In the midst of recent discussions of Fantasy art, I saw a comment or two about the paucity of people of color depicted on the covers and in the pages of prominent genre magazines. It’s true that I often see more white faces than not, and I suspect that the artists themselves are often not POC (though one major exception is Frank Wu, a Hugo award-winning artist of fabulousness).
In order to provide a helpful guide for those interested in expanding their horizons when it comes to art and artists, I invite readers to post links to the portfolios of their favorite POC artists in the comments. It’s okay if you want to link to your own work as well! At the end of this week I’ll pick some to feature in a post. And, of course, I’ll add the names and links to the CBS wiki.
I’ll start off by pointing to one of my very favorite artists: Sanjana Baijnath. If you ever visited Fantasy Magazine in the first year after our redesign and saw the fairy girl on the header, you’ve seen Sanjana’s work.
I showed you mine, now show me yours…
One of my very favorite POC artists is Ahyicodae (Ahyicodae.com). She did the cover for my short story collection, Returning My Sister’s Face, as well as the cover for Vera Nazarian’s Salt of the Air collection and the forthcoming Sky Whales anthology.
Hi there,
I find a lot of Filipino artists over at deviantart–many don’t have their own sites, but still do very high quality work.
I’ve made lists of my favorites in 2 posts (http://bit.ly/enCco) and (http://bit.ly/aDVNT) but I didn’t limit myself strictly to SFF art for those. Here are some who I’m sure do SFF art:
Kevin Lapeña – http://scarypet.deviantart.com/ and http://scarypet.carbonmade.com/
Honoel A. Ibardolaza (Hai) – http://bymoonalone.com/ and http://homanga.deviantart.com/
Chester Ocampo – http://www.chesterocampo.net/
And if you don’t mind your SFF art with a side-order of cute and Disney, Dado de Guzman and the Artspice people do good work – http://artspice.blogspot.com/
There are millions over at DeviantART. A couple from my watch list–
Shawna Mills
Seung Kim
Khary Randolph
Sean Galloway
Dustin Nguyen
Admira Wijaya
Peter V. Nguyen
Francis Manapul
Leinil Yu
Jeffrey Cruz
Niccolo Balce
“Cuson”
Jose Johann Jaro
Tien Hee
Paul Davey
Several of these I found through their work in comics or animation, so I hopee you’re also looking for that type of SF. Sorry for only linking to their DeviantART galleries – I had way too many tabs open as it was.
Hope this helps!
There is also the wonderful Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, and one of my favorites–Kinuko Craft.
Oh goodness, anonymous beat me to Kinuko Craft, one of my favorites.
I see that the CBS Wiki has a listing for Leo and Diane Dillon, who are a biracial couple (he’s African American, she”s white) who are famous both for classic SF covers and children’s books.
Fun thread. Lots of new authors to check out! I’m a little surprised Octavia Butler hasn’t come up yet. Nalo Hopkinson is another favorite.
Is Jody Lee a woman of colour? By her name she could be Asian but doing a search I couldn’t find out for sure. She illustrated my copies of the Prydain chronicles and her vision of the characters will always stick in my mind. I love her use of bright colour.
A great women of color author is Andrea Hairston–she publishes from small presses and isn’t very well known, but her work is fabulous.
One of my favourite artists is Kara Walker.
There is also the ormes society.
http://theormessociety.com/
has a list of black women artists & writers.
I’m probably too late, but I’ll post this anyway.
I just put up my blog and posted a few of my sketches for a graphic novel featuring a heroine of color, but in the coming weeks I’ll have more up. My blog contains info on Zuda Comics, which features graphic novels like “High Moon” and the awesome “Bayou” and “Deadly” at http://www.zudacomics.com.
All three comics I mentioned have minority protagonists and the comics are free to view. Please note that Bayou took five awards at this year’s 8th Annual East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC). Bayou won the 2009 Glyph Awards for Story of the Year, Best Writer, Best Artist, Best Female Character, and Best Comic Strip.
My blog is http://mythicagirl.livejournal.com/
Many Thanks.
Ming Doyle is a comics artist and illustrator.
http://users.livejournal.com/_ming/
http://www.mingdoyle.com/
http://www.mingdoyle.com/illust/index.html