Stephen Youll

Stephen Youll: I actually left university with a degree in visual information design, which is technical illustration and advertising illustration. And I was primarily airbrushing and painting in acrylic, because I knew in science fiction it glows.  

I grew up with the artwork of the Seventies: Michael Whelan, Boris (Vallejo), Tim White, Chris Foss. Those are my childhood heroes in terms of book cover illustrators. When you look at that, that's professional work. You've got to be as good as them, so you might as well be using similar techniques to get certain effects, because they're quick. Book covers have to be put out so fast sometimes. 

Crescent Blues: In three days, for example… 

Stephen Youll: [Laughs.] Yeah. Though I've learned a lot since my acrylic/airbrush days to this time period. Then I started looking at Old Masters and learning about people I really never knew existed, because I had such a different background. I was learning about guys who were great architects and great car designers. 

That was all sort of non-constructive for me as an artist, because I love painting figures. I had to relearn so much after leaving university that I took several years and pretty much retrained myself. After that was when I started pursuing a career in science fiction, because this was what I always wanted to do. 

This was not something that happened accidentally. It was something that I pursued. It was a boyhood dream to become a book cover illustrator, a science fiction illustrator. It's something that I love and respect. It's a real, major art form in this part of the century, and I'm sure in a couple of hundred years' time it will be looked back upon as a very important art form. 

But I took a few years off and did a lot of paintings of science fiction covers. I did that by going out to the book store -- and this is for anybody who wants to do this and want get into book jackets. Buy some books that you like, read them and illustrate them as you think they should be illustrated. That way it looks like you are a professional and that you know what you're doing -- if you do a good job, of course. 

Then I sent those paintings to an exhibition… Oh God, it's going back over 13 years now, something like that. 

Crescent Blues: Was it harder being in England pursuing your goal of being a science fiction artist? 

Stephen Youll: Well, it's easier being over here in America. There's a lot more opportunity. 

Crescent Blues: I mean, when you were starting out. 

Stephen Youll: Oh! You mean when I was living there. No, not at all. I pretty much got discovered with my twin brother (Paul Youll) at the first science fiction convention that I went to. And the editor, which was Lou Aronica of Bantam Books at the time, he liked the work, and he wanted me to send my art portfolio to the art director. And I had no portfolio. Those paintings that were hanging there were all I had. I had no transparencies, no slides -- absolutely nothing. 

And I was completely bluffing my way with the art director saying, "Oh yeah, I can get this for you. I can get slides." And I never had anything. I thought, "Oh my God, I've got to go out and get slides now." And I never even had a camera. I was completely green as grass, but I never let on, and the art director said -- Incidentally, it's very ironic that I ended up marrying her ten years later. It's very much like fate. 

[Jamie] said she had no clue I wasn't a professional artist. And I was so nervous on the telephone when I called her. But she said I bowled her over with my British accent. 

Crescent Blues: Which part of England are you from? 

Stephen Youll: The north part of England, actually. Near a town called Durham.  

Crescent Blues: The cathedral at Durham. 

Stephen Youll: I used to work there. 

Crescent Blues: You did architectural renderings for them, didn't you? 

Stephen Youll: I used to do reconstruction work of artifacts: wooden friezes, organs, portraits of famous people who were important in the church, who discovered things. You know a lot of priests were doctors.  

Crescent Blues: Were you working from damaged objects to help aid in the restoration? 

Stephen Youll: Not to aid in restoring them, but to illustrate how they would've looked when they were new, so people could see. [If I had] here a part of a wooden frieze that was really damaged, I had to visually redo it so that it was perfect, so they could see it. That was actually, really interesting stuff. 

Crescent Blues: How does that relate to the visualization skills that you need for drawing science fiction or fantasy art? 

Stephen Youll: For certain areas in certain paintings I've actually gone back to when I worked in the cathedral and gone into the cathedral, which is an enormous building, and I deliberately based [elements] on the structure of a cathedral. I've gotten a lot from it, like painting Celtic runes, stone, door knockers -- stuff like that. I think it definitely aids. 

Anything you do in art, you take something from anything you've ever done, whatever it was, and you apply it to what you're doing now. You can't help do that. You cannot be wholly unaffected by your experiences. 

Crescent Blues: Does your brother Paul share your goals in terms of science fiction illustration? 

Stephen Youll: Very much so. He's just as fanatical as I am. 

Crescent Blues: What was it like to work in tandem? That concept just boggles my mind. 

