FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

The best place to ask Michael for an autograph is at personal appearances where he is typically available to sign, chat, and take photos with fans.

• Michael doesn’t charge for autographs at events because he is there promoting his work.
• He will only sign items for projects that he’s worked on.
• He may limit the number of items he will sign.

We try to promote appearances here with as much notice as we can provide. Please see details of the event for further guidance.

If you are unable to attend an event, we offer many reproductions in our online shop that are hand-signed by Michael.  Please contact us if you have a question about personalization on an item you are ordering.

Sometimes but Michael’s availability depends on his schedule. Because there is time involved in receiving, handling, and reshipping items, we may charge for autographs by mail. Special handling may apply on high value items like first edition copies of The Gunslinger.

Please contact us in advance for permission, rates, and shipping instructions. We cannot accept any liability for unauthorized items we receive.

The same holds true for collectibles from other manufacturers / publishers like The Franklin Mint. We can probably tell you the original offering price, but we have no additional insight or knowledge of collectibles.

To determine market value, many collectors rely on eBay, Heritage, or other auction sites. On eBay, for example, you can access completed auctions using advanced search. Click “sold listings” to view prices achieved.

It’s wonderful to share the enthusiasm of collectors, but we are unable to offer appraisal services as we would have to research those sites ourselves.

• If you have a non-commercial fan art gallery type of site, Michael Whelan may allow you to display a few images with a link back to this website. Please contact us for permission.
• To report a possible copyright infringement, please contact us. Thank you for your help!

• Michael sincerely appreciates all your enthusiasm and support and it is difficult for him to say “no” to fans, but he cannot allow any altering of his images. Every presentation of his artwork reflects on his craft and he cannot guarantee quality reproduction on any site except this one.
• If an image is taken from a book cover or other illustration, there is also the author, musician, or publisher’s copyright to consider.

Yes. Scans of full book or album covers (including title and author’s or musician’s name) or other products may be shown freely on any website, unless copyrights held by the publisher limit reproduction.

• When sharing Michael’s art, always include an attribution (Example: Art by Michael Whelan)
• Please share images from our website and social media to ensure the best image quality.
• You’ll find convenient links to share images on all of our gallery detail pages (Example: Darkness Over Hayholt)
• Provide a link back to us so others who enjoy the art can explore our galleries on the website or our posts on Instagram.

• Always caption the images including the title of the art, an attribution, and a link back to our website or the specific gallery post.  (Example: OATHBRINGER by Michael Whelan)
• Journalistic standards apply whether you are a casual blogger, a professional, or a retailer advertising upcoming titles.
• Obviously make sure to credit the author / publisher where applicable for illustrations.

I don’t think so. Although I know of people who say they’ve made a windfall off NFTs, it seems to be a hip scam for the most part. Can’t say I have much interest or incentive to try to validate my hipness by jumping—late in the game—on such a bandwagon.

Wha—? It has? I guess that was to be expected.

I don’t like it, on a gut level especially. Basically it’s electronically disguised plagiarism. For decades I’ve been made aware of art students striving to capture or duplicate my “style”—whatever the hell that would be. It seems like an electronic effort to mechanize that, using computer AI.

Can’t deny it gives me a creepy feeling.

To quote HAL 9000, “I don’t think there can be any question about it.”

An art director at Warner Books once advised me to “take the money and run” because “soon if we need a cover we’ll be able to cook one up using the computer and you guys will be out of a job.” That was in 1988.

My response was, “Well, when you can get a photo of a dragon for a book cover, I’ll start to worry about it.” I thought that was a good riposte—until I saw “Reign of Fire” and realized how CGI had already reached an amazing level of believability. But such artistry had yet to affect the visual arts in my genre.

Well, now it’s happening. Any way the corporate overlords can cut out people in the publishing chain and increase profits, they’ll do it. Of course they will. Anyone who doubts it is a fool.

Beginning with PhotoShop and painting apps, I’ve lived to see digital paintings take out an ever-increasing share of the illustration market. That trajectory will continue. And now we have AI generated composition become part of the mix.

