Later I had the chance to loop two more artists into the conversation: Award-winning illustrator Julie Dillon and Women Destroy Fantasy! cover artist Elizabeth Leggett generously shared their own experiences and advice. I deeply appreciate each of these fantastic women for being so open with their insight and knowledge. It was a humbling and inspiring opportunity for me personally.
Our Panel
Julie Bell’s credits include creating advertising illustrations for the elite of the corporate world, such as Nike, Coca-Cola, and The Ford Motor Company, painting book covers for the major publishing houses in NYC, or doing album covers for artists such as Meat Loaf. She was the first woman ever to paint Conan for Marvel Comics, which paved the way for many other commissions from Marvel, DC, and Image Comics to illustrate superheroes in fully rendered paintings. In 2000, she was given an assignment to do the covers of Jane Lindskold’s Firekeeper saga, a series of fantasy novels that starred a large wolf with magic powers. The success of that first wolf painting brought more animal assignments as well as private commissions, which included horses. Now she is finding a new sense of herself in painting the animals just as they are, without supernatural powers.
Julie Dillon is a Hugo and Chesley Award-winning, World Fantasy Award-nominated science fiction and fantasy artist, with clients such as Penguin Books, Simon & Schuster, Tor Books, and Wizards of the Coast.
Irene Gallo is the Chesley Award-winning and World Fantasy Award-nominated art director of Tor Books and the Associate Publisher of Tor.com. She’s been on the board of Directors of the Society of Illustrators and Spectrum Fantastic Art, and has helped curate the Spectrum exhibitions at the Museum of American Illustration. She also helps organize MicroVisions, a charity auction of mini paintings by top illustrators. By far, the most exciting part of her job is working with all the wonderful artists and becoming good friends with many of them.
Rebecca Guay has been painting professionally for twenty years, during which time she built a formidable reputation in contemporary and pop culture art and illustration. She has exhibited in both solo and group shows at renowned galleries and museums including the R. Michelson Galleries and The Allentown Museum of Art, as well as the Eric Carle Museum, and has been acquired into the permanent collection of the American Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators in NYC. An ARC 2013 and 2014 finalist, Rebecca has also been the recipient of many significant awards and honors, including numerous gold medal awards from the Spectrum Annual and several Gold and Bronze Medals from the Society of Illustrators West Annual for Best in the Original Works/Gallery category, and she is currently nominated for a Chesley Award. In addition to her career as an artist, she is also the creator of The Illustration Master Class (illustrationmasterclass.com) and SmArt School (smarterartschool.com).
Elizabeth Leggett is a twenty-year veteran freelance illustrator. Her artistic influences include Michael Kaluta, Donato Giancola, John Jude Palencar, and Jeremy Geddes. She completed a seventy-eight-card tarot in a single year and launched it into a successful Kickstarter (Portico Tarot and Art Prints). In December, she won two places in Jon Schindehette’s ArtOrder Inspiration, and she provided internal art for the Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue of Lightspeed and is the Women Destroy Fantasy! cover artist and art director.
Lauren Panepinto has worked in every publishing genre and collaborated with artists as varied as Shepard Fairey and John Harris. As the Creative Director of Orbit Books and Yen Press for the past five years, she has been trying to merge the worlds of genre and commercial publishing and figure out what SFF publishing looks like in the present world of mainstream “geek” media.
Zoë Robinson is the Senior Art Coordinator and founding member of the Art Direction Team at Fantasy Flight Games.
First off, what led you to work in the speculative fiction field? Was this always your intended career plan?
Irene Gallo: I think “plan” is overstating it. I grew up on Close Encounters [of the Third Kind] and then Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was obsessed with those two movies, especially Raiders of the Lost Ark. And then I literally stumbled into a Harlan Ellison book and went to hear him speak a few times. It was like junior high school or whatever. But then I did phase out of it, not so much out of a “plan” either. I went to college and was busy with college things, and when I got out, I got a job with Tor. I really came full circle, and really recognized everything around me. I was very lucky.
