he exhibited some of his student works in the Lunacon convention art show in New York, where it was seen by Harlan Ellison. Ellison kindly obtained Whelan's first magazine illustration assignment for Ellison's story "Croatoan" which appeared in Gallery magazine. At Lunacon Michael also met Rick Bryant, who subsequently introduced Michael to Neal Adams. Mr. Adams graciously called the art director of Ace Books and paved the way for Whelan's first assignment at Ace.

Quick to take advantage of these opportunities, Whelan soon gained a reputation as a talented, imaginative, and dependable cover artist, working for science fiction and fantasy publishers such as DAW Books, Del Rey, and Ace. Whelan credits the 1979 publication of Anne McCaffrey's best-selling The White Dragon featuring his cover art as a turning point in his career. He won his first Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist in 1980 at the Noreascon II Worldcon in Boston. In his career to date, Whelan has won fifteen Hugos—more than any other artist.

When commissioned,Whelan made a practice of reading the entire book that he sought to illustrate, usually twice. "I try to let the book I'm illustrating determine the approach and subject matter," he stated (Delos). Not surprisingly, Whelan's close attention to the work he illustrates has made him popular with writers and fans alike. Fantasist Michael Moorcock wrote of Whelan, "I am more than usually grateful for an artist who not only depicts him [Elric] as I imagine (and describe him) but who also manages to capture some of the appropriate atmosphere" (Wonderworks, p. 36). Science fiction writer Anne McCaffrey praised him, declaring, "Fortunate indeed is the author who has Michael Whelan for an illustrator" (Wonderworks, p. 55).

He illustrated the cover for Meat Loaf's 1993 album Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell. He also provided several illustrations for the insert booklet, which were also used for the single releases such as "I'd Do Anything for Love (but I Won't Do That)". Larger versions of his artwork were featured in the album's 2002 special edition release. He has since gone on to paint album cover artwork for many other recording artists, from Michael Jackson to Sepultura to Jonn Serrie.

Whelan currently lives in Danbury, Connecticut. Since 1996 he has stopped accepting commissioned work, devoting his efforts to his gallery pieces and "self-commissioned" works. He has mounted several one-man and group shows at a number of galleries in the U.S., but his imaginative and engaging work still finds it's way onto published projects such as the SPECTRUM annuals.

He and Audrey Price have two children, Alexa and Adrian. Whelan was successfully treated for Lyme disease in 1999 and prostate cancer in 2000.

His hobbies include the martial arts (he has a second degree black belt in Chinese-Okinawan Kempo), electronic music, and travel.

Michael Whelan | Science Fiction and Fantasy Artist
Michael Whelan - Summary Bibliography
Delos International: An Interview con Michael Whelan



(i've known this cover for 15 years; in my youth i played d&d and naturally my favorites where the Undead... the book was called Land of the Dead or something like that)





(obvious)



(i know this, too...but i'm not sure where i've seen it before)



(funny tonight i reread the Boogeyman Episode in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing)

[G. S. Carnivals]

The second and third (obvious) images, of course, provide a portion of the cover artwork for Del Rey's The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. Mr. Ribcage appears on the book's spine.

[Odalisque]

Quote Originally Posted by G. S. Carnivals

The second and third (obvious) images, of course, provide a portion of the cover artwork for Del Rey's The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. Mr. Ribcage appears on the book's spine.

Of course? Why of course? I don't think I've seen the volume in question. Some of us have to muddle by with our Arkham House Lovecrafts -- we can't all keep up with Del Rey volumes.

Of course, I do have the Joshi edited Arkham House Lovecrafts and the earlier Derleth edited volumes. I don't think that all the changes made by Joshi are for the better. ;)

But Del Rey editions? I don't know them.

[G. S. Carnivals]

Quote Originally Posted by Odalisque

Quote Originally Posted by G. S. Carnivals The second and third (obvious) images, of course, provide a portion of the cover artwork for Del Rey's The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. Mr. Ribcage appears on the book's spine. Of course? Why of course?

Because it was apparently (obvious), obviously. (Just a mild nudge in the direction of Tobias not to assume that these images are known to all.) I only replied at all because I immediately knew where these works were used, of course.

[hypnogeist]

As noted above, MW has primarily been a Sci-Fi/Fantasy illustrator. But throughout his career he has produced a much smaller number, I would guess between 20 & 25, of outstanding horror illustrations. Of those, a few, including the Del Rey images used for the Lovecraft paperbacks posted above and 3 of the 4 I am posting, are among my favorite horror illustrations from the last 50 years or so.

This illustration has appeared more than once. First saw it on the cover of a collection of short stories by George R.R. Martin called "Sandkings" in 1986 (great reading btw, mostly sci-fi and fantasy stories with a few dashes of horror mixed in):


The cover of DAW=SF's "The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series IX" edited by Karl Edward Wagner (contains excellent stories by Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, and T.E.D. Klein) from 1981 sported this image:


Here is another image used for the The-Year's-Best-Horror-Stories (I forget which volume):

In addition to the obvious terrors there are also several subtle, almost hidden sub-images in this picture. I can almost guarantee you won't see them all at first glance if you've never seen this pic before. For that matter, not sure I've seen them all yet.

And here is one of what I term MW's Cyclopean-Concrete-Edifice pictures, because I don't know their actual titles. He did 3 or 4 others similar to this. Don't know what these were used for. Strike me as very strange and very well done, though perhaps not horrific. Then again, they certainly are gloomy, oppresive, and strongly suggestive of decay and neglect. Though not overt, perhaps horror is intended nonetheless:

If this last catches your attention you really should try to find a larger resolution image, as the detail of the original approaches photorealism and is simply awesome. Maybe if you search about the Net a bit, seems like I remember seeing a giant wallpaper of this somewhere... ;)

Many thanks to Cyril Tourneur for the thorough and edifying MW biography.

[hypnogeist]

All of MW's best horror pictures are in his poster book titled "Something In My Eye", 17 or so images. It is a giant book, something like 15" x 12", with beautifully reproduced images - nothing blury and colors are true. It is OOP but there are 7 or 8 used copies available currently at Amazon for < $10. If you are into eBay it probably turns up there frequently also.

[bendk]

In the most recent newsletter by Centipede Press, it states that Michael Whelan has painted the cover for their upcoming edition of At the Mountains of Madness. I look forward to seeing that. I am a big fan of his work.