The Story Between the Words

by Frank Kelly Freas

Frank Kelly Freas career as a science fiction and fantasy artist spans forty years. He began with painting covers for Astounding Science-Fiction and Planet Stories in the 1950s. Over the years, Freas' art has graced the covers of hundreds of science fiction books and magazines including works by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark. He also contributed covers to Mad Magazine from 1955 to 1962, as well as numerous other commercial illustrations, such as the record jacket for Queen's best-selling album, News of the World, and the cover of the 1992 Star Trek Annual. An official NASA artist, Freas' space posters hang in the Smithsonian Museum, Washington. He was also commissioned by the Skylab I astronauts to design their crew patch. Freas has won ten Hugo Awards, the highest recognition granted to a science fiction artist. In 1994, Starlog magazine included him in their prestigious list of The 200 Most Important People in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Please contact Frank Kelly Freas at ao891@lafn.org or http://www.concentric.net/~3dstereo/freas.shtml
 
Now why in the world would anybody want to be a science fiction illustrator, anyway? There's more money in lots of places, and sometimes just as much fun -- like painting pinup girls.
 
There is basically only one reason for doing science fiction. It is simply more interesting, more challenging, more exciting, and less restricting than any other genre of illustration.
 
I have written (elsewhere and often) about the opportunity illustration offers the artist to move outside the limitations of mere self-expression, into an area where he can apply his abilities to the concerns of his whole culture. Consider, in what area but science fiction could the artist have such an opportunity to add a visual dimension to the endless variety of ideas being generated by some of the finest minds in the world?
 
Science fiction offers a chance to have a positive impact on our culture, bypassing both jellified thought-patterns and the frequently justifiable reluctance of the general market to consider anything very far off trail. That science fiction both as art and literature has begun to get more general acceptance doesn't indicate a broader-minded public. It just means that the general public is more aware of us and our ideas through the media. It would be even nicer if it was able to read, but let us nevertheless be duly grateful.
More than any other segment of the art world, and in spite of operating on its fringes, we have both a high degree of freedom to act and a reasonable chance of having an effect on the culture itself.
 
Why do I stress illustration over easel painting? Can't the mainstream artist have as much freedom and import as we can? Bluntly, no. Because the publications through which we work disseminate the ideas we illustrate -- and eventually come back to us through cartoons, movies, videos,comics, etc. In the non-SF or real world you'd have to be a serial axe murderer to get the coverage we get routinely -- and it wouldn't last as long. Ask Michelangelo....
 
Throughout history, the artist has always been an illustrator. (Just think for a moment how in seven thousand years of art, the art gallery has been with us for over a hundred). Art has typically been a reflection of the world in which the artist found himself.
 
To date, the majority of stories readily available to use have been rooted in a Western cultural framework. I think you would agree that for good or ill, 2000+ years of Western thought has been based on Judeo-Christian philosophy/mythology and the United States is -- and probably shall continue to be for a while at least -- an essentially Western culture. The effectiveness and continuity of any culture is founded upon the ability of its members to communicate with each other. I don't think science fiction (or fact for that matter) has quite reached the stage of McLuhan's "global village", but we are becoming an international information exchange. Since communication itself is based upon a body of shared symbolism, much of which abides at the unconscious level, we obviously need to become familiar with the nature and variety of thought patterns of the rest of the planet. We do not exist in a one-culture world. For example, it is going to become essential for us to learn and use the mythology of the East, and there can hardly be an easier or more direct method of doing so than through the visual techniques which are the illustrator's stock in trade. We hope. Even English alone is hard enough to put into potent visual imagery.
 
As a dedicated professional illustrator for over forty years, I am painfully aware of the need for knowledge of this basic symbolism in order to translate verbal expression of ideas into immediately effective visual terms. In fact, in the last decade and a half, more of less, I have found to my chagrin that what seemed to be an obvious reference was totally lost on my new generation of readers. This is a real and continuing problem, and shows every likelihood of getting worse.
 
For instance, what could be more obvious than my reference to Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem by titling my Skylab poster "The Wonder That IS"? Apparently, anything. Doesn't anyone read Tennyson anymore? Then to compound the stupidity, I titled my second collection of science fiction cover art A Separate Star, and got my tail thoroughly chewed by a couple of courageous friends. The pointed out that the juxtaposition of "Frank Kelly Freas" and "A Separate Star" conveyed a message of personal horn-blowing considerably more familiar to the public than Kipling's poem, which concludes:
 
"... and each in his Separate Star will paint the Think as he sees it
For the God of Things as They Are."
 
