Volume 4, Issue 5 – October, 2001

David Cherry: In Search of Transcendence

Inspired by the classical masters of the 19th century, David Cherry felt out of place in art colleges that valued political messages above humanism and skill. Besides, Cherry wanted to marry and start a family. He couldn’t afford to pursue the pipe dream of an art no longer in fashion when practicing law promised him everything else he wanted from life. Except the itch for art refused to go away.

More than 20 years after he traded financial security for the life of a freelance artist, the itch remains. But these days the multi-awardwinning Cherry satisfies the craving by painting the new myths of science fiction and fantasy, and re-interpreting the classics for the game company Ensemble Studios. Recently, Cherry talked to Teresa Patterson, his collaborator on Terry Brooks: The World of Shannara, about how a lawyer learned to paint and what happened then.

Teresa Patterson: You were originally a lawyer, and a very successful one at that. What made you give up law to become an artist?

David Cherry: In school, I had thought about art as a career, but the only art schools available to me were teaching “modern” art, i.e., throwing paint at a board and then melting toy tanks over it in protest to the Vietnam War. I wanted to do art like the works I had seen in my Latin and Greek texts, which were illustrated using the works of Gerome, Alma Tadema, Lord Leighton, etc. I didn’t think spending my college years having my work criticized by a bunch of dope smoking morons would result in my being able to make a living that would support a family. And being able to marry and start a family was, beyond anything else, my greatest dream.

So instead, I concentrated on the thing that would make me the best possible provider — plus give me a field of endeavor so large that I would have little chance of learning it all in a few months only to be bored to death with it for the next 30 years. I decided law fit the bill rather well, so I set my sights on a Juris Doctors degree.

But when I had finally obtained that and graduated, I found myself alone, with no one to marry and no real idea what to do with myself. I had the degree, so for want of anything better to do, I set out to be an attorney. It was a not altogether pleasant experience. I was good at it. And there was enough variety in it to keep me mentally occupied for many years, but it was unfulfilling. The worst part of it was that I spent my day surrounded by other lawyers. This meant that I had few friends because I had discovered that, on the whole, I don’t actually like or respect most lawyers.

A few years into my practice I was surprised to learn that my sister (C. J. Cherryh) had landed a contract to have a fantasy story published, and that she was to appear at something called a Worldcon because she was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of The Year. She invited me along. It was Big Mac, the 1975 Worldcon in Kansas City. I was very impressed. I got to see people like Isaac Asimov and actually meet Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Then I wandered into the art show. I hadn’t been aware that there would be an art show, but it sounded interesting, so I went. I found myself looking at the original painting for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Bloody Sun, which I happened to be reading at the time. I found that I even knew the name of the artist since it was the same fellow that Sis’s publisher, Don Wollheim, had chosen to do the cover of her first book. Very cool. Here was art I liked. It occurred to me, “So this is where you go if you want to do representational painting in the classical style.” I bought the painting and got to meet the artist, a handsome young blonde fellow named Michael Whelan.

For the next few years, I kept thinking about what it would be like to do what Michael did and live the life of a freelance artist. I wouldn’t be a good provider. But what the heck. No one was jumping at the chance to marry me and have babies. So, I thought I might just leave law and do what I really wanted with my life. Only problem was, I had no idea how to paint, and was only roughly good at drawing.

So how did a lawyer learn to paint? Did you have any art training in college?

No. I spent all my school time getting the law degree. I had no formal training in art at all. Fortunately, art is one of the few fields left where a degree is not required. If you can create a winning portfolio, you can show it and get jobs. No one will refuse to hire you just because you don’t have a degree. So I reasoned, “I am a good lawyer not because I know all the laws but because I know how to research and find out whatever I need for a given case. I can just research how to paint.” So, I took a deep breath, closed the law firm and set out to teach myself how to paint. Nearly starved to death.

