Ron Walotsky: The Fine Art of Covers

If you want to know about Ron Walotsky, take a look around the science fiction and fantasy section of any bookstore. Pick out a few of the classier dust jackets and check the credits. Odds are you’ll soon run across his name.

Walotsky has painted covers for just about every major writer in the business, from Asimov to Zelazny — not to mention more covers for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fictionthan any other artist. Crescent Blues caught up with Walotsky shortly before the publication of Inner Visions: the Art of Ron Walotsky and got the inside scoop on how he became one of the most prolific and respected artists in the field.

Crescent Blues: How did you get started in art — did you always want to be an artist?

Ron Walotsky: Yes, I did always want to be an artist. It was basically the only thing I seemed to really excel at when I was in school. I didn’t do well at anything else, and I always seemed get “As” and do well in art. I was smart enough to know where my strength lay, so I pursued art. Never really did anything in school, for newspapers or anything like that. But won a few awards and painted and knew early on that’s where I wanted to go.

And you went from high school to art school?

I went to the School of Visual Arts after high school. I was there for four years, the last year on a fine art scholarship, which is what I was planning to do for a living — and trying to figure out a way to make a living doing my own paintings.

The only way that most artists, at least at that time, [made a living from their art] was by becoming teachers and carpenters. Actors and actresses are waiters. Everybody has a certain area they seem to go into, and painters, it seemed to be that area (teaching).

I didn’t want to go to that area, so I was trying to figure out how can I make a living. I was doing mystical paintings and abstract paintings. And I said, well, fantasy, science fiction painting was the closest thing to what I wanted to paint for myself, so let me see if I can make a living doing that.

How did you go about finding the first job?

Well, that was interesting, because I put a portfolio together right after school, then went to the bookstores and drugstores and candy stores, wherever books and magazines were. I looked at the covers that related to what I wanted to do and found out who the publishers were. I was living in New York, and this was around 1966, 1967. Found the covers and then called the publishers to see if I could see them.

One of the places I went to was The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ed Ferman’s dad was publishing it then. And I walked in — I think Ed was there also. Ed even wrote something for my book, which was kind of fun, about the first day we met, which he still remembered. Which kind of surprised me. And I got my first job for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1967, just by walking in there. They happened to need a cover fairly quickly, and they took a chance on me. And I’ve been working with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for 33 years. I’ve done more covers than any other artist for the magazine.

And still today continuing.

And still today continuing, yes.

When was the last time you did a cover for them?

Ron Walotsky: This year. I think I’ve missed one year out of the 33 years. When I was going through the bibliography for my book, I had to go over every magazine cover, and there was one year that I didn’t do any covers for them. And I’m very disappointed; there was a break in that whole line of work. But some years I would do two covers, some years three.

So how did you get into doing book covers?

Well, that started it, and then going to the publishers. At that time you’d go in and they would see you, and if they didn’t like your work they’d tell you where else to go. They were very nice. You didn’t have to send work in. They’d give you a try, and once they saw something published, that made a huge difference, because if you’re going in cold as the first job, they’re very hesitant, but once they saw that you had published something that worked…

I started doing work with Avon Books very early on, in the late Sixties, early Seventies, and started getting some authors that have stayed with me through the years. Like Roger Zelazny. I did Lord of Light, which was Roger Zelazny’s first book.

And his last one, right?

Right; I’ve worked through all the Amber Books, the first Amber books for Avon, and a number of other covers. Just last year I was working on Donnerjack for Roger Zelazny, the book that he was working on when he died. So I’ve worked with the man throughout his whole career and got to know him, and he was a wonderful, beautiful man.

Lord of Light had a certain ambiance to it at that time and place — it hit a chord. Zelazny’s the only author where I actually sent the original painting of Lord of Light to him — as a thank you note for giving me the pleasure of reading that book. We corresponded on and off through the years after that. He had the painting hanging in his office in Santa Fe — I think he said it was the only painting he had hanging in there — and we had a nice rapport all through the years.