I expect that for a period of time there will be a glut of AI-generated concept art and book illustration pieces, then things will stabilize [partly out of a sense of nostalgia perhaps] and some traditional artists will continue to be sought after. Styles change and we live in a diverse society, but things will never be quite the same.

• It would violate copyright laws to use his copyrighted image in any commercial transaction without his express permission, but Michael does allow you to have one of his images reproduced as a tattoo on your own body. Although in strict terms the tattoo artist is being paid for the service and it is a commercial transaction, Michael Whelan grants his permission on a one-time basis.
• If you have some other personal project in mind, please contact us in advance at Legal @ MichaelWhelan.com for his approval.

Again, Michael’s illustration schedule is very limited and he tends to work with high-profile artists. While he often can’t take on new commissions, rights to existing works are usually available.

Many of his album covers over the years have featured previously created images from his illustration and personal gallery work. For more information about secondary rights, see the question below.

Usually yes…but it depends on a number of factors: availability, previous use, exclusivity, etc. Please contact us for more information on rights.

For quickest response be sure to provide relevant details on the project in your initial inquiry, such as how the artwork will be used (as the cover of a book or an interior illustration?), the size of the print run (if applicable), and your budget.

We currently handle all foreign rights for Michael Whelan’s work. Please contact us and provide the details of your publication, particularly the market and the estimated size of the print run.

• A professional, well-researched proposal will include details on the product (including quantities to be printed / manufactured) and how you will market it.
• We value quality of production, so please provide samples whenever possible.
• The licensing agreement may include an upfront fee and/or a percent of royalties over time. Either way, your proposal should give us confidence that the license will be profitable for all parties involved.
• In the past, we have licensed Whelan art for journals, bookmarks, calendars, greeting cards, mugs, t-shirts and more. But please understand that not all products will fit our needs and some artwork may not be available to license.

Once you have your proposal together, please contact us through the website or via mail at:

MICHAEL WHELAN
PO BOX 88
BROOKFIELD, CT 06804

Michael spends his days painting and to be honest, that’s what all of us who love his art want him to do – make more! If you are sure that you need to contact him personally and none of his staff can help you, please click on the contact button and send another email. We will make sure he gets back to you.

We get a lot of email, but we do try very hard to reply to everyone. If you have not heard back from us in a reasonable amount of time, please try again. Your email may have been deleted as spam and we didn’t receive it.

If you have sent an email regarding an order you have placed and not received a reply, please call us at 203-798-6063.

If you have a general question, be sure to read through the FAQ’s – your question may be answered here.

Please contact us at CustomerService @ MichaelWhelan.com. Sometimes, Michael is able to email you himself or to do an interview over the phone.

The first Michael Whelan prints were produced in 1977 by a small press, but in 1979 Michael’s wife Audrey Price started Glass Onion Graphics and has been steadily publishing Whelan prints since then. Over the years there have been other publishers who have produced his prints, books, calendars, etc., but Glass Onion is still his primary publisher and also handles the sales of his reproductions via MichaelWhelan.com.

We have had an exclusive Michael Whelan website since 1996 with online ordering since 1998.

Since I was in college in the early 1970’s.

• In college I painted signs, worked on a barber’s manual, and did medical illustration for the “Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery”. I also sold cover art rights to some of my portfolio pieces to book publishers in Europe before my work was published here.
• As a science fiction/fantasy book cover artist since 1975.

There are negatives with any profession, and many of the ones in freelance illustration are due to being self-employed: no health plan, pension, etc., without spending enormous sums to cover all your bases.

• The hours are long, often not a steady income, there can be constant fighting to get paid and against rip-offs and stolen rights.
• There’s a lack of respect illustrators receive compared to “gallery” or “fine artists,” and most freelance illustrators have to be perpetually looking for new jobs.

I have been very fortunate in that once I started working for DAW, I have never been without an assignment.

• But success can bring problems too – you can do anything too much. If you accept every assignment offered, you can burn out in a surprisingly short time.
• Once you have succeeded in a particular subject or look, your clients want more of the same. A desperate boredom can set in which is death to creativity. It’s like being typecast as an actor.
• Illustration is like any other art form – there is a star system – and the top stars earn a lot more than the bottom rung names. This competition and struggle can be tough to deal with.