My theory, basically, was that if I locked myself in a room for 12 hours a day with nothing but art supplies for a year or two, I would come out a pretty good artist –or be dead of boredom. I lucked out in that one of the other attorneys in town approached me to do some contract legal work for him that I was able to do out of my home. I could do that for 20 hours each week and make enough to pay the bills, barely. Every other hour I was awake, I was drawing and painting, reading and researching. That was in 1982. Two years later, I had learned a ton, but my work still wasn’t what I needed it to be. I had no hope of being able to make a living from art alone, and my contract legal work began to be less and less available. I was faced with having to get better fast or move on to something else.

Some time earlier, I had met a wonderful artist named James C. Christensen. He was a Professor of Art at Brigham Young University, was a respected fantasy artist and had done several covers that I admired. I called him, told him my dilemma and asked if he could help me with my acrylic painting technique. He was willing but warned that, while he could show me all he knew about it in four or five hours, it took his students four or five years of work to internalize it all. I responded that I had just put in several years of study; I just wanted those four or five hours of instruction from an expert. Being the great gentleman he is, he gave them to me.

Fortunately, I had chosen the perfect person, given my own approach to acrylics. He was — and is — a master. But when I saw him work, I was shocked to see that his early stages were as loose and messy as mine. He never showed me any particular thing I didn’t already know how to do, but he showed me when to do what, when to keep going past points where I would have stopped, how to get the best effect from washes and glazes, and he stressed the fact that I needed to be able to draw better before I could paint better.

It took me a month of preparation before I did my next painting. I changed the ground I was painting on, changed the way I applied gesso to the board, sewed costumes for models, took my own photography of friends to get the best possible reference, then drew my heart out. I drew the same image over and over and over until I finally knew it like the back of my hand and had figured out every nuance of shading. Then I began to paint. It was a miracle. I pushed myself to see far more detail than I had ever noticed before, and then studied it until I could reproduce it with photographic accuracy in monochrome. I did a painting called Scattered Reflections, which I will never sell, since it is the first one I ever did well enough to like myself.

Then I did one, using my friend Real Musgrave as a model, called Man of Prophecy. I showed it at the 1984 Art-Con in Dallas (which you chaired, as I recall). Tim Hildebrandt was the Art Guest of Honor. I was sitting with him in the audience as the art show awards were announced. He won Best Color for one of his pieces, and I congratulated him. Then — and I will never forget my amazement — I heard you announce that the award for Best of Show had gone to me, for Man of Prophecy. Wow. That was a rush.

I remember the fans loved your reaction.

The next time I showed the painting, it sold to my good friend, Lilly Schneiderman, for a considerable amount of money, given that it was only an 11 by 14 image. Those two events told me that I had made it. I could, from that point on, make a living at art.

At that point you could have painted anything. Why choose science fiction and fantasy?

As I mentioned earlier. My idea of what art should be was not in sync with the mainstream of art in this century. Before she was a best selling author, my sister, C.J. Cherryh, was a Latin and Ancient History scholar and teacher. In her textbooks, I stumbled across the works of the Hellenistic sculptors. I don’t think man has ever created anything finer. I found their work stunning and magical. They had studied reality but gone beyond mere representational art. They showed men and women, not necessarily as they are, but rather as they should be, glorious and transcendent. I never forgot that.

I am no sculptor. But I loved to draw and yearned to learn to paint. I looked for that same transcendence in the works of the masters. I never quite found it but came close in the works of Bouguereau, Alma Tadema, Gerome, and Waterhouse. If I could only be that good, I thought, I could die happy. But I was born in the wrong century. For several centuries prior to ours, representational depictions of myth and legend were the mainstream of art. But in the 20th century, the art schools spoke of the masters I loved only as examples of what “art” should never be. Too much skill. Too much technique. It was merely craft, they said. “Art” should be a dirty toilet seat mounted on a blank canvas. Skill, technique, and craft should not be involved. What utter tripe and insanity! With thoughts like that dominating our so-called culture, where was I to turn?

The answer came, that day when I entered the art show at Big Mac. Here was a room filled with works of modern day masters doing beautiful representational paintings of myth and legend.

It was not classical myth and legend. It was science fiction and fantasy. But what is that but the same message in a new form? The old myths and legends attempted to define man’s place in the universe and to examine our struggle for balance between what is mortal and material and what is infinite and spiritual. They were the repositories of generations of collected wisdoms and moral lessons. Science fiction and fantasy, as a literary genre, does much the same.

