Strange Horizons, Feb. ’02
Strange Horizons, Inc.
CONTENTS:
Interview: Mark Ferrari, by Terry Hickman
Article: The Dimension of Our Galaxy, by Brian Tung
Article: Both/And: Science Fiction and the Question of Changing Gender, by Sherryl Vint
Article: Making Believable Planets, by Peter Jekel
Fiction: Little Gods, by Tim Pratt, illustration by Mark Precious
Fiction: Travel Agency, by Ellen Klages
Fiction: The Final Solution (part 1 of 2), by K. Mark Hoover
Fiction: Other Cities #6 of 12: Zvlotsk, by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Fiction: The Final Solution (part 2 of 2), by K. Mark Hoover
Music: Capturing the Musical Essence: A Look at the Scores for Harry Potter and The Fellowship of the Ring, by C. A. Casey
Poetry: Gargoyle Poems, by Michael Marsh
Poetry: Muse Trap, by Tim Pratt
Poetry: Why Norm Jones Never Feels Like He Gets Anything Done In A Day, by Russ Bickerstaff
Poetry: The Eclipse, by Liz Henry
Review: Firebird: A New Line of Young Adult Speculative Fiction, reviewed by Mary Anne Mohanraj
Review: Neil Gaiman and John Bolton’s Harlequin Valentine, reviewed by Erin Donahoe
Review: Keith Hartman’s Gumshoe Gorilla, reviewed by Wendy Pearson
Review: Steve Berman’s Trysts: A Triskaidecollection of Queer and Weird Stories, reviewed by Greg Wharton
Editorial: All That Glitters Is Not Pyrite, by R Michael Harman
Interview: Mark Ferrari
By Terry Hickman
2/4/02
Mark Ferrari is a fantasy illustrator whose work conjures as much (or more) magic as the stories it illustrates. His book cover illustration work has graced projects at Tor, Ace-Berkeley, Doubleday, Eclipse Comics, Chaosium, to name a few. He’s also done gaming software illustration for Lucasfilm, Lucasarts Software, and MacGraw Hill Interactive, among many others. You can see his work on the cover of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine #49, enhancing Susan Dexter’s story, “Rowan, Oak and Iron.”
I met Mr. Ferrari at Wayne State College’s second annual WillyCon, in Wayne, Nebraska, in March 2000. I bought a print of “Trying to Fit In,” having fallen in love with it at first sight. At WillyCon, he impressed me with his focus on the students. An example: upon discovering that there was nothing to give students whose art had placed in the WillyCon Art Show, he took several students downtown and bought materials, then made hand-calligraphied certificates for the award winners.
His medium of choice is colored pencil, which is unusual in his field.
Terry Hickman: Why pencil?
Mark Ferrari: I use Prismacolor pencils. Originally when I started I picked that medium because I considered it visually more attractive; it was more affordable than most other media; and it was very portable. And non-messy—that was important because I had roommates!
TH: How did you get into fantasy illustration?
MF: Fantasy literature was a huge interest of mine since about the 4th grade. I “did art” throughout grade school, junior high and high school, up to about halfway through college. Then I lost interest and quit, gave away all my equipment and supplies. For seven years I did no drawing or painting at all. By then I was working in a field totally unrelated to art, and finding that I needed to do something else. I was miserable. I started looking for another profession by sitting down and listing things I thought I could do, enjoy, and be good at. I ended up with a list of four professions: writing, psychotherapy, film, and art. I included art only because I knew I could do it.
I decided to give each of them a chance, starting with art because I figured I’d hate it, as I did when I’d dropped it years before, so I could eliminate it quickly. I started with Peter Max-like landscapes in a small, 8″x10” format. As I got better at it, I kept working in larger and larger formats, and started selling them—people wanted to buy them!