Yes, all those things.

• With a book cover illustration, the main source is the manuscript.
• I have thousands of photos I’ve taken in the UK of castles, abbeys, and ruins and ones from museums with armor and weapons.
• I have costume and other reference books and a lifetime of pictures I’ve cut out of magazines.
• Sometimes I pose myself in a costume in front of a mirror and occasionally I do photograph professional models, but the most fun is when someone I know fits a character so well that they are pressed into service.
• Anything else in the story is my business to invent. My job is to do it in a way that is consistent with the narrative of the story, and to make it real enough to bring the story to life. The Pern Dragons may violate known laws of physics, but it was my job to paint them as if they could fly.

I am actually not doing horror images much anymore. I feel that there’s enough horror and bloodshed in the world already that I don’t feel compelled to add to it.

The digital media are well suited to the publishing world. For art directors, it is a huge boon to be able to make changes easily in the art, to lay over type designs or to upload ready-to-print cover art.

It’s certainly the direction that the illustration field is going. Among new illustrators, I’d guess that the majority of them work digitally. It’s ideally suited to the publishing world for artists, art directors, and printers.

The fine art/gallery world is not moving as quickly that way. My guess is that art collectors still like owning a painting not a print of a digital image. But with the amazing resolution you can get today with prints on canvas, etc., who knows?

All the paintings I expect to do will still be about a “sense of wonder” and dreamlike interpretations of my experiences as a human being. I imagine that commercial applications will be found for some of it and you may see it as book or CD covers on occasion. So in that sense I will still be an illustrator.

You have to want to paint fantastic subjects and have a good imagination.

• Learn how to paint the “real,” then apply those techniques to the “unreal.”
• Learn how to draw and paint the human figure. The biggest complaint I hear from art directors is that there aren’t enough artists who are proficient at that.
• Look at the work already being done in the field you are interested in (ie.book covers, comics, gaming) and practice until you are as good as what you see.

I don’t really know. When I started more than 30 years ago the book industry was a different world. But from what I can understand, getting your work seen in the first place is the the main obstacle.

• Art directors are swamped with work and rarely have time to look at portfolios. Enter competitions like the SPECTRUM ANNUAL OF THE BEST IN CONTEMPORARY FANTASTIC ART, or THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS student competitions.
• Frame and show your work in one of the leading SF or fantasy convention art shows. It is likely to be seen by some people you’d like to show it to and you have the added benefit of seeing how your work stacks up to the competition. You may meet other newcomers and professionals and I dare say that if you display your art in these shows and you don’t win any awards or ribbons, you need to work at improving it before you seek work as a professional.

They come from all sorts of places:

• Intellectual musings sparked by events in my life or things I’ve learned in books or elsewhere.
• Images that appear in my mind at random times and places.
• Images or concepts suggested to me during dreams, waking dreams, or during meditation.

It’s important that I cultivate and maintain an open attitude to these influences, to stay as open as I can to things which may be trying to speak to me and suggest new images. It took many years for me to come to that realization. This may be what people mean when they say “talent.”

The difficult thing for me was to learn that I couldn’t do both at the same time. I found that I can’t simply turn a mental switch and hop from one modality to the other without a significant adjustment period in between. I wish it weren’t so. I wasted a lot of time figuring that out!

That’s the way my visions look to me. The symbols are used to communicate ideas and other intangibles in a sort of visual shorthand. In general, I relegate certain sets of related symbols to certain sets of paintings that are linked in concept or theme.

• For example, the “bubble” in my Passage paintings represents undying mentality, or consciousness, or “soul.”
• The Virtues paintings all contain Dactyloceras ammonite fossils as a symbol of loss and extinction.

It seems odd that it would ever be so, considering the historical record. Just think of all the famous American artists who began as illustrators: Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Remington, Parrish, Andy Warhol, to name a few.

The brands I use are primarily Liquitex and Golden. I favor the jar or ‘fluid” acrylics because they flow better and I often use glazes or watercolor wash effects in my work. In addition, I occasionally run them through an airbrush, which the tube colors are unsuitable for. I do keep some tube colors around for the very last stages of a painting, if there’s an area which calls for a particularly opaque and strongly stated layer of paint.