In story after story we find the protagonist facing impossible odds in situations that would crush the soul of most people, only to find that, by adhering to certain principles, he or she can rise above the situation and win through. It is like the works of the Hellenistic sculptors in a way, holding out to us a mirror that shows, not necessarily what we are, but what we should be, what we could become. I love that. I respect it. What more suitable genre of literature could there be for the art that I hope to produce?

I am not bad now, but I am nowhere near good enough yet to do the works I dream of. But then, I am still learning day by day. I have always thought that I will do my best works when I am in my sixties. I have eight more years to practice and improve, God willing. Then perhaps, I will be able to produce something that is worthwhile, something that will touch people as I have been touched by the works of great artists.

And if I ever reach that point, I know that I will, in one way or another, still be doing works of fantasy and science fiction. And that I will have Michael Whelan, Don Maitz, Bob Eggleton, Real Musgrave, Jim Gurney and countless other friends right beside me, pouring out works that dazzle and amaze, because they are filled with the same fire to reach for something better with each painting. And they are constantly at work, honing their skills. None of us has yet reached our peak. Can you imagine what we will be able to do when we get really good?

I only hope I am there to see it. From your description, it sounds like you needed only to learn how to paint to have a career. I know there was more to it than that. How did you manage that all-important step between learning to paint and actually landing a contract?

First of all, I had good friends. That was the best thing about turning from law to art — the people. I had done law for eight years and didn’t have one friend in the business, one person I could respect. When I turned to art, the money was nowhere near as good, but almost every one of my peers is someone I would be proud to have for a friend, a brother, or a sister.

As a matter of fact, my first actual illustration job did come through my sister, C.J. It was back in the late Seventies. She knew that I had been doing art again in my spare time, ever since seeing the art show at Big Mac. I had shown her some of my efforts. She was doing a book that was to be published by Don Grant. Most of the books he produces are illustrated. Sis saw this as a good chance to nudge me in a direction that would force me to take my art more seriously. She had me put together samples of some of my drawings and send them to Don. To my surprise, he liked them and said he would trust me to illustrate the book [Ealdwood], even though I had never done anything like that before.

But as fun as that project was, and as important as it became in finally convincing me to leave law, it doesn’t really count in answer to your question. At the time of that sale, I was still a lawyer playing at doing a bit of illustration. I was a total amateur and enjoyed it as a lark — something to tell my grandkids about, if I ever had any. Later, after meeting Real and Muff Musgrave and leaving law to teach myself art, getting work on my own as an illustrator became a deadly serious business.

It was Bill Fawcett who gave me my first actual assignment after I closed the law firm in 1982. It was $25 an image for several black and white interiors illustrating a manual for a game from Mayfair Games. I have forgotten the name of the game. But actual illustration jobs were few and far between from 1982 through 1984. I didn’t really expect to have many, mind you. I knew I wasn’t good enough to compete with the pros. So I held onto my day job [doing legal work on a contract basis for another lawyer] and practiced my heart out to get better.

During that time, if I did a painting and it was a success, I counted it as a waste of my time. I needed to get good, really good and fast. And how could I do that if I limited myself to painting things I already knew how to do well? Failures, on the other hand, were exciting to me. With each new painting, I always gave myself something to do that I had no idea how to handle. I would, of course, fail at it. But then I would examine the effort I had made to see if I could isolate what the failure was. If I could detect it, I could research it, find a solution and implement it. That was how I spent those two years, forcing myself to fail, and then learning how not to.

Failure by failure, my experience and skill grew. That was why, by the time I went to see Jim Christensen, I was ready to hear what he had to say, and why I knew what to do with it. I already had all the pieces to the jigsaw puzzle. Jim showed me how they fit together. He gave me a pattern, a procedure. After that, the work got better fast. But there was still a lag between the time that I was good enough to get work and the time that work actually started coming in.

