Year: 1997
Publisher: Friedlander
ISBN: 188756912X
Content: 128 pages with colour illustrations
Quite a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far... no, wait, that was something else...) a few people thought, it could be a great idea to print science fiction, fantasy and comicbook artwork on tiiiiny little cards, and sell them to a lot of other people, who even might be interested in trading them. Just like sports cards, only with better pictures :)
Whatever your opinion on the trading card business might be - I am quite gratefull for it because it gave me a few nice little keepsake collections (kind of mini portfolios) and above all, artbooks I would have surely missed otherwise, like the ones from Ken Kelly, or, you´ve guessed it, Darrell K. Sweet. I first saw some of his paintings in the exquisite, fantastic art collection by Ian Summers, "Tomorrow and Beyond" and very much liked his art, his almost fairytale-like approach to typical fantasy and science fiction subjects.
This art collection brings together for the first time the best of his body of work in the field. Foreword is by Piers Anthony, since his Shannara-books has been illustrated through basically decades by Sweet.
Sadly, Darrell left us in 2011, but his images live on. You can see more of his art (not only SF/Fantasy, but also his quite famous Western art) on this webpage.
Piers Anthony wrote the Xanth books, illustrated by DKS. The Shannara books are written by Terry Brooks.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Absolutely true - my memory did not serve me well :)
ReplyDeleteIndeed, DKS illustrated both series, Xanth (hence the PA foreword) AND Shannara.