On occasion I use Golden Satin painting medium when I want to execute a wet-in-wet blend. Golden’s GAC 200 medium is very useful to me, as it’s the hardest medium I know of which imparts a gloss to a layer of color. Other gloss mediums can get sticky on humid days long after an acrylic painting is finished, whereas the GAC 200 stays hard and impervious to such changes. However, it’s rigidity makes it suitable only for non-flexible surfaces, so i can only use it when I’m painting on a panel or board.

I’m picky about some colors in particular. Only the Rembrandt Raw Umber, for example, has the quality and tonal richness I desire in that color.

The Daniel Smith Company keeps coming up with cool pigments to play around with, but I recently realized I have more materials than I’m likely to use in my lifetime so I’m determined to be strong and stop acquiring more.

Liquin was my medium of choice until a couple of older works of mine showed signs of delamination, which made me worry that I was using too much of it. I decided then to simplify things in the interest of safety and go back to a more traditional medium made up of linseed oil and mineral spirits.

I have a wide assortment of brushes, and their use is dictated by the effect I’m looking for. In the course of completing a painting I can employ many different kinds of brushes – as well as sponges, fabrics, pipe cleaners, pieces of cut plastic, all kinds of wacky things – whatever does the job.

75% of the time I use synthetic brushes, but often towards the end of a painting I find that nothing short of a real sable or bristle brush will do. I save them for critical detail work and places where I’m seeking a very smooth blend. Watercolor brushes have the most utility for me since much of my acrylic painting employs thin layers of paint laid down in washes of varying opacity.

I use mostly sable and hog bristle brushes, depending on the effect I am seeking, what kind of surface I’m using, and how fast I need to work. Dan Dos Santos turned me on to Utrecht synthetic sable oil paint brushes, which I find quite useful.

First off, I can’t recommend any type of airbrush “kit,” because I’m not familiar with them at all. I’ve always bought my stuff piecemeal and I don’t really know what’s available or who’s offering what.

I’ve tried all sorts of airbrushes, from top of the line Iwatas to Badgers and Paasches, double action as well as single action models, and the old reliable Paasches H series have been consistently useful. They are the easiest to clean and maintain, work best with my methods, and interrupt my work flow the least. But they have definite limitations, and a much coarser spray than other models…but then again, I am always trying to force a thicker paint fluid through them than I should be.

I’ve recently reopened my Iwata Eclipse models and have been using them for retouching and fine detail work, and man, they are amazing. Wonderfully crafted and hard working tools. On paintings that need repair work done the Iwata’s have proven to be invaluable tools, as their precision and ease of use are unmatched in my experience.

• For gessoing panels and large sheets of watercolor board, I use an Iwata W-88 spray gun. I also use it for spraying final varnish layers on my acrylic paintings.
• For large areas on my acrylic paintings (I don’t use an airbrush on oil paintings of course), I use a Paasche H series single action airbrush. I actually have two hooked up, one with the H-1 tip and nozzle and the other with an H-5 tip and nozzle. I use one or the other depending on how fine the application has to be, or how broad the surface area to be covered.
• I use a pressure ranging from 20 psi to 60 psi depending on how thick the paint is, what kind of coverage I am looking for, and whether I want any spatter effects, etc.

The terms “boards” in the illustrator/artist sense can mean anything from actual wood panels to sheets of watercolor or illustration paper mounted on heavy archival cardboard or museum board.

One of my favorite surfaces is D’Arches watercolor paper mounted on 100% rag museum mounting board. It’s a wonderful and sensitive surface to work on. The other kind of “board’ is usually understood to be some kind of composite wood surface such as Masonite. To avoid confusion I refer to these as “panels”.

My favorite is a commercially made product called Gessoboard (from Ampersandart.com). The surface is ideal for acrylic work, with almost a magical ability to keep the paint workable far longer than other surfaces I’ve tried. There’s a new set of primers from a company called “Colourfix” which I like very much because they have an extremely aggressive tooth, and sometimes I’ll coat a Gessoboard with such a primer.