Why? Because one or two good pieces does not a portfolio make. And I had to have one. I tried sending slides. That didn’t work. We didn’t have PCs then, so I couldn’t just email a bunch of jpgs to the art directors. I had to get 8 by 10 photographs of my best paintings, put them in a leather-bound portfolio, and schlep it around New York from publisher to publisher.

Betsy Wollheim and Peter Stampfel, who live in Manhattan, were kind enough to open their home to me and let me bunk with them on my annual visits to show my portfolio. That was great and saved a lot on hotel costs. Later, Janny Wurts and Don Maitz [when they still lived in Connecticut] let me stay with them.

It was Don [Maitz] who taught me an invaluable lesson about portfolios. I had stuffed mine with everything I had that had any possible merit — many of which were truly amateurish — and I had put the best things first. Don looked at it, shook his head, told me to pick out my nine best pieces — “Five, if you haven’t got nine strong ones” — and put my worst one first, my best one last. This made no sense to me whatsoever, but I had been getting lots of doors slammed in my face lately, so I thought, “What the heck?” I tried it the next day. It worked. I got a cover the very next time I showed the portfolio. With glacial slowness, the portfolio got better and the work came in with more regularity.

Once you started working as a freelance illustrator you became subject to the whims and requirements of art directors, and some of them can be very difficult.

Fortunately, for every jerk who gives artists sleepless nights and ulcers, there are three top-notch professional art directors who are a joy to work with. One of the things that had me nervous when I signed on to work at my current job with Ensemble Studios was knowing that I would be working directly under an art director — and knowing how uncomfortable that could be if the art director wasn’t one of the good ones. As it happened, I totally lucked out. Ensemble hired Brad Pollard in that position, and he is definitely one of the best. In every interaction we have ever had, he has always been professional and has bent over backwards to be helpful and supportive.

Aside from Brad Pollard, who are your favorite art directors?

In the field of book covers, I would have to say that Dave Stevenson at Ballantine is my all time favorite art director. He is a good artist himself. He knows what it takes to get a job done, what the stresses and problems are, and he makes allowances. I also used to work with Ruth Ross at Ballantine. She was wonderful too, very professional. She knew her field. She was down to earth, reasonable. And her word was as good as gold.

With regard to magazines, I always liked Rachel Holmen at Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine. I don’t think any art director in the history of the planet ever cared more about the artists or tried harder to be fair and accommodating. She is a jewel. She is also, I hear, looking for a new assignment, by the way. Anyone with connections that can help get her placed back where she can do us all some good would have my sincere thanks.

And I have to throw in a good word about Bill Fawcett too. He is not an art director, per se. He wears lots of different hats. And he can be totally maddening — like the time he sent me a copy of Photoshop(tm), with no manual, and told me to learn it, and to produce a useable screen for one of his new computer games. All this in one month — and me still trying to figure out Windows(tm) for pity sake, since I had only owned a computer for two months at that point. I was charmed by his faith in me and devastated by the load.

But all in all, Bill has always been there for me through thick and thin. Especially thin. If times ever got tough, Bill was there finding work for me. If he couldn’t find any, he’d invent some. He gave me my first professional assignment as a freelancer, and he gave me my last, The World of Shannara. And I love the way he art directed me on it.

“OK, Dave. The deadline is the 23rd. Can you make it?”

“Yeah, sure, Bill. What do you want it to look like?”

“Whatever you want, Dave. Just make it cool.”

There ought to be more art directors like that.

You mentioned that you left cover work for the gaming industry. Other than special projects, would you ever go back to book illustration full time?

Life is long. It is hard to say. I loved doing covers. I am sure I could love doing them again. But there are some definite downsides to consider. When I started, the business was directed and controlled by people like Don Wollheim, Lester Del Rey, and Ian Ballantine. They were passionate about all aspects of science fiction and fantasy — art included. If they gave art direction, it was drawn from a vast well of experience in a genre that they not only understood, but loved and had helped form.

