Burnsing Passions: Jim Burns Interviewed

advertise.

	EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE

Burnsing Passions: Jim Burns Interviewed

This brilliantly talented science fiction and fantasy artist waves an airbrush like Yoda waves a lightsaber. You only know you've made it as an author, when your publisher assigns Big Jim Burns to illustrate your cover.

There can be no doubt in anyone's mind that Jim Burns is one of our foremost sf illustrators -- one of the true greats -- so it's surprising that before this year there had been only one book of his amazing art.

This dearth was amended by Paper Tiger with the publication of Transluminal, a collection (about 120 illustrations) of Jim's work. Jim very kindly took time out from his characteristically hectic schedule to talk to the Snarl's Paul Barnett, and this is what he told us:

PS: Why was there such a long gap between Lightship and Transluminal?

JB: Well I tell you -- it wasn't for want of trying at my end! Along with my utterly splendid but long-suffering agent, Alison Eldred of Arena, I've been trying to convince any number of publishers on both sides of the Atlantic that what they really wanted was a new Jim Burns collection.

And to be fair, a lot of interest was shown and a lot of nice things were said about my work -- but, and very frustratingly, it was always "maybe next year" or some other similar fob-off. Ironically enough, the one publisher who seemed always genuinely to be interested in a new book was Paper Tiger, but for various reasons I'd wanted to change to a different publisher: the relationship between myself (and other artists) with Paper Tiger went through a very disagreeable patch for a while -- all now completely behind us as a consequence of the Collins & Brown takeover of the imprint.

I have nothing but respect for the people who are now running things at Paper Tiger -- but this was not always the case! There was a period in the late 1980s, early 1990s when publishing -- science fiction publishing in particular -- was in the doldrums and I think there was little energy, interest or indeed money available for illustrated books.

There seems to be something of a resurgence of these types of books now with a number of juicy new collections in the pipeline from Paper Tiger and other publishers too.

PS: How are you finding the transition from more traditional media to computer art? In similar vein, how are your clients finding the transition?

JB: I'd like to say "seamless" in answer to this one. But of course it is inevitably a path full of potential pitfalls both on the actual picture-creation front and perhaps more critically on the client front.

Let me first say one very important thing -- for the record. I am not finished with painting. In fact, since starting to output a significant proportion of my work digitally, I've found that it "informs" my traditional work in some interesting new ways. I compose most of my initial sketches for client approval on the computer these days, whether the finished thing is a painting or a digital file.

The particular foibles, eccentricities and indeed succulent new facilities offered by, say, the various tools in Photoshop are helping me to evolve my style in a more "organic" direction.

When I then do a trad-style painting from digitally created sketch stages I find that the actual look of my paintings is changing in some subtle but increasingly obvious way -- along a road that I would have attempted to follow anyway -- but which is accelerated by this new method of initially "getting ideas down". I'm finding it very liberating indeed.

Actually painting the finished article "on-screen" too has provided me with a whole new mode of self-expression, and I find the renewed/refreshed involvement with sf art truly invigorating. Everything palls a bit with time -- even a relatively exciting thing like creating science fiction paintings -- and for me, despite my clunky early digital efforts, it's really renewed my enthusiasm.

I enjoy being able to switch between the two methods of outputting images, and as a consequence of "going digital" I'm enjoying my traditional-style painting much more than in recent years.

Clients vary! Some of them, as my agent Alison so delicately puts it, are just "very old-farty" with this newfangled nonsense and won't even entertain the possibility of getting a Zip disk instead of a painting. Some will try me out and then be either hooked or not by what I'm offering -- future commissions from those sources reflecting their opinion.

Others are very enthusiastic about the whole process -- so long as the quality is there -- for apart from any other considerations the logistics side of handling Zip disks is so much less bothersome than having to look after valuable, one-off artwork.

It's still early days for me with digital art creation. I've done some good things and some iffy things. Time will tell how profoundly the Apple Mac is going to affect my career as an sf artist.

PS: Do you ever feel the urge to write fantasy/sf yourself?

JB: Well, the "pull" is there on some level certainly -- and every so often (usually after tackling the cover to some awful, awful book by some soon-to-be-forgotten writer) I think "I can do better than that" and start to assemble, on some near subliminal level, the elements of a storyline.

Then I get to read the latest Stephen Baxter, or a first novel by this new young whippersnapper called John Meaney, or decide to give The Forever War another run-through after a decade or more -- and I think to myself, "What are you good enough at, Jim, that you can make a reasonable living out of it?" and the answer is, of course: "Painting pictures."

Like any number of unnameable, unspeakable urges, this one is best left to the guys whose speciality and talent it is! I might be more seriously tempted if science fiction writers suddenly started producing their own brilliantly painted book covers!

PS: Illustration seems to flow so freely from you, but there must have been times when a particular book proved especially devilish to illustrate. Are there any covers that strike you as the most difficult you've had to do?