Stephen Youll: You know it was actually very fun, because I always had somebody to rely on that was doing a part of the painting that he was good at, while I was doing my part. It would get done faster. We had this sort of kindred spirit where we knew each other's thoughts completely. 

We once did a painting for a Robert Silverberg book, and my brother was starting on one part of the ship and I was starting on the front part, and we met right in the middle. We had different palettes with the same colors in them, but the color was perfectly matched, and even the wood grain met up in the middle. And we weren't even doing anything consciously, except Paul was doing his part and I was doing mine. 

We're both real Gemini twins too, so that's double jeopardy there. But we just knew exactly what the other one thought and wanted it to look like.  

He was actually much more into details at the time than I was. He would paint tiny cities with colossal amounts of detail in them, and I was doing a lot more figurative work. 

Crescent Blues: Did you go through the same course of study? 

Stephen Youll: I studied technical illustration, and he studied natural history illustration with the feeling that we were both going to use it in our work, because we did intend to paint together. And it was only after I met my wife that we actually split up. I moved over here, and he stayed in England. 

He studied animals and landscapes and painting trees, which he's much better at than I am. 

Crescent Blues: So while you were retraining yourself to do figures, Paul was off retraining himself to do machines? 

Stephen Youll: He was doing the natural history stuff. I was doing the technical stuff. Ironically, he's turned out to be better at doing the technical thing than I am, while I'm better at the other. 

Crescent Blues: That's what I'm thinking. 

Stephen Youll: It's bizarre. What he studied, he sort of left behind. And what I studied -- we just switched when we got to our book jackets. 

Crescent Blues: You mentioned earlier that you started out doing airbrush and acrylic. Do they remain your favorite techniques? 

Stephen Youll: No. I stopped painting in acrylics about five years ago and switched to oil paint completely. I was painting acrylic paintings like an oil painter painted them anyway. I just had the belief that it was so much faster to paint in acrylics, because it dried instantly. But there are some wonderful techniques that I learned with airbrushing -- glazing over the top, one color under another -- that I still look back on fondly and miss with being an oil painter.  

But I just retrained myself completely to paint in oils. And I found that it was faster to paint in oils than acrylics -- in fact, twice as fast. 

Crescent Blues: More margin for error? 

Stephen Youll: There is, that's true. But you can also wipe off what you don't like and redo. But you can also glaze the same way, and I have techniques for getting the oil paint to dry, using mediums that dry faster. 

But there are certain things that just paint themselves -- that's the easiest way to explain it. It's more forgiving a medium, to start with. And I enjoy it more. It feels more free. It feels more artistic, though I never say that the paint makes the artist. The artist makes the image. But it feels more traditional. I love the smell of linseed oil and oil paint. I really do. 

Crescent Blues: You were in the cathedral too long. [Grins.] 

Stephen Youll: Maybe that's true. I'm sort of steeped in tradition now. But I still love some of the air brush paintings that I did: my I, Robot painting, my Caves of Steel painting for Isaac Asimov. And I look back at them, and I wonder how I actually managed to do them in acrylic. I've forgotten those acrylic painting techniques and how to blend it like oil paint.  

But I can do it faster in oil paint now, much faster. Before it could take me three or four days to paint a full figure. Now it could take me a day to a day and a half. 

Crescent Blues: I was noticing you have that small oil sketch of the cover for Game of Thrones in your booth, and it's almost identical to the finished book cover. 

Stephen Youll: Yeah, the oil study. I usually do little studies. If I'm feeling stumped about what I want or if I have time. Sometimes, I just don't have time, and I have to just bull into a painting completely oblivious to what it's going to look like. But I always trust my instincts. I think an artist has some kind of instinct or sense inside him that at the end of the day, it will come right. And even if you doubt yourself the whole way, it always does. I always doubt myself in every painting, but it always comes right in the end somehow. 

Crescent Blues: That's really good. I think you don't become an artist unless you have an eye for certain types of spatial relationships, and that will save you more times than not. 

Stephen Youll: Absolutely, it's true. But I like doing the little color studies to sell to people. I sell them very cheap. I do sometimes go back and paint on top of them to put more work in, so [the buyers] have a nicer painting, because most people can't afford the big ones, and I have a hard time selling them anyway. So this way people get to see the small reproductions, and sometimes I like the small ones better than the bigger ones. I've done that a few times. Sometimes I haven't wanted to sell the small ones; I would like to just hang this one in my studio. But I thought, "I painted it for somebody. I'd love somebody to have this." And when they appreciate it -- that's good. 

Crescent Blues: Are there any authors you'd particularly like to illustrate? 

Stephen Youll - Continued