Once they were gone I found myself frequently art directed by people who couldn’t care less and who often wanted you to jump through hoops just to show you who was boss. And I am not necessarily talking about art directors here, although there were some of those too. Once Wollheim, Del Rey, and Ballantine were gone, there was no one left with a grand, overall vision and understanding of what was called for. No one was sure enough of themselves to say, “Here. This is what needs to be done. Now go do it.”

It seemed as if, lacking the vision or the understanding of the genre, no one wanted to take on that kind of responsibility. Everything became a committee decision. Where in the past I would work directly under Don, who did most of his own art directing, or say, under an art director who might be reporting directly to Lester Del Rey, I suddenly found myself being directed by a committee. The art director might be involved, but so would one or more editors, and (the bane of my existence) the [shudder] marketing people. I have seen so many truly bad decisions fueled by the genius of marketing gurus.

You can imagine how many more misdirections and changes and alterations get asked for by a committee, where everyone feels he has to ask for one just to show that he is involved in the process. And when the marketing people got involved as well, with all their swell ideas (fresh out of some college textbook), a fun and creative process was turned into an exercise in frustration. I hear that the pendulum is starting to swing the other way now and that people like Irene Gallo are helping the process. I hope so. It really got to be a mess there for a while.

Another negative, for me at least, in thinking about going back to doing covers is a purely financial consideration. The pay today is approximately what it was when I started in 1982. But it costs more to live, and I now have a family to support, kids to buy cars for, college to pay for. I can only paint so fast, only stay awake so many hours, but it takes more and more paintings to make enough to live on. Freelancing is fun in that you are almost totally your own boss and totally in control of your time. But when you have to work constantly, that becomes a distinction with little meaning.

As one of the few artists in the field to work as both a freelance book illustrator and a company game artist, how would you contrast the two?

I loved being a freelancer when I lived by myself and no one got hurt but me if I couldn’t pay the rent. And I especially loved it when the kids were little because it allowed me to be at home with them 24/7. But while I was at home, I was almost always working. My girls grew up in my studio with their own desks near mine because Daddy was always working, so they would come up and do art too. It was great. But I digress.

If I go back to freelancing, I will probably do some book covers but will probably also keep game art as my primary focus. It is such a new industry that the people who had the vision and the passion for it are usually still there in the companies. So working in this field is much more like doing book covers was when I could work with the Don Wollheims of the world. I like that. It counts for a lot. The pay is often worse, so you have to do a lot of little paintings rather than a few big ones, but the work is usually fairly plentiful.

For the past year, however, I have not been freelancing. I have been working as an artist for Ensemble Studios, which has lately become a Microsoft company. We make PC computer games like Age Of Empires, and Age of Kings. Right now, we are busy at work on a similar but slightly different game called Age of Mythology. Most of the artists in the computer gaming world are 3D specialists. They work in 3D programs on the computer and make models, then go into Photoshop and create textures to go on the models. Then another set of artists takes the textured models and animates them. One of the big lures for me is that I want to learn all of that stuff. I have had some training in it, and it is a blast. Any given aspect of it is fun.

But I was originally hired to do concept art, having no training in 3D at the time. I was to do 2D drawings of buildings and characters to show the modelers and texturers what to aim for.

Eventually, however, I migrated back to doing what I have done for years, which is, essentially, marketing art. I have been doing really fun paintings of Thor, Odin, Isis, Poseidon, etc. for magazine covers, posters, coffee mugs, t-shirts, what have you.

I have, over the years acquired a fairly extensive knowledge of Photoshop, so I do some of the work on computer, but most of it is the old fashioned stuff I have always done, painted by hand. My boss, Tony Goodman, had the insight to see that something of this sort would be useful, and I think he had in mind all along that I would end up doing this. I can’t think of any other computer game developer that has a dedicated marketing art department like ours. The differences between doing this and doing covers are all positive ones.

First of all, to my great pleasure and surprise, I have always been given whatever time I need in order to get a painting right. That almost never happened when doing covers. I was always having to send something out the door, lamenting what it could have been like with only a day or two more to work on it. Secondly, I am trusted and expected to know what I am doing. Art direction is minimal and exists only to help, never hinder. It is also accurate and knowledgeable.