I use Fredrix Polyflax or Ultrasmooth for some of my paintings on canvas. Others are done on Claessons linen, among other brands. I like to buy canvas when I can actually feel it and see the weave with my own eyes, so I don’t buy it online.

Sometimes I mount the canvas on panels because I like the rigidity of the surface as well as the creative inspiration I get from the canvas weave itself. Now that there are archival canvas panels available, I have been painting on some of those, but I make the larger ones myself.

Since most of my illustrations are on watercolor board, and the board comes in sheets of 30″ x 40,” many of my illos are in derivatives of that size. When I was just starting my career a front cover painting would run about 16″ x 20″, though many were smaller. As the years went by, however, I found my work getting larger and larger.

Also, after the first few years a greater proportion of my work was intended for wraparound cover designs, which were by their design already twice the size of what I had been doing before.

Most of my work for publication these days is 24″ x 36″ or larger, whether a front cover only or a wraparound, depending to some extent on the subject matter.

My self-commissioned or gallery works vary greatly in size. I suppose that in some ways I’m choosing sizes that are deliberately different from what I get to do in my published work. hence, many of my gallery paintings are either diminutive in size (8″ x 10″ or smaller) or quite a bit larger (4′ x 4′ or greater).

Many of the themes that seemed destined towards my gallery work have a gravity or sense of significance to them that impels me to make them large. Part of it comes from a desire to have the image encompass as much of the visual field of the viewer as possible. A larger work automatically becomes a more immersive experience for a viewer, it can’t be avoided.

I’ve seen many works –some of them ones that I did myself– that would have been much improved by being larger. Dali’s “Persistence of Memory” , for example.

It’s a great layout and sketching tool and that is primarily what I use it for. I’ve no doubt that Leonardo would have used one for just that purpose, if he could have.

I’m less excited about making final output digitally, though I have done so for some CD cover art and other purposes. I like tactile feedback, being able to run my hand over canvas or watercolor paper or whatever, the feel and smell o the paint. It’s like a symphony for me. Why would I seek to deny myself that wonderful experience?

Nonetheless, over time my computers, scanner and printer have been incorporated into my workflow in different ways. It is common for me now to go back and forth from my drawing table to the computer and then back again while composing a book cover painting, swapping or transforming elements and then revising them with traditional media until I arrive at a design that works for me. But the final rendering is almost always painted with conventional media.

Virtually all modern illustrations are “digital” now by the time they arrive at the art director’s office; at some point an image becomes a digital file for publication. It’s just a matter of personal convenience or preference at which point the artist decides to go digital. For me –usually– that point is at the end of the process.

My primary studio machine is an iMac which is in it’s own room with a large format scanner and printer.

I use a MacBook Pro upstairs in my main studio. I’ll dump scans of reference photos and sketches into a slide show which I’ll keep running as a background resource while I’m working. I can easily carry it into whatever room I happen to be working in at the time, and helps to diminish the clutter in my work space [ha!].

I do both, though I most often work from my imagination. Being human, however, I can’t retain everything, so there are times when I feel the need to supplement my mental image of an element or pose with more information. That can come from my own photos, outdoor sketches, or scrap file images I’ve saved and filed away, or images downloaded online.

For figures, if I’m having difficulty visualizing a pose I can pose myself or a model and work directly from life. (I have some big mirrors mounted in my larger studio room so it’s fairly easy for me to pose myself in the general attitude of the figure I need and work from that.) At other times I’ll photograph myself using a remote and dump the shots into iPhoto, run them in a slideshow on my laptop and work from those.

When I use photos, I look at several to get the gist of the light effect or manner in which the folds of the fabric are moving and then extrapolate and make up my own figure based on what I’ve learned. This is quite a bit different from tracing and/or trying to copy a photo, which rarely works. Photos can lie, but they do capture information about details. What you decide to do with them is part of what makes up your “style.” Painting from life can be part of the process, but I am more likely to work from a model in my studio for my personal work than for an illustration.

I’ve done a bare handful of paintings outdoors. Most of my work is painted in the studio using recollections form experiences outside. If I see a particularly compelling cloud or light effect during one of my excursions outdoors I’ll try to document it in acrylics on a small panel or card, usually about 5″ x 7″, and I’ll use these references at times.