Julie Bell: I definitely didn’t have it as a plan, either. I can look back and see a lot of the things I really liked when I was a kid, like Dulac and fairy tale art, things like that. I always thought that I was going to be an artist, and I wanted to do children’s books. I had this idea of making my own fairy tale a long time ago, which I never did. I can see where what I’m doing definitely goes to that, it’s just that I never actually put it into a plan of action. My life just, in this really magical kind of way, fell into it.
Lauren Panepinto: I’m the same. I’m an only child, and I was a tomboy, and I was kind of my dad’s buddy. He was into baseball cards, and we always went to these baseball card shows. I always went straight to the comics section. You know, when you’re a little girl, you can get advice: “What is a good comic book for a girl?” “Oh, X-Men!” And since I was hanging out there all the time, eventually I worked at the comic book store near my high school in Staten Island (Jim Hanley’s Universe). I worked there through high school and summer vacations in college—I went to the School of Visual Arts for Graphic Design.
After graduation I got into books and worked for a couple different publishers. I was the art director in charge of paperbacks for Broadway/Doubleday when Orbit came to the US from the UK. That year there was a big shakeup in publishing; it had decimated my division, ending up with me getting laid off literally the week that Orbit was looking for a creative director to take over and dedicate themselves to only geek books. A friend called me and was like, “I heard you got laid off. I have a job for you!” It was just the most amazing luck. I met the publisher, Tim Holman. We talked about books and we talked about geekdom, and he even grilled me on my geek cred, “Have you really read Chapterhouse: Dune? Have you really read The Simarillion?” I finally had to show my elvish tattoo. So, the answer is, I ended up doing this by total luck and chance.
Zoë Robinson: Mine is very much similar—right place, right time. Except sort of the opposite in the childhood. I was a pretty isolated kid who lived very much in my head, so I read everything I could get my hands on. My books were my friends, and they were very much more real to me than everything else around me. I would draw a lot, partially to put flesh on that, and partially because it gave me something to do with my hands that adults wouldn’t make me stop doing. It split my attention. I was constantly, constantly drawing. I ended up accidentally getting an art degree from a Liberal Arts school and wandering through weird jobs. Finally, a friend was like, “So, this place needs an art director . . . I hope they get somebody good . . . You should do it!” So I ended up getting hired at Fantasy Flight Games.
Rebecca Guay: I always wanted to be an artist, and I fell in love with The X-Men in seventh grade. I saw an issue of The X-Men in a newspaper stand, and was like, “What is this wonderful world?” and immediately was sold. I was also super into The Raiders of the Lost Ark. Oh my God. And Star Wars, but Raiders! I still have my twelve-inch Indiana Jones clock. It’s in the guest room right now, waiting for the new studio. I was copying comics constantly through junior high and high school. My mom made a bet that by the time I was in college, I wouldn’t want to go into comics. I was like, “I’ll take that bet!” She was sure I’d grow up and be “serious” about art.
I got to college and I somewhat got sidetracked. I thought I’d go into kids’ books, children’s book illustration. In fact, I had a nice children’s book portfolio when I graduated from Pratt, but I started dating George Pratt, who had just done Enemy Ace, which is this beautiful graphic novel. He started introducing me at parties and
different get-togethers to the comic book world. I met Mike Mignola and Mike Kaluta and all these amazing people. I sort of met Frank Miller: I spilled a drink on him and ran away.
I started putting together my sample pages when I was working my day job as an assistant at Marvel Comics. My friend was in the art department at Marvel, and I was his assistant for sixty dollars a day, just getting anything anyone needed. Every night, I’d go home to my sample pages. I got my first ten-page story for Marvel, and that got me into an issue of Swamp Thing, which got me a full-time penciling gig for Black Orchid. That lasted two years, and on the side I was getting into kids’ magazines, and also trading card work.