Do you usually get to meet the author, or is it a more anonymous relationship?

It’s much more of an anonymous relationship. Before I started going to the conventions, I didn’t meet any of the authors. I dealt just with the editor or the art director, and the author is the last one to see the cover on the book. Authors really have no say on what the cover is, so they’re usually very anxious to see what the editor or art director pick out, or who they pick out to do it.

Once in a while, as time has gone on, I have spoken to authors and gotten to know them. And I will talk to certain authors about a cover I’m working on if it’s something I need more input on, or a character I want to flesh out a little bit more.

Do they usually give you the manuscript to work with?

Yes, most of the time. I really prefer that. A lot of times editors or art directors will have certain ideas of what they think should be on the cover. What I prefer is for the editors and art directors to just give me the manuscript, and if they don’t say anything to me, that would be lovely. But usually they do have something to say.

But it gets easier as your career goes on, right?

Yes, but if they give me the freedom — I consider that part of my job is to interpret the story and to pick out something that I think will make an exciting cover. And I like to use my own thoughts on that instead of trying to interpret somebody else’s idea. Interpreting the book is enough for me. And that’s what I do, so I think, just give me the cover, and I’ll do it and be very satisfied that way.

How do the writers usually react?

I usually get pretty good reactions.

Never had anyone say, “Oh, God, I hated that cover?”

Well nobody’s ever said they hated it to me!

Anyone every say, “Well, why did you choose that to illustrate about my book?” Do you ever get into discussions with the author about your differing visions of the work?

Nowadays when I see an author I’ve done a cover for…I just finished a book called Return to Mars by Ben Bova, for Easton Press, which came out very quickly after the initial book. I was at a convention with Ben and talked to him about it. I wanted his reaction to the painting, and he liked it better than the mainstream cover, so that was terrific. And I’ve done that with Gene Wolfe and other authors. So I’ve gotten to know a lot of authors over the years, doing the books and going to the science fiction and fantasy conventions. A lot of them have become good friends over the years.

Since the way you work is by reading the book, you probably hope you only get asked to do books by people whose work you enjoy.

Well, you never know what books you’re going to get. That’s kind of up in the air. And sometimes you get a book that’s just so cerebral and has no visual images in it that you’ve really got to pull something out of there. Sometimes if a guy is a very visual writer — for example, when I was doing Piers Anthony covers I would take a lot of different images, because it was so visual, and put them together and make up a composite of all the characters or scenes within the book. But sometimes you get books that just don’t have any visual elements. Then it gets tougher.

What I usually do in those cases, I’ll read the book. When I’m working I’ll usually make thumbnail sketches, but if nothing is there, I’ll read the book and just put it in the back of my mind for a few days and let it simmer. And something will come up, if I don’t push it. When I try to force it, it’s one thing, but I don’t force that anymore. I don’t worry about it if I don’t get an idea right away, because I’ll store it in back, then go do something else, and it will always be there. But not consciously. And it will slowly well up until something appears and I say, well, there’s a seed of an idea, there’s something that I can maybe pull something out of it. And when I start doing the sketch, then another element might form, and I work towards something. It will come at some point.

Does it sometimes scare you that it doesn’t seem to be coming as fast as it needs to?

Yes, but I don’t worry about that too much anymore, because it will come. And if I try and worry about it, then it’s not going to come. It’s like when you meditate, as soon as you realize you’re meditating, it goes away. So if you just forget about it and let it happen by itself, that works for me.

Can you work on more than one piece at a time? Do you have multiple projects going or do you have to focus on one?

At one time I had nine projects going, which I think was my record, in all different stages — reading a manuscript, doing sketches, doing finished paintings and a few other things. And everything was done on schedule and on time. So I like to work under pressure. I don’t have a problem with that. Actually, it helps. If I’ve got a book and I’ve got two months to do it, and there’s nothing else [due], three weeks before the book is due, I’ll start thinking about it, then I’ll feel rushed. So I’d rather know I have to get into something fairly quickly and work through it.

Do you feel your style has changed over the years?

