John Picacio's A Visual History of the Best Professional Artist Hugo Award Winners

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Hugo Awards started in 1953, however, the Best Professional Artist category wasn’t created until 1955. Since then, seventeen pro artists have been recognized with the award in that category (eighteen if you count Leo and Diane Dillon as individuals—debatable because they considered themselves inseparable—even though each was/is a powerhouse individual artist). It’s a helluva list.

Two Sundays ago, I became a part of it, prompting me to put together this visual history of the winners of the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist. After assembling this set of images, the first thought I have is “get back to work....go get better.” And the next—“this still feels like a dream.”

The question I have at the end of the above is "given that popular artists like Berkey never got a Hugo, which current artists are being overlooked in this category?"

Comments

[seawasp]

Well, I have been incredibly fortunate to get Bob Eggleton for not one, but TWO covers (Threshold and the forthcoming Portal), but while those are awesome covers indeed (the Portal one is, in fact, a wraparound!), my favorite is the one for Phoenix Rising, which captures an actual moment within the book and brings it to artistic life in gorgeous detail. So I'd say Todd Lockwood is certainly up there for consideration. The artist for Grand Central Arena's cover, Stephen Hickman, is also very, very good.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

What, no love for the Reverse Dragon (aka the Flame Farting Tyrannosaur of DOOOOOOM) from Boundary?

[seawasp]

And THIS is why I avoid mentioning that cover, because the Net, despite being almost as old as I am, is still in its pre-teen years. :)

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Oh, come one. Mentioning that cover never gets old! My goal is for it to enter the pantheon of legendary SF covers, such as the Carnivorous Blue Cabbage from the Lord Darcy collection, the My God Honor Harrington Looks Like Michael Jackson With a Gun cover, and of course the Miles Vorkosigan Has Too Many Teeth cover.

[seawasp]

But does Kurt Miller want to be remembered that way, when there are so many more awesome covers he's done?

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as bad publicity for a cover artist, if for nothing else than that someone will inevitably point to all the good work they've done that no would have ever connected to them otherwise.

Besides, even the greats like Franzetta produced some stinkers.

[arkuat]

I don't know how popular Egge ever was, and as far as I know he hasn't worked as an artist for years, but I always thought his cover for Mote was about the best that could be done for that book.

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

I don't know if she's been nominated or not, but she's done a lot of covers for books I like, to the point where I'll always check out something she's done the cover for: Kinuko Craft.

Otherwise I tend not to pay attention to who does cover art. The last two years since I've been voting for Hugos I do a bit more but I also have a kindle so don't look at book covers much in real life. The pictures that come with the Hugo packet though, wow. That's probably the hardest choice for me.