And I was getting absorbed in art again. I forgot about the other three careers on my list. I decided to go to art school, the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. I ran out of money, so I could only attend for two semesters, but I got exposed to many ideas and concepts I wouldn’t have otherwise thought about, Art History especially. While in school, I settled on the colored pencils as my medium of choice, but I still hadn’t decided what area of subject matter to focus on. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be a living in the fantasy genre that I’d loved ever since I was very young.
To get into the school you had to write a statement of purpose. Part of what mine said was “I don’t want to be an illustrator.” I had this prejudiced view of what “illustrators” were. I thought they drew assembly diagrams for blenders and bicycles. So naturally, due to scheduling constraints, I ended up having to take survey of illustration! And that’s where I learned what illustration was. The artists were doing all the things I wanted to do!
“Hobbitesque” was the first piece I created for my portfolio. “The Dream” was the first post-art school drawing I did for it, and in some ways I feel like it’s still one of my best works. I did it just for myself.
TH: That might suggest something….
MF: Definitely! With those seven years’ hindsight, I realized why I’d dropped art in the first place. It had become entirely about meeting the expectations of others. It was one of the few things which consistently earned applause. There are a couple of ways to destroy a young artist: one, put down their talent and efforts. Two—and this is really almost worse—praise them profusely, build up the pressure to keep topping the last masterpiece. This takes all the joy and play out of doing art. I ended up drawing only those things I was sure would come out well—therefore I kept drawing the same things over and over again. Boring! Also, those trite images then get burned into your retina so that when you do try something new, all that comes out is the same old-same old.
TH: So you came out of art school with a portfolio started and a refreshed love of art and a new focus: fantasy.
MF: There were some really wonderful people who helped me out. Some of them provided housing while I sort of hid out and honed my craft. I was prepared to go the route: struggle and anonymity. Then I had showed my work to a staff member of the Dark Carnival Bookstore in Berkeley, and someone there suggested I take it to BayCon. That was about 1987. I’d never heard of science fiction-fantasy conventions. I had no idea what to expect.
So I went, got a booth for my work way back in a corner out of everyone’s way … and discovered that ten or twelve of the biggest names in fantasy art were there. I thought, “Oh my God am I out of my league!” I was working on the contract for the H. P. Lovecraft Creatures book at the time, so I had to enter the Art show as a Pro instead of an Amateur, meaning I was competing with Those Big Names, so I really was feeling overwhelmed.
And people were stopping by my booth and examining my work and asking all these questions: “What medium is that?” “That can’t be pencil!” “But how do you get that effect with pencils!?” and all kinds of technical stuff, so there was quite a bit of activity I hadn’t expected.
Then Tom Kidd stopped by, and sort of took me under his wing. He introduced me to all Those Big Names I’d admired from afar for so long. There I was eating lunch with all these Big Names! And then “The Dream” won “Best of Show” and won “Best Fantasy” in the Professional category.
TH: Wow! Overnight success!
MF: (laughing) Yeah. So much for my years of struggle.
At BayCon I was contacted by a representative from Lucasfilms. They were looking for artists to work on their computer games. So the next weekend I found myself at Skywalker Ranch in Marin, CA, talking with the Art Division art director and some of their other artists. They liked my work and they didn’t care that I didn’t know much about computers; they said it was easier to train an artist to use a computer than to train a computer technician to be an artist. So I started working for them doing game illustration using 2D software. I turned out to be very good at the software illustrations, largely because I didn’t know anything about computers. I didn’t have the foreknowledge of what couldn’t and shouldn’t be done with the software. I even came up with some innovations that changed aspects of the industry.
I kept doing cover art while working on gaming software. Looking back, I can see where I was drifting towards the very situation that had made me leave art the first time: I had gone from being nobody to being very, very busy and in demand but I was really not prepared. I felt very un-equipped and very insecure. Meeting the deadlines and expectations of these important employers caused me to do what was safest and fastest, and my work became stale. And then, four or five years ago, the 3D CAD systems came out (Doom, etc.), and the hardware and software for those was very expensive, and the 3D work just wasn’t as interesting … and it didn’t matter who did the art work, because the software did most of the rendering.