It’s expanded. It’s gone into different areas. I’ve always been a fine artist, which means I always wanted my paintings in science fiction and fantasy to stand up by themselves. That was very important to me — that the paintings didn’t need to be connected to a book. When people look at the paintings, I want them to just relate to the paintings. If it’s not on the cover, then I don’t want the book to affect it. I want people to see that, and I want the painting to be strong enough to stand on its own. So I do that, and I’ve always done my own painting. It’s great to interpret somebody’s work all the time, but I’ve got things that I need to say also, and even though I’m saying them in the illustration work, it’s still the idea of interpreting someone else’s concept.

So you also do find time for your own original work?

I’ll always do my original work. In fact, years ago I was on a panel with Michael Whelan, and we were talking about things like that. He was just doing the book covers, and he thought that would be it. But not that long ago he got very involved in just doing his own painting, and the fine arts. And we’ve talked about that. You have to express yourself in your own way, and not just where people are using you for your style or your talent. You want to do your own philosophy, your own images, what you consider important.

Most of the paintings you had on exhibition at the 1999 World Fantasy Convention were acrylics. But you work in other media too, don’t you?

I will work in other media, I work in watercolor, and I make masks out of horseshoe crab shells.

Real horseshoe crab shells?

Yes, I will use the actual horseshoe crab shells. They’re called “Ancient Warriors from Lost Civilizations.” What’s fascinating about them — they’re not a craft; they became a serious part of my art.

The horseshoe crabs are 360 million years old, and have a copper-based blood, the only creature with a copper-based blood. They’re related to spiders and not crabs, so they’ve got this strange history, and they’re very spacey and surreal, just in their image themselves. I’ve even used them for designs for spaceships because they just have a certain flavor to them. I started painting them, and I make them like a shaman would be working on a mask for a ritual. So each mask is different. And I let the mask dictate what it’s going to look like. I’ve been working on them for about ten years, in between the other work, and have probably done about forty Ancient Warriors over the years.

So the sizes and the shapes differ, depending on how large the crab was when it shed the shell, or how battered it was when you found it?

Exactly. When I was living on the beach in New York, local kids used to call me the Crab Man, because if they found good crabs I would give them a dollar. So the kids on the block, if they found a good crab, would come and give it to me.

Hey, there’s this real weird guy who pays a dollar for those! Let’s go collect them!

And horseshoe crabs do molt, so you don’t have to kill them. There used to be so many millions on the beach in New York, they were used for fertilizer.

Are they harder to find now?

No, they’re down in Florida also. They’re not as predominant as they used to be but they’re still around a lot. And the Marineland laboratories down near St. Augustine do tests for the Navy on the eyes of horseshoe crabs, so I can get them there. And when someone retires that’s working on them, they usually come to me and buy one of the horseshoe crabs as a going away present.

So you’re becoming well known among marine biologists.

Yes. As a matter of fact, there was a marine biologist here that was very interested, because I gave her one of my cards that had the picture of it. She was going to get in touch with me about getting one.

My dad’s a marine biologist. I’m going to tell him about this! It’s fascinating.

Yes, I’ve sold a couple to marine biologists already. Seems to be a new area.

What artists or influences do you think have most affected your work? What painters do you consider your roots?

There’s a lot of painters from the early Renaissance on. I’ve always been heavily involved in painting and in the quality of paint. Rembrandt, [John Singer] Sargent, Franz Hals. Any of the early masters fascinate me.

More contemporary people — I think one of my favorite artists is Rene Magritte. One painting I did was a homage to him. He had a train coming out of a fireplace. To me it was a very mystical, strange image, with the smoke coming out.

I had a show in the American Cultural Center in Paris, and they took us to the Georges Pompidou museum to see a retrospective on Rene Magritte. That was fascinating. And when I got back I had a job for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that dealt with a train going through time, and it just connected me to that. I always considered the painting I did a homage to Rene Magritte.