 
Perhaps it was an example of the disadvantages of a classical education: more likely it was simply a fugitive from Reader's Digest's "Fascination With the Sound of Own Words" department.
 
Since so very few students, if any, read the classics, learn poetry, have any grounding in philosophy -- Western, Eastern or Abo -- one seems to be reduced to taking one's symbolism from Tolkein (a very watery substitute for the Bible, or even Milton) or from Madonna and her ilk. Be that as it may, it is becoming increasingly apparent that some knowledge of the popular comics, as well as -- God help us -- television programs, is vital for an illustrator merely to communicate at the most elementary level. Anybody need a good house painter?
 
Professionally, I accept the need to understand the new and fractured language; but unfortunately its use restricts communication to a smaller and smaller segment of our society as a whole. This is regrettable, not only as a serious professional problem but also as a sign of the incipient breakdown of all general communication. Where do I find time to familiarise myself with every subconscious argot from Korean to Bantu; and how do I talk to so-called Yuppies who don't know Tennyson from Nimoy and who couldn't care less?
 
It seems clear that biochemists can't talk to engineers, who can't converse with scientists, who totally confuse the accountants, who upset the public relations people, who speak for the politicians, who succeed in manipulating their particular constituency via a total disregard for the accuracy or relevance of their data. Somehow, I can't believe that the present emphasis on a sort of Orwellian newspeak is going to improve the situation: especially when it is applied to the new global culture.
 
Somebody once said that any organisation, however bad, is better than no organisation, because it provides the discipline and the framework -- the skeleton -- upon which improvements are possible. A skeleton can be modified and evolved to fit the changing needs of the organism, from fish to amphibian to reptile to man. An amoeba remains an amoeba, however happy it may be. Mythology, symbolism, and its disciplined expression in language is the skeleton of a society, and understanding it is the very foundation of communication both cross-cultural and internal.
 
Considering all this, we SF people are especially fortunate in being relatively free of that particular communications failure known as the generation gap. Most of us learned by the age of ten that communication per se was well nigh impossible outside of SF, and difficult enough inside it. For 30 years, we got away with talking to ourselves -- even though we get a few odd looks at times -- but somewhere along the line, a few of them started listening.
 
They -- advertising, motion pictures, television, etc., etc. -- had found a gimmick: science fiction, and I don't need to recount, again, the sad tale of what they did with it. No doubt it is progress for what that's worth.
 
But as a more or less coherent group, we SF readers are still fortunate. Oh, of course any large mixed group must have one or two nitwitted teenagers and couple of middle-aged dunderheads, and no doubt we have some somewhere (though I'm sure none of us has met any). But most of us can still communicate.
 
It is imperative for science fiction and fantasy illustrators to become educated members of society, either by being self-taught or through formal training. John W. Campbell knew what he wanted to publish with due regard for the need to educate the readers and to broaden their horizons. He never forgot for a moment that the primary professional objective was to provide entertainment: without that there would be no sales of magazines, and shouting into a barrel is singularly unrewarding. But having provided the entertainment -- or better, in the process of providing it -- a great deal of instruction, education, and general enlightenment could legitimately be included. That was our real reason for being. Furthermore, he said, if we did not have something to add to the consciousness and the well-being of the human race, we would be wiser to get a good, secure, well-paying job with the government or an advertising agency, and leave science fiction to those professional entertainers (ie., writers and artists) who do have something to say.
 
Science fiction should be, to some degree, independent of mere contemporary trends or opinions. We are, after all, supposed to establish or at least anticipate, the trends. Hah! The client will listen quietly, nod sagely and say: "Yes. We see what you mean. Now do it the way we told you," ie. their way. Except in the rare cases where the VP in charge happens to be a science fiction fan, "their way" usually consists of whatever is passing itself off at the time as art in the mainstream market.
 
This stuff is not necessarily bad. Some of it is actually superb. The general level of commercial art is incredibly good nowadays. But it just isn't science fiction and its thought patterns are not appropriate to the genre. That is where we, the science fiction readers, come in. It is not inconceivable that with so many excellent artists and imaginative thinkers out there, a genuine understanding of what science fiction is all about will in the end produce a whole new generation of illustrators whose abilities are attuned to the most valuable genre of literature our culture has so far produced. It has been said that those who know no history are doomed to repeat it. Even thus, failure to analyse the present, to extrapolate from it and predict the possible futures, will place us as a culture completely at the mercy of that future. Are we rational beings or not? Don't answer that! Just bear in mind that a visual image is not dependent on rationality; it is pure sensation.
 