JB: Illustration most emphatically does not flow freely from me! I have an intensely visual imagination and a desire since childhood to express myself in pencil, paint or now, with amazingly renewed energy and enthusiasm . . . pixels. But it has always been a struggle.

I have a limited range of natural skills which I've managed to hone to a certain degree of crafty conviction, and I've learned a few new tricks along the way. Art college did not help one iota. Despite all that, every time I start a new job it's most definitely a case of girding up the loins and plunging enthusiastically in regardless.

I'm lucky that I'm a man who was able to turn his hobby and interest towards the means of making a living but I think it's fair to say that I do set myself high standards -- which in my own opinion I rarely manage to achieve. The successful one is always the next one.

Some writers help enormously by being just, well, bloody good writers who fire the imagination off down some road or other (the problem here is usually along the lines of "What do I choose not to illustrate?").

But sometimes, just sometimes one can get to page 598 of some uninvolving great tome or other and that sheet of paper on which I habitually jot down page references for all the good visual stuff, the little asides and messages to myself, remains . . . a great big white virginally blank sheet of paper. They are the difficult ones -- when inspiration refuses to fire the appropriate neurones into activity.

Back when I started doing this stuff it was the convincing depiction of human characters that proved most difficult. I can do that now. Aliens -- I used to conjure them up via a long process of sketched preliminaries leading to the final painted realization.

Now they just seem to evolve naturally out of the painting process itself. Hardware builds itself before my very eyes and, I hope, never the same twice. The difficulty now is more subtle and more personal. It's connected to some difficult-to-define supra-process in which the aim is to engage with ambience or mood or, perhaps most importantly to this illustrator anyway, to convey the essential spirit of the tale through the book jacket illustration.

PS: Have you ever felt tempted to move into the Fine Art field, with gallery exhibitions and the like?

JB: Nope! For a start, I can't really imagine painting anything other than science fiction. I don't think I'd be all that much cop at painting anything else.

The enthusiasm for and indeed the deeply ingrained habit of science fiction has become totally dominant in the way I express myself in paint. I could perhaps see myself pursuing a style of "fantastic art" which may have its origins in the kind of thing I do now but which carries a few more personal "inclinations and obsessions" than my commercial output.

This hypothetical material might hold some attractions for some galleries -- but, and it's a big but, my work is quintessentially commercial and it is overwhelmingly science fictional. Neither of these facts hold much attraction for the owners of galleries and, apart from the just about unique case of the Worlds of Wonder gallery in Washington DC, there is not likely to be any great meeting of the minds between me and the world of Fine Art. I'm too busy just making a living working the field I enjoy and love.

PS: Who are your own favourite artists currently working in the field? Or does your Top of the Pops vary from one day to the next? Are there any who have particularly influenced your own work?

JB: My Top of the Pops does vary somewhat with my fickle enthusiasms. I'm currently rather interested in the work of a few digital artists who seem to be bringing a new fresh mood into the field. In particular I like the way Rick Berry has created his own singular oeuvre.

Brom too, using more traditional media, has managed to enliven an area of fantasy art that had become very derivative and rather boring. Every year I get the latest annual edition of Spectrum -- The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, and every time I find pieces by people I've not heard of before (and who often seem then to vanish into the woodwork) who stun me with their scary facility and hyperactive imaginations.

I'm impressed too by some of the often nameless people who produce great, usually digital designs for film. Last night we went and saw The Phantom Menace and, visually at least, there are some truly amazing things going on. At last a true sense of a real science fiction mindset going into the design thinking behind alien lifeforms and hardware.

As I've stated at boring length elsewhere, my biggest influences were the British comic artists of the 1950s and 1960s -- in particular Frank Hampson and Frank Bellamy and their work on Dan Dare for the Eagle comic. I still see curves and angles emerging out of my own designs that are pure 1960s Frank Hampson -- an unconscious homage I like to think.

PS: Are there any plans for a new book to follow Transluminal?

JB: Editing the work down to fit into Transluminal was quite a case of "What do I leave out?" rather than "What shall I put in?". I've already got enough accumulated work to fill another book the size of Transluminal and indeed to almost fill yet another -- though some stuff was left out of Transluminal for very good reasons and I'd hate to start trawling through rejected stuff just in order to fill a new book.

A follow-on to Transluminal has been tentatively mooted (Superluminal?). I suppose it depends on how well or badly the current book does out there in the only place that counts -- the market place!

PS: Jim Burns, thank you.

A version of this article originally appeared in The Snarl, Paper Tiger�s reader zine. Many thanks to the Snarl�s Editor extraordinaire, Paul Barnett (www.papertiger.co.uk), for letting us use their prose.

FREE SF MAGAZINE
Sign up for the Crowsnest SF e-magazine - full of funny reports and gossip. Be the first to find out about hot science fiction happenings & news!