So he’s one of the people you feel more…

I feel connected to Magritte’s surreal images. Very simple but very strong. And he had a certain style and way of working that was fascinating to me. Also Frank Stella, an abstract artist, contemporary artist, someone that I admire. There are quite a few artists in the fine art field as well as artists in the fantasy or science fiction field — like Brueghel and a lot of the old painters — that are as surreal and strange as you can get.

They fit the science fiction/fantasy genre.

Oh yes. There’s so much history there. One thing I found fascinating, because I’ve always done my own work — I was upstate in Pennsylvania at a new age health farm, and we were sitting outside drawing, doing watercolors in a field where the people were working. And it connected us immediately with [Vincent] Van Gogh when the potato pickers were there. You felt that you were part of that history. It’s something you don’t feel as much when you’re sitting in your studio doing your work. But when I was out there and they’re bending down, and you’re doing these quick watercolor images. You felt a connection with the history of art, where it came from, where the people would go out and paint outdoors. And that was a wonderful feeling to me and connected me back to why I became an artist. It had a certain magic to it.

There must have been several dozen top-notch fantasy artists at World Fantasy Con 1999. What happens when you guys get together?

We hang out. We have a good time.

You talk about painting?

We talk about painting some, what we’re doing, who we’re working with. We look at the paintings. We’ll ask people how they do something sometimes. Not very often anymore, but I used to. And people are very open. I’ve had people tell me who they work for, and maybe you should see them, and I’ve told the same thing to other people.

It’s a good group of people and they’re very close, although we never get to see each other except at a science fiction or fantasy convention. I live in the same state with Don Maitz, and we had to come to Rhode Island to see each other. Or a convention somewhere in the world.

It’s like a traveling group of friends who reassemble at different locations.

And [World Fantasy Con 1999 was] like a reunion to me. There were people I haven’t seen in years there.

How long have you been coming to conventions?

Since 1980, I think, I did my first convention, but that was almost thirteen years after I was in the business. So I had no idea there were conventions.

How did you find out about them?

Ed Ferman told me. He said there were two conventions, a world science fiction convention and a world fantasy convention. And about five years later, I said, well, let me go to one of these. It’s what I do; let me see what it’s like.

I had no idea. I didn’t have friends in the field. I never went to a science fiction convention as a fan, so I had no idea what there were like. I basically was doing fantasy and science fiction art to pay for my fine arts, so I could do that, although it’s sort of reversed itself now. This is my career and I still do gallery shows, but it’s almost secondary to some extent.

And I went to a World Science Fiction Convention in Boston in 1980 — I think that’s when it was. I went there and did not know anybody. But people started coming over to me when they saw my nametag, and they’d give me some books to sign. Then somebody came in with this big cardboard box, and there were forty books of mine in this box. And I looked at these people like they’re nuts; I had no idea that people collected this stuff or were interested in the covers or were aware of who did the covers.

Early on we never asked for the paintings back even from the publisher because we were just happy to get it published, and it was stuck in a drawer or a warehouse somewhere. There are early paintings that were lost, and I never know what happened to them, because I never asked about it. And some of the publishing houses went out of business. Early stuff I did for Lancer Books or Pyramid Books disappeared. I have no idea where those paintings went.

Ever seen any of them turn up in strange places?

I’ve seen a couple of them turn up at the Illustration House in New York City. And actually they gave me back a couple of them, because they felt they didn’t get them… I don’t know how they got them. I don’t know where they came from. So there are things floating out there.

And I know a lot of other artists did the same because I used to see paintings behind the door at Berkley, paintings that used to get banged into all the time. [The paintings] were peeling and almost destroyed, because early on, after they published [a book cover], they didn’t think there was anything else for it. Now, of course, there’s a huge different market, between selling a painting, selling reprints, selling prints. You can make money four different ways other than just the book cover. You sell foreign rights. You get all the originals back now.

So the business has changed quite a bit since you’ve been in it.

Oh yes. I mean it’s gotten much tougher. I’m pre-Star Wars, so the field was much smaller. There were many more publishing companies. You could get work from a lot more places.