How, then, does one produce a good illustration? Believe it or not, a thorough knowledge of the story to be illustrated is of paramount importance. Just getting a few paragraphs from an editor will not give the artist the overall feeling, the details, or the pure enjoyment of reading the story, the last of which is essential for real contact with the reader. Anything less is mere page decoration, however beautifully done, and not true illustration.
 
Just a few words about the "creation" of a drawing or painting: the picture one "creates" will usually not be good. The good picture is the one you realise -- the artist is the means of its manifestation. But "creating" is the term we're stuck with although it's an unfortunate misnomer.
 
There are several ways one can approach doing a picture:
 
A. No idea at all
1. Set up a general overall composition -- fill in the details to suit the composition.
2. Assemble a mass of details and juggle them mentally until they form a satisfactory composition.
 
B. Start with an idea.
1. Compose the picture on a visual-emotive basis, determine what details are required to convey the desired effect.
2. Assemble all available relevant data (details and background information). Decide how to best organise the material into a composition with satisfying aesthetic results.
 
I use whatever method suits the present assignment, as well as the state of my liver at the moment. Which ever way you go, just don't you dare be wishy-washy about it. To illustrate is to be deliberate: you pick your subject and method, and you stick with them, right or wrong, for that job.
 
After you've digested the story, you try to appeal to what your observer already "knows" -- especially at his unconscious level. For example, the reader "knows" that ghosts and vampires don't cast shadows. Objects do.
 
OK. Let an object (say, a chair) cast a shadow, appropriate to the lighting of the scene, right where the ghost's shadow ought to be. The reader may not even see it, consciously -- but his subconscious notes and records "ghost".
 
This, of course, is a matter of judgment. Judgment, good or bad, is not necessarily an aesthetic problem. Bad judgment may not affect the quality of a painting qua painting, while ruining its effect completely as an illustration. Authenticity, good drawing, "rightness" of whatever sort does count. A techie snarls: "Those wings will never lift that weight." A carpenter observes that your hinges will pop the first time your dungeon door is opened, etc. To these readers all the work you've put into creating your illusion is short. For example:
 
If you are doing a painting in which your centre of interest is a horseman, there is good reason to make the horse anatomically correct. You adapt your design to make the effect you want possible. Note: correctness in that case does not imply that you should not exaggerate as required to convey character and motion. Just remember that the objective is to produce, let us say, "a fighting horse," not "a horse with funny legs"!
 
If your horse is a secondary, or minor element in the picture, you can feel free to shrink his head, stretch his neck, or move his legs into impossible positions in any way that suits the mood or composition. Note well, however, that if you do it correctly (ie., if your judgment is right and the distortion works) nobody will notice it anyway. The objective in this case is to establish a situation but not to divert the observer's attention from the action or the message of the picture.
 
Another important consideration is that your drawing or painting, while communicating the ideas of the author, should also stimulate the potential reader's curiosity to the point that he or she feels compelled to buy the book or magazine and read it. As a reader, you are no doubt well aware of that phenomenon. How many times have you picked a book out of the rack because the cover was interesting -- and cursed because it had no connection with the story? Well... maybe that's why so many of us prefer magazines: at least the odds are with us that there will be some connection between the cover art and content.
 
Personally, I find illustration to be thoroughly satisfying and emotionally rewarding. Now don't get me wrong: I enjoy fine art as much as the next guy. It's not illustration, but it is of tremendous value in its view of the world. However, I consider easel painting to be fine for persons of independent means, or for those who enjoy a diet of dry bread and sour wine in their garrett. But have you priced a garrett lately? In any case, for me, the real enjoyment as an artist is in interpreting and bringing into visual reality the writer's own concept in such a way as to satisfy the author and enhance the readers' enjoyment. It's also nice to please the editor and the art director too, if you expect to be paid. And I'll admit that I do occasionally succumb to temptation and do a drawing or painting or two out of sheet self-indulgence. But not often. I just don't have time to take out from the important work -- ILLUSTRATION.
 
In addition to a hectic studio schedule, much of my time nowadays is spent inducing potential illustrators to come out of the wainscoting and start chewing on something substantial. Like the four thousand dollar annual prize from the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrator of the Future contest. There is, after all, only one indispensable requirement for good illustration in our books and magazines. To wit: illustrators. Tongue-tied storytellers who can't type.