I didn’t really intend to go into comics and science fiction/fantasy; I thought I’d go into kids’ books, but ended up in comics, and then segued into Magic: [The Gathering] through comics, and graphic novels through Magic, and segued into fantasy, and then children’s books came around, and it all grew from there.
Julie Dillon: I’ve always leaned towards fantasy and science fiction, even as a child. I’ve been drawing and painting my whole life, but I didn’t start taking it more seriously until early high school, when I started wanting to draw pictures of scenes from books or characters I’d made up, and got frustrated with how bad I was at it. I particularly loved the artwork on the early Magic: The Gathering cards, so I’d copy the art from my favorite cards to help me practice. For a while, I got really into anime, and that dominated what I did for a few years. At that point I had improved enough that I would get occasional commissions from people online, but I still didn’t consider art as a viable career, so I spent the next several years plugging away at a computer science degree. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I started thinking maybe I should pursue art, since that’s what I was doing in every bit of free time I had available. I enjoyed drawing and creating too much to keep it as a side-gig or hobby.
I enjoy the freedom of expression and potential for storytelling inherent in SF and fantasy illustration. There’s so much room for experimentation and new ideas. Sometimes it’s hard to explain to other people what it is I do for a living, though, since drawing dragons and warrior ladies and robots isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when people think “artist.”
Elizabeth Leggett: I have been a tabletop gamer since I was in elementary school. The art in the books sparked my imagination and matched the art I found myself trying to draw. It was like discovering friends rather than a career path. It was many years later when I finally accepted the constant yearning to illustrate full time as a “Life Goal.” It became more than a dream. It became something worth planning a life around achieving.
There’s been a lot of talk about gender parity in the SF illustrating field, about how few women, percentage-wise, are working as illustrators—especially since at least half of art students are female. Did your gender ever come into play in your careers? What are your thoughts about what causes this attrition?
Panepinto: These are definitely conversations Irene and I have had before, trying to think of all the female names, who’s working and who’s not, and it seems like there are so many female students that are into it right now, but then where are the working artists?
Robinson: I think it’s just recently that it hasn’t been just the hardheaded girls toughing it out. It’s been very recently that generally, girls are aware that this is something that they’re invited and allowed to do.
Panepinto: I think that it also comes out of the YA fiction. Harry Potter’s got such strong characters—Hermione’s such a great female character—and The Hunger Games.
Dillon: I’ve done most of my work online, working by myself at home, so it’s difficult to gauge sometimes if gender has come into play in terms of my career path. Early on, it felt pretty isolating not seeing many other women in the big art forums at the time, but there have been more and more women becoming more visible in the field over the years.
Leggett: If my gender came into play in any negative way that kept me from illustration contracts, I am not aware of it. I think male and female illustrators face the same challenges. This is a frighteningly competitive business and that might be the crux of the matter. Males, generally speaking, accept competition as part of the process and some thrive on it. More and more women are stepping into this fray and discovering they thrive as well, but are having to catch up in the race.
Guay: It’s still a confidence issue with girls. Believing that their art has weight, has gravity, is worth something. And it’s not because the industry says it’s not. I have never, ever encountered sexism.
Bell: Me neither. I’ve never had anybody even care if I was male or female.
Guay: It’s always been about my work, and if anything, it’s been a benefit, honestly. They’re just happy to see a girl. It’s benefited me on the reverse side.
Pinepinto: When I’m showing art samples to editors, they don’t even know names.
Gallo: I think confidence is the issue. I remember seeing an awards ceremony where a woman had won, and she was delighted. Her acceptance speech was, “Oh my God, so many other people deserve to be here, thank you so much.” My heart just sank the minute she said that, because a Dan Dos Santos or Donato would never get up there—they would be humble and say “amongst these amazing people, thank you”—but they would never say “I don’t deserve this.” So I do think there’s a confidence issue.