Now everything is conglomerated. There’re very few publishing companies. The computer has taken a huge chunk out of a lot of people’s work. [Publishers] can get not-very-talented people to work on a computer, take some stock images, reshuffle them, put it together, and you can be a graphic designer. I’m not taking anything away from that, but to be a painter, in some ways, has changed a bit. And a lot of covers recently have become like graphic novels, so they’ve changed the look.

With the conglomerates, it’s not the love of the business the way it used to be. It’s the bottom line. It’s how much money are they making. So even the [midlist] authors are in trouble, because they’re being let go if they don’t reach a certain quota. And the artists – [And the publishers] can save money by doing things in house much cheaper than having the artist outside doing the covers. So the computer has changed the business dramatically.

Scary thing, isn’t it?

It’s pretty scary, yes. It really is. What’s taken over some of it is the card art that a lot of artists do now, for Magic® or Dune® or different ones. I’ve just been doing some cards for a card set called The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan. I did 14 cards recently for them.

Is that fun to do?

Yes, the cards are fun. They’re like little paintings, and they go very quick. You’re usually doing eight and a half by 11 or smaller for the cards, so they’re like quick, tight sketches. So you have some kind of freedom. And you do them fairly quick because of the time sequence and the payment, so you’re not going to spend a lot of time on them. I kind of enjoy them once in a while. The only problem is that the only cards that seem to have done well through the years are the Magic, the Gathering® cards.

Are the cards gaining you a slightly different fan base?

Well, I’ll sign cards for people. That seems to have come and gone a little bit, and right now the predominant cards are the Magic® cards, and I haven’t done any Magic® cards. That’s probably the only company I haven’t done cards for. It seems everything else I’ve done has gone bankrupt, half of them.

But when those cards first came out, with the pay scale and what they were, a lot of the serious artists weren’t doing them, so they gave them to other people who’ve made huge amounts of money on them. They’ve changed the whole process of payment on those cards in the last few years. At first, they didn’t seem to be a viable avenue, and they actually have stuck around for a while.

And now I go to art shows at fantasy conventions and see a painting with the card framed beside it to show this was the original painting for the card.

Yes, that’s an added area of fantasy and science fiction. It’s not just the book covers or the magazine covers now; it’s the card art. And there’s digital stuff, but very few. Even in [the 1999 World Fantasy Con], I know Rick Berry was here, but I can’t think of any other digital artists actually that were showing here. I’m sure there are a couple of other ones, but it’s not as much as you might think.

Have you experimented at all with digital art?

I don’t work the computer at all, actually. What bothers me about it… I’ve seen some great images, and there’s a couple of people that are very good at it. There are David Mattingly and Rick Berry and maybe one or two other people whose work I think is very good. But there’s no original painting. And even an original painting that’s flat (and there’s no texture for an illustration) has a soul. With digital art, there is no original with it. There is no soul behind it, so there’s something missing. I mean that a digital piece can be unbelievably beautiful and exquisite but there’s still something missing. There’s no physical presence. It’s still a photographic image or an image that doesn’t have the depth that a painting will have.

I notice when I go to the art shows, no matter how hard the publisher tries to give a very detailed, accurate representation of the painting, there’s always so much more you can gain by looking at the actual painting. Stuff you don’t see in a photograph, however good.

Yes, it’s the quality of the surface. And it’s the personal touch of the artist. There’s a personality in that painting, even if you can’t see the brush strokes, that artist’s soul is in that painting somewhere. And you don’t get that with the digital stuff. There’s a coldness. I don’t care how pretty it is; there’s a coldness to it. There’s something you can’t get other than doing the actual painting by hand, when the person is connected physically to the canvas or the board. And when you’re working on it–it’s like your fingerprint. Digitally, there’s a certain style, but a painting just has something else, a quality that you can’t get at this point in manufactured images.

Donna Andrews

Donna Andrews is the author of Murder with Peacocks, which won the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Award in May 1998. Her second book in the Meg and Michael series, Murder with Puffins, will be released this spring.