I have been absolutely obsessed with the art of Ian Miller since I was 8 or 9 years old. I first saw his elaborate, intensely detailed pen and ink drawings in my father's paperback copy of Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead and was instantly hooked. That edition contains a number of stunning full page illustrations, but what I loved even more than that were the chapter headers Ian designed for the entire novel. Here is just one of them...
Just magnificent. Ian's work really seems to defy easy description. Fortunately, there are two long out of print collections of his drawings which can be found for relatively reasonable prices, Green Dog Trumpet and Ian Miller's Secret Art. Both were from the now-defunct Paper Tiger / Dragon's Dream publishing house, and both were released some time in the late 1970s. Anyway, I am rambling.
Ian has been selling some of his original pieces and while I would love to buy every single one, I am not a rich man. However, two of his original drawings caught my eye and I wanted them very badly. I saved and saved, sold some of my own art, and then had enough to finally acquire them. The package Ian sent was quite a bit of fun to open, and here is how that all went. First, the box itself, fresh from the Royal Mail of the United Kingdom...
I tore into it pretty quickly, very excited to see the contents. This is what greeted me...
And I thought that I packed art well! "Please remove tape to access." Awesome. I removed the tape as fast as I could and came to the first layer of treasures. A lovely note from Ian and a few very high quality prints of three of his older drawings...
After taking those out, I came to this clever little foam core contraption with further instructions. I love this!
Removing the hatch cover did not, as was indicated, lead to an ornamental lake at all, but to two drawings carefully nestled within...
This was it. This was the moment I had been eagerly awaiting for literally months. The drawings I had coveted were finally here!
And here are better images of each, from Ian's own site. Their titles are Berserker Machine 1 and Berserker Machine 2, each pen and ink on watercolor paper, and each from 1970. These drawings are only one year younger than I am.
These pieces are just stunning. The precision of the pen and ink work boggles the mind. And here, even 42 years later, the ink is a deep rich midnight black. The watercolor paper has slowly begun to show a few signs of age which, to me, make the pieces even more exquisite. These are absolute treasures to me, and in a strange way, I would never have been able to hang these on my wall without having embarked on my Moby-Dick illustration project almost 3 years ago, creating a book, and selling my own art. These drawings from Ian were not at all inexpensive, although they are certainly worth every penny I paid and then some. This has all been wonderful in so many ways. Happy birthday to me!
I will post some additional pictures once these are framed and hanging. I want to do something very special for each one.
12 comments:
That was a fun post, Matt. And the drawings are terrific. Thanks for sharing! I recently posted scans of a couple of Ray Bradbury novels with uncredited Miller cover art over at RCN. Powerful stuff!
RC
Thank you RC, it was great fun to write and to share some of my excitement about the art. The drawings are just gorgeous. I will take a look at your post and certainly link to it soon. I'll also have my post about the collage up tomorrow some time, so look for it then.
I wish I had the energy and ambition to research and write proper articles for RCN. More often than not, however, my blog is a whole lot of show and very little tell. Your blog strikes a much better balance, I think. And it's definitely a lot more personal than RCN. Which is a good thing!
Anyway... I'm definitely looking forward to reading your post about the collage. Thanks for the heads up!
RC
That's exceptionally kind of you, RC. I often feel like my posts are rather scattered and rambling, and I generally feel much more comfortable communicating visually instead. I'm relieved the results of my efforts are a bit more coherent than I might have imagined.
The personal aspect happened almost by accident. The entire "Moby-Dick" illustration was such a deeply and intensely personal endeavor that there was really no way I could put any real distance between myself and those posts. Ultimately, while this entire thing has made me more visible and accessible and considerably less private than I am used to, most people have treated me with kindness and friendship and for that I am grateful.
Congrats on your new art purchase, Matt. Ian Miller was one of the few artists that I became aware of when I was in my heavy fantasy/science fiction reading phase in my teens. I have the Bantam edition of Ray Bradbury's The Golden Apples of the Sun with the awesome Ian Miller cover. If I remember correctly, he even did a cover or two for DC's Swamp Thing, back in the day.
hello matt - long time, it seems. just want to add a pedestrian tho heartfelt happy birthday. cheers. lizzy
Dara, I had no idea Miller had contributed those Swamp Thing covers. I just checked them out online and they are incredible! A great fit for the book as well. Whichever editor at DC came up with that idea has real vision.
Miller's done quite a few really amazing paperback covers. It's strange to see him on Bradbury, although I love what he did. I am so used to just automatically associating Mugnaini's art with Bradbury that Miller almost came as a shock.
Lizzy, thank you! And I just got a package from you as well, sitting at my right elbow and as yet unopened. It seems I owe you an even longer (yet still gestating) email.
Thanks for sharing! And maybe I'm just a big design nerd, but the showing of the way the artwork was packaged was really informative. I've never really thought of best practices for mailing art before.
Nonsense on the "design nerd" thing, this entire package was a joy. I've shipped out a lot of art and what I usually do is slide it into a comic book bag & board arrangement, then carefully but lightly tape that down to a piece of chipboard, then sandwich that entire thing between several other pieces of chipboard. Then I take that whole jam and slide it into a postal service box and pad the whole thing with crumpled paper. It seems to work well but I'm sure it's not nearly as exciting to open. Ian made this entire process a dream.
Then again, I paid considerably more for these two drawings than the price of anything I have ever sold, so perhaps the labor he put into packing it up was a proper part of the whole thing. Still, it worked incredibly well, and that box really would have to have been submerged or completely run over by a monstrously heavy truck to damage the art.
this reminds me of old time letter writing, with delay effect... didn't say the whole process of your reception of that b'day gift to self, the packaging/unwrapping and all was a treat in itself. you'll tell me some day about my - rather modest - packet. cheers lizzy
I am still very fond of the delay with snail mail. Unfortunately that seems to have crept in to my electronic mailing as well. I spend so much time on the computer all day for my job I tend to dread using it in my free time. Still...
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