But I also think there are stylistic issues, which are difficult to talk about. The default for a science fiction/fantasy book cover is a very male aesthetic, and when I get these beautiful portfolios of more feminine styles or more feminine themes, I can think of many fewer places that I could use that on.
Panepinto: I’ve been using a lot of female artists in the urban fantasy genre. I think Mélanie Delon’s art is very “feminine,” beautiful, and floral, and it’s perfect for these books and I was super excited to be able to use her. I feel like this conversation isn’t done. It lulls a bit and spikes a bit, but this “women in fantasy” conversation has been loudly advocated for at least a year.
Dillon: I feel like, while things are slowly evening out, there is still a degree of institutional bias that makes art seem like a more tangible career possibility for men than women. There are a lot of women working as illustrators, but they don’t often hold as many visible higher-up positions. Some people have a tendency to be more dismissive of women illustrators, because there’s this vague assumption that women only do decorative, quiet, or frivolous work: greeting cards, children’s books, et cetera (dismissing this type of work is an issue in itself); while men are considered to be the ones doing the “real” work of fine art, concept art, and animation for films and games. This is flat-out untrue; all genders have much to offer in all areas of art, and one style of art isn’t inherently more worthy or legitimate than other styles. But even when these assumptions are proven wrong, women working in concepting and animation and other typically male-dominated fields face an uphill battle to gain the same level of respect and recognition that men do, while men doing more decorative and introspective work tend to garner more legitimacy than their female counterparts.
Gallo: And certainly at Tor.com I could use a lot more of everything! The whole breadth of artistic styles more than anything else. That’s been great, because I have been able to push that into the book covers more and more. There’s more acceptance of all kinds of styles, regardless of who it’s coming from.
Leggett: We are outnumbered at the moment, but that will change. There are so many creative, professionally focused, driven women finding better and better opportunities in this field every day. We are in the call lists. We are in the convention guest lists. We are mentoring and studying and working so beautifully that the male illustrators are taking notice. They are challenging themselves more as well. This is good for the science fiction and fantasy genres as a whole.
Dillon: One thing I have noticed is that I sometimes get contacted for work specifically bec
ause I am a woman artist; it doesn’t happen too often, and while I’m happy for any work I get, the self-doubting part of my brain worries sometimes if tokenism is playing a part.
Robinson: Now, in gaming, sexism is a lot more salient, because it’s a different kind of projective escapism. In gaming, the art shows who’s invited to the table, and, until very recently, there was no diversity. It was all Caucasian males. In fact, if I don’t specify race and gender in the art brief, I will get a 6’1”, thirty-year-old Caucasian man with short dark hair, clean-shaven, and with dark eyes. I’ve noticed it in my office culture; at first, it took the interrupt of going in and saying, “This is old. Can we at least do X?” Now the culture is they do it by verbatim. They do the hundred twenty cards and then go through and make sure there’s representation. They’re excited about the diversity.
Guay: I’ve noticed less and less stylistic diversity since the ‘90’s. More and more computer-generated, glossy, slick, high-tech look in a lot of stuff.
Dillon: When I get art assignments, I have been making more of a conscious effort to have more variety in the characters’ appearances, to include more women and make sure that the women I do include are not all helpless waifish blondes. Most of the time it goes over well (or at least, I don’t get complaints), but every now and then I’ll receive feedback from an art director complaining that a female character was “too fat” or “too ethnic” or “not pretty enough,” which just makes me all the more determined to try to be even more inclusive and diverse when I have the freedom to do so.
Robinson: I think, too, when it comes to sexism, that this new generation of artists is feeling it a lot more keenly, because of, I heard an artist describe it as “bro wolf-packing.” With internet culture, it becomes much more apparent who’s doing what and anyone can comment. In face-to-face physical meetings where you’re going around, everyone’s very polite and accepting, but you get on the internet and you have trolls. Everyone is much more loud.
Fantasy Magazine Issue 58, Women Destroy Fantasy! Special Issue Page 23