I always use a palette, unless you consider the layering of different colors on a surface “mixing”.

When I’m painting it’s a constant process of alteration and refinement. At first I endeavor to get as close an approximation of what I’m seeking as possible. Then, there are repeated adjustments made to fine tune things to work in a way that feels best to me. In addition to correcting drawing errors or whatever, colors are either replaced or adjusted by alternate applications of opaque, semi-opaque, or transparent glazes, as the need arises, until the painting looks finished enough to me.

It would be far easier for me if I could nail the exact right color from the start (painting more like Greg Manchess, for example) but alas it’s not in my makeup to be able to work that way.

Acrylics can be painted all kinds of ways: thickly with bristle brushes as if they were oils, or thinly as with watercolors… and every way in between. That’s a primary reason why I prefer to use them; that freedom is liberating.

Generally, I tend to paint from background to foreground. That allows me to use wet-on-wet washes and freehand airbrush work for the sky and distant objects. For the foreground, I use a variety of techniques to blend light to dark passages.

When I started—and up until the late 90s—I totally avoided using “retarders” or blending mediums, relying on aqueous watercolor blending techniques to complete my paintings. This is because I’ve usually been in a hurry to get the painting done, and waiting for paint mixed with a glazing medium to dry really was a drag on my process.

Also, I do a LOT of over painting [going over certain areas with several passes to build up transitions, etc] and under layers painted with retarder or glazing mediums always “melt” when brushed over with another layer, so I never used them. These days, however, I’ve become more open minded and experimental about using them and I’ve come to see how they can help.

But for the most part, it comes down to one or more of three favored techniques:

• Using one or many washes of color, either going from one color to another in a single pass, or painting the darks in first [preferably with a transparent pigment] then using successful washes of a lighter color, being careful to keep the terminator edges blending into the dark with your brush, before it dries. I find sable brushes [or their synthetic equivalent] to be indispensable for this approach.
• Painting an area with thin color and blending it by using a round sable brush that is flattened to make it sort of fan out. Then it can be used in a sort of crosshatching effect, going from more color to less as you work the brush towards the area where you want it to fade completely. Again, sable brushes are the only ones that seem to spread out in a way that allows this technique to work. The flexibility and thinness of the hairs are also a critical factor here. Unfortunately this technique is very hard on the brushes and they don’t last very long if you do a lot of painting this way.
• Lastly, one can use an airbrush. I don’t need to go into how to use one of these, because there are probably dozens of YouTube videos covering that. Personally, I hate using an airbrush for anything in the foreground, so I only use one of most basic models out there: the Paasche H series single action airbrush. This keeps me from being tempted to use it for painting anything small or heavily detailed, like a face or whatever.

I suppose the answer to blending acrylics hinges on how you are using them.

Most of the big skies and unblemished surface areas are done with washes or airbrush gradations. [I love how I can lay successive acrylic washes over one another without messing up the underlying color application.] Many of my larger skies and similar areas are created by laying many different colored washes one on top of the other, continually adjusting and fine tuning the colors and values as I go. But the same approach can be used to create smooth transitions on smaller areas— from light to dark on a figure’s arms and legs or whatever.

When working with opaque paint, one is compelled to employ other means. Generally, what I do is premix my color/value ranges for what I’m painting and blend the areas from one transition to another as I go. If one edge looks too sharp then I’ll mix the adjacent colors to make one that is between the two and use it to smooth the blend.

Whenever possible I’ll use a flat or angled brush with the colors already laid on my palette and paint the blend light to dark in one stroke.

There are too many variables involved from one project to another to realistically convey how I do it.

I tailor my technique—the handling of the paint—to the project at hand.  Factors such as the size of the painting, the size and lighting on the figures and faces, the color scheme, the composition, and whether or not parts of the painting will be opaque or transparent, what kind of surface I’ve chosen to work on—these all influence how I’m going to get a painting done.

Then there’s one last element: my subjective state at the time; my mood, in other words. How can I objectify why some images “feel” to me more like oil paintings instead of acrylics? It’s a mystery to me, so there’s no way I can do a procedural essay on that.