When doing covers, art direction was often by committee or by people who couldn’t do a painting themselves if their life depended on it. And having no concept of what they were asking for, it was often more of a hindrance to the process than a help. When I was freelancing I kept saying, “When you hire a plumber, you let him plumb. When you hire an artist, why can’t you let him art?” At Ensemble they let me art.

There are other benefits as well. A steady income is a nice change. Good health care and insurance is something I really missed while freelancing. And with both kids needing braces, it is certainly a good thing to have now. But the biggest change for me, I suppose, is the hours.

Every few months, the company will call a “Crunch.” Workers are expected to work from 10 a.m. ’til midnight for four days of a given week (normal hours the fifth day) and to do that for two weeks. They think that that is working a lot of hours. When I was freelancing, those would have been considered light days. I often went for three or four months straight with no more than four hours of sleep a night. That was not at all unusual.

Now, even though I am not home during the day, I have evenings and weekends off. And when I am off, I am really and truly off. If I want, I can just spend a whole evening playing Purple Pooh Bear with Kasi or take a day and go to the zoo. That is a magnificent luxury. It would be hard to give that up and go back into freelancing, especially when the people I work for are so thoughtful and wonderful and when the work I am doing is so fulfilling.

If I sound like a happy man, I am. But that could change. Corporate environments constantly evolve. Years from now I could be a victim of downsizing or find myself working long hours for people I don’t like on projects that are of no interest to me. I doubt that will be the case, but it could happen. If it does, I will be back into freelancing like a shot. One thing about a strong portfolio, it is very good job security.

Your last book illustration project was the newly released The World of Shannara. In that book, a full color opus dedicated to Terry Brooks’ fantasy world, you did most of the illustrations and actually designed the look of the book. What was it like working with Terry Brooks?

I did almost all of the art for the book with the notable exception of the cover. By agreement, the cover was to have been mine as well. It was a great surprise to Terry, Bill Fawcett, our editor and me when it turned out that other art had been used. That caught us flat-footed. Who could have imagined that someone would do something like that?

But other than that particular slap in the face, every other thing about doing the book (except for the long hours) was tremendous. Our editor was Shelly Shapiro. I love her. She is really good. And when our vision of the project expanded beyond the original concept, she was right there beside us, working to find ways to make it all happen and produce the best book possible. And of course, you and Bill were great to work with too. I know we all gave each other ulcers during the process, but I am very proud of what we accomplished, and if I had to do one of these things again, I would want to be working with you and with Bill.

Terry was fabulous to work with. He is a very kind and intelligent gentleman and, of course, a tremendous author. It was extremely nice of him to open his home to us so we could get the details of our project worked out and establish a working relationship. I did not know what to expect.

Some authors could have kept us tied up for years doing revisions to get everything just the way they wanted it to be. Terry’s view was that, any given book is different for each person who reads it and that that person’s view of what a character or place might look like is, perforce, as valid as his own. So, while he was nice enough to help out by sharing his own views of how, say, Alanon should look, or how the airship or sword should look, he was also open to allowing my own artistic interpretation to be expressed when appropriate.

Garett Jax, for instance, was done as I see him. Terry did ask for a few changes on other pieces — nothing at all unreasonable — and I was happy to make them. It is, after all, the fact that he took the time to guide my interpretations that make this book so special. But he was always supportive, always helpful, always a total professional whenever we had the chance to interact. I value his acquaintance and consider it an honor to know him, much less to have been allowed to play in his world as I did.

Since you were the initial designer for the book, how close to your vision was the final product?

Well, the writing is better than I had hoped for, and the layout and production are top notch. If I would change anything, I would just wish that I could have done even better with the art and/or had a year or two more to play with it. But then, I can always say that about anything I have ever done. For the conditions and the time allowed, I think we did a heck of a job.

Initially, part of my job as the artist on this project was to do the actual layout of the book. I had never had that opportunity before and looked forward to it. There is a lot of power in being able to do the layout. You get not only to do the art, but to decide how it will be presented as well.

My good friend, Lillian Butler, helped me out initially, since she knows Quark Express(tm), the program used to prepare manuscripts for printing. And I was working with a fellow at Ballantine named Alex Klapwald, with whom I had worked on prior projects.

