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

[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.