Fantastic art by John Jude Palencar

December 25, 2008 6:04 PM

Just some cool dark fantasy art by John Jude Palencar, including covers for Lovecraft, de Lint, Tolkien and other popular books.
posted by mediareport (11 comments total)

JUST?
posted by baphomet at 6:27 PM on December 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

I actually prefer some of the other lovecraft covers to the one in the Lovecraft link - they've got a faintly disturbing abstract floaty feeling to them that suits Lovecraft well.
posted by Artw at 6:54 PM on December 25, 2008

I love JJP. My favorite fantasy cover of all time is this one: Black Sun Rising. It's by Michael Whelan. I never thought I'd see better. I still prefer his Lovecraft stuff to JJP's. Then came along Brom. It's now a bit harder for me to figure out who my favorite cover artists is, but these are my top 3 for sure.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:02 PM on December 25, 2008

de Lint? Really? Pocket or bellybutton?
posted by Eideteker at 9:36 PM on December 25, 2008

Finally, I find out who created one of my favourite paperback covers of all time: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.

Brilliant!
posted by Katemonkey at 4:57 AM on December 26, 2008

JJP has become the ubiquitous in SF covers. Grab any random 10 books of the self and you probably have 2 JJP covers.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:10 AM on December 26, 2008

OK, this may be blasphemy for saying this but I don't care: I hate his Lovecraft covers. He has a nice, fluid style but I find his images misleading about the stories themselves. I never have pictured soft creatures with half their face in one of Lovecraft's stories. My wife bought me a collection that didn't have any of his art work on it and I prefer than many times more...and it's unabridged.
posted by Chocomog at 7:57 AM on December 26, 2008

Heh. Well I grew up with Tim White's covers being THE Lovecraft covers, make of that what you will.
posted by Artw at 9:25 AM on December 26, 2008

Paper Tiger
posted by infini at 10:41 AM on December 26, 2008

Here's my favourite bit of Lovecraftian Tim White from that period - I've often felt that White's work has become a little overlooked, but his work (particularly for the Panther SF imprint) sometimes had a rare humour and a quite startling approach.
posted by specialbrew at 5:37 PM on December 27, 2008

Oh man I wish I'd seen this while the thread was still active! JJP was one of the people in my early life that really had a profound impact on me. I stumbled across HP Lovecraft at a very young age and was completely absorbed by the artwork on them. A long time ago I found two of my old books and decided to hunt down information on him, but at the time there wasn't anything available that I could find on the Internet.
Good to know he's still producing artwork! He's almost more Giger than Giger himself, and some of his more surreal pieces remind me of Bosch, but actually done well.
posted by GoingToShopping at 6:42 AM on December 28, 2008