The initial concept was that we would have only eight pages available for color and that everything else would have to be done as monochrome sketches, scattered throughout the text. Not much thought was give to chapter headings, borders, designs, etc. We were just going to do some sketches, pop them into the text and do seven color paintings plus a double spread map for the color section.

But as time passed and the body of work grew, it became obvious that what we really needed was a more expanded book with full color throughout. That would be exceeding both our contracts and our budget, but that is where good editors like Shelly and Bill come in. Your job was to come up with terrific text. Mine was to do the best art I could. Theirs was to take what we came up with and make the best possible book. They certainly did that.

Last fall, Bill flew down to Dallas to see how far along I was and to take a look at the new art I had done. Due to personal complications, I had been slower than he would have liked in my production, so I know he was not looking forward to the trip. “Oh, #$%%&!” he must have thought, “David won’t have enough done, and I will have to try to hold myself back from killing him.”

But he seemed instead to be both surprised and pleased. He was still shaking his head and going, “Damn!” when we were coming back from lunch an hour later. Being a harsher critic of my own work than probably anyone else, I had not expected such a reaction from him. It was the greatest compliment he had given me in twenty years of working together. It was at that point that I began to think we might have a chance to get the project bumped up to full color, if the publisher’s reactions were anything like Bill’s had been. And sure enough, before too long the word came through that we could pull out the stops and go for the gold.

In order to put together the layout I wanted, I taught myself Quark Express and set about designing something that would look different and would display the art well. Fred Dodnick, head of the department at Ballantine, directed me to Sylvain Michaels, an expert in Quark who is one of the top outside contractors working with Ballantine.

With Sylvain’s patient help, I was able to master Quark enough to turn in a fairly clean and useable layout of the first chapter. I was readying myself to tackle the rest of it when word came in that Fred and Sylvain wanted to finish the project themselves, using my design as a template. I was more than pleased. I knew how excited they were about the book, and I knew that they would treat it with almost as much love and respect as I would. I also knew that they were faster and better than I am at Quark, so it was with no reservations at all that I left the rest of the layout in their capable hands. I was not disappointed. Not one bit. They did a great job, and they followed my plans for it, almost to the letter.

There are places where my choices would have differed, naturally. But no one could have done better overall, least of all me. I am very grateful to them. They brought my baby home in style.

Were the illustrations for The World of Shannara done as paintings or as computer renderings?

Both. Some works were done totally by hand. A few were done totally on computer. Some were done sort of half and half. My goal here was to illustrate the book, not to enlarge my portfolio. I can paint and draw. That question was settled a long time ago, and I have nothing to prove to anyone on that point. I know that there are purists out there to whom anything done on computer is of diminished value. They are free to think what they like, but I know from experience that not many of them have the skill or expertise to produce quality art from scratch on the computer themselves. If they did, their views would be changed by the experience.

At Ensemble, we have a life drawing class once a week in the evenings. The professor who we have hired to conduct the class is a very old school sort of guy, and I think that he has been surprised that all these people here doing computer art could be so competent with charcoal and newsprint. To him, computers seemed a cheat. He didn’t know how the graphics programs worked actually, but he had some idea that we just punched a button and the work was done for us in some miraculous way.

So last night, I invited him back to my studio while we were on a break and showed him what I do. I brought up a white background and, using my graphics tablet, began to draw in black, just like we were doing in class. The strokes were mine. The decisions as to how broad, how much pressure to apply, what to erase all were mine. I drew a flat black silhouette of a figure. Then, using white at very low pressure, I began to go into it, laying down highlights where light would hit, slowly at first, building up forms and shape as I went. I hadn’t gone far with it when the professor caught on. Why, this wasn’t what he had thought it would be at all! What I was doing on the computer was, step by step, the same exact thing that I had been doing off the computer for him in class.

I am the first to admit that there are ways to use a computer which will allow someone who can’t draw or paint their way out of a paper bag to come up with some fairly decent images. But it is also true that the good graphics programs allow traditional artists to do everything on the computer the same way they would do it off the computer. In the end, it is just a tool, like any other, except that it is more versatile, more powerful and far faster.

