And finishing off Art Week, we have the 2016 Best Professional Artists finalists:
So, who is at the top of your list?
As always, keep in mind the Comment Rules, and let’s discuss the Hugo finalists!
Now onto the Retro artists
I couldn’t find them on Deviant Art (ha! I crack myself up), but I did find a nice Pulp Artists site that has works for each of them. It doesn’t have many for the specific year in question, but it at least provides some clear examples of their style and talent until we hopefully get some examples in the Retro Packet.
So, who is at the top of your list?
As always, keep in mind the Comment Rules, and let’s discuss the Hugo finalists!
Update: Hat tips to Bartimaeus, for the link to Amazing Stories’ cover gallery and Steve J Wright for the link to many of Frank R. Paul’s works.
Here are a series of recommendations for Best Professional Artist. The images included below are just samples – please click the artist names for the full recommendations.
Sheppard’s subtly detailed images and lovely, atmospheric colors have appeared on the covers of Karen Memory, The Iron Assassin, and the forthcoming A Daughter of No Nation, as well as on a number of 2015 Magic: The Gathering cards.
Former Best Fan Artist winner and Best Professional Artist nominee Galen Dara produced several beautiful, powerful images this year for the short story collection Three Slices. Her work also appeared on the cover of Kevin Hearne’s Two Tales of the Iron Druid Chronicles.
Professional cover artist and illustrator with a bold and distinctive style.
Bastion is a new science fiction magazine publishing digitally on the first of every month… Their cover artist is Milan Jaram and every cover is absolutely gorgeous.
Professional artist working for 2000 AD; does comics and book covers in a range of styles, effective and striking.
When reviewing covers and other works for best pro artist, a couple jumped right to the top of my list (Empire Ascendant cover and Dinosaur Lords – especially interior art) and I quickly realized, they were by the same artist.
Also, this weekend I will be posting links to several of the pro artist recommendation lists out there since there are a large number of them that list the artists of show a piece of their art or two but don’t have actual write-ups. But a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
This week is Best Professional Artist which I have definitely been looking forward to! With that I add an option to the submission form for a preview image if there is one particular image you think stands out. Also, we can see about using it when we get to things like Novels and other works that have definite covers. Either way, it’s optional right now.
If you are unsure if the work is eligible for Best Professional Artist or Best Fan Artist, just take your best guess (Best Fan Artist is in January to mix it up some). It is based on whether the artwork appeared in a professional publication, not on whether the artist is a full time artist or paid for their work. So a general rule of thumb is if it is a book cover or interior illustration of a book or professional magazine, it is professional work. Other stuff including semiprozine art or art on websites (personal, Deviant Art, etc.) is probably fan art – even if the artist is a full time artist living off of t-shirts and other merchandising.
A great place to start looking – and to possibly post recommendations – is on Tumblr, and the Hugo Eligible Art 2015 tumblr blog. I have discovered several new artists there. It includes both Professional and Fan art, but they are usually tagged whether they are fan or pro art.
Comments are open for those who don’t have another place to post, but I don’t know yet how well images will embed – and this is a week where images would be really handy. But I also heartily recommend posting to the Hugo Eligible Art 2015 tumblr blog mentioned above to help them have as wide of a repository as possible. The more who see recommendations and are informed this Hugo season, the better!
Please submit links to recommendations with this form (or as a comment below if you don’t have anywhere to post a rec).
Now let’s see some artwork!!
2018 Hugo Recommendation Season 