I recall my first mass-market paperback cover back in, I think, 1982. I had done the drawing, transferred it to the board, airbrushed the background, painted the figure, and then laboriously erased away the airbrushed background bit by bit to reveal the white gessoed ground. It gave me just the right feel of clouds coming out of the dark background. But it took days of long hours to get it just right.

I turned it in. The publisher loved it. But I had done it in green, as the scene had been described in the book. The publisher wanted it done in blue. There was nothing to do but start over from scratch.

The money I would make from doing the cover would compensate me for the time it took to do the first painting. But I was working for free on the second one. Do you think I would have quibbled for one second about the purity of art if I could have popped that image into Photoshop and changed the image to blue in less than a minute? Do you think I would have felt any less an artist? Not likely. But I would have worried about it more. Now I know better.

Based on your diverse experience, what advice would you give to young artists approaching the field?

First, be sure you are trained to make a living in some field other than art, just in case you have to. Art, especially freelance art, is one of the only fields left where having a degree from an outstanding college means next to nothing. What really counts is whether you have a killer portfolio. If you do, you can show that and get work.

I have never once had a client ask where I went to school. They couldn’t care less. All they care about is whether I can create the image that they need and do so on time. That being the case, it is possible (though by no means always preferable) to use one’s time at college earning a degree in another field. That way you increase your available options in life. You can always learn art on your own if you talk to the right people, read the right books and devote enough time to it.

On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to be able to go to a really great art college, such as Sheridan College in Canada (which is basically a farm school for Disney animators), putting all your eggs in one basket might not be such a bad idea. But even at the prestigious schools, competition for jobs can be fierce. Dropout rates are over 60 percent. And a lot of the people who do fight their way to graduation still end up flipping burgers.

Second, (and I think this is a loose quote from one of the masters — Da Vinci, possibly) be careful whom you marry. Being an artist, even when you work for a company, is seldom a 9 to 5 job. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy being married to an artist. The pay is often minimal. The hours are brutal, and it is easy for your mate to feel neglected.

Third, make an effort to meet and become friends with people who are already making a living doing the kind of art you want to do. You will learn far, far more useful information from them than you will from your teachers. And knowing people in the business is always a plus when you are ready to start looking for work.

Fourth, whether you intend to illustrate books or produce game art, I would strongly advise that your first priority should be to become expert at drawing and painting by hand. Not just passable. Not just good. Expert. In this field, nobody pays a dime for anything second rate. A portfolio of “good” stuff will net you little more than a large pile of polite rejection letters.

But what about computer artists, especially 3D artists? Why should they bother to learn traditional skills? First and foremost, it will make you a better artist. There can be no better reason than that.

But additionally, even though I know that there are a lot of genius computer artists out there who do not feel comfortable with traditional media, I think that the market place is changing somewhat. More and more, I see traditional artists entering the field of computer art, and more and more I see the art directors looking to hire people who can do both, if for no other reason than that they can be used by the company in a wider variety of situations.

Look at it from the art director’s point of view. You have two applicants. One is a specialist at 3D modeling. He is killer at it, but his skills beyond that are weak. The other may not be quite as good at modeling, but he is very good and has an outstanding portfolio of traditional art which means that he would also be useful for concept art, marketing art, and (assuming competence in Photoshop or other 2D graphic programs) probably good at textures, lighting, shading, etc. Which one would you hire?

I know. It depends — mostly on how badly you need a really killer modeler. But in most cases today I think the person with the wider variety of skills will have an advantage over the specialist.

Teresa Patterson

Teresa Patterson is the co-author, (with Robert Jordan) of The World of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, and with Terry Brooks of The World of Shannara. The writer of various fantasy stories and non-fiction articles, Patterson served two terms as president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. Before becoming a writer she produced science fiction conventions and received her Master Class rating as a fantasy costumer. Patterson lives in Texas with her roommate, nine cat children and an ever changing number of raccoons.

Click here to learn more about David Cherry.