This episode explores the creative world of art, illustration, and book design with Lucy A. Sink, an experienced artist known for her work with publishers and convention exhibitions. Lucy shares behind-the-scenes insights into designing book covers, the creative challenges illustrators and authors sometimes face, and the inspiration behind her modern Americana series celebrating diversity and everyday American life.

Mentioned This Episode:

Website: Lucy Synk Fantasy Art

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Lansing Community College Library

Takeaways:

• The podcast discusses the intricate relationship between illustrators and publishers in the book industry, highlighting how communication is often limited during the cover design process.
• Listeners will gain insights into the significance of art in literature, particularly how illustrations can shape a reader's expectations and experiences.
• The episode features an exploration of various artistic mediums, including traditional painting and modern digital techniques used to create compelling book covers and illustrations.
• The guest shares her journey into the art world, including her experiences at conventions and the evolution of her artistic style through collaboration with other artists.
• Insights are provided into the challenges and rewards of working on large-scale projects, such as murals for museums, emphasizing the detailed planning and execution required.
• The discussion includes reflections on the changing landscape of the art industry, particularly in relation to conventions and the commercialization of artistic spaces.

You are listening to Written in the Stars: Books and Beyond, where hosts from the LCC Library sit down with writers, publishers, entrepreneurs and literary enthusiasts of all types. Join us, as we explore the very heart of the written word.

Hello and welcome to Written in the Stars. My name is John Szilagyi. With me today is my co host, Amy Ewald.

Hi, everybody.

Today we are talking about art, illustrations and book design. Our guest is Lucy Synk.

Hello.

Hi. Lucy is an artist with extensive experience who has worked as an artist for large companies and as a freelance artist.

She has exhibited work at galleries, at science fiction conventions, at Renaissance fairs and art fairs, kind of all across the country. She published illustrations and book covers in the US And Europe.

In addition to her art, she also completed a master's degree in theology from Loyola University in New Orleans, using it to explore her interest in science and faith, feminine spirituality and fantasy, sci fi as modern myth. So thank you for being here, Lucy.

Hi. Happy to be here.

So our podcast kind of really focusing on books. We were going to jump right into talking about kind of your work on books. So what is it like, especially illustrating a book cover?

It can be a very varied experience. In most of my career I was working with publishers and it's kind of funny. They don't want you to communicate with the author much.

From the publisher's point of view, the book cover is an advertisement. So you don't. They don't encourage you to read much of the book. That can cause problems.

If you ever talk to authors about this, you find out, oh, that doesn't look anything like my character. Or you gave away the whole surprise ending of the book.

That didn't happen to me personally, but I talked with Andre Norton once and she worked very hard on a surprise ending, only to have it revealed.

Through the COVID through the book.

Maybe you don't know this, but in that case, did the illustrator just guess what was going to happen or did they have too much knowledge?

The publisher probably gave them a specific scene that the publisher thought would make a good cover, irregardless of what the author might have wanted to do.

So was that the kind of direction that you got from the publisher if they'd give you a specific scene or.

Some little information for commissioned work, very often, if we are lucky, we might be able to read the book ahead of time. Many of my book covers, actually the publisher liked a piece I had already done that was inspired by the genre. I mentioned Andre Norton already.

She inspired me to do and many other authors, a series of female wizards doing magic different Portraits of these fantasy characters.

So when Tor books saw one of my illustrations, one of my original paintings, they thought it would be perfect for an anthology of Andrea Norton books called Wizards Worlds, which were all about female wizards. So I really lucked out. I just got paid the licensing fee and I didn't have to deal with grind of.

Developing something from scratch. Right?

Yes.

I've actually done several short story illustrations for magazines, especially Aboriginal Science Fiction, where I did get to read the short story and then they had me do like two or three color illustrations throughout the magazine for it. That's cool. So I worked with a little art direction there.

I had one particular instance where I did not like the characters in the story and they all died at the end and they deserved what they got.

So I ended up focusing on their abilities and making almost a surrealistic image, which was really worked out because I got an agent that showed my work to European publishers, non English speaking publishers, and one of them loved one of the illustrations and put it on the COVID An anthology of super horror. I don't do horror, but. And I can't read the book because it's in German.

So what do you do in that situation? Do you just.

Well, they give me a copy of the COVID and it goes in my resume and I take my check and cash it.

So you mentioned kind of, I don't know if you would call it a sub genre, that of aboriginal fantasy or sci fi. What does that kind of entail and what is that I guess kind of about?

Well, that was a specific name of the specific magazine.

Okay.

And I think their ideas, the aboriginals would be the natives of different planets.

Okay.

So from their point of view, they're the main character.

Okay. That was very different than what I was seeing in my. In my head for a title of that. So that. That is good to know.

The next question I kind of have is obviously we've been talking a lot about sci fi and fantasy so far, and that was like a lot of your illustrations are part of that. So what kind of drew you to create sci fi and fantasy art?

When I was 12, Star Trek came out. Boy, am I dating myself. I got an instant crush on Mr. Spock. I was living in White Cloud, Michigan at the time, a very small town.

I think I read every single science fiction book there. Library had. I just fell in love with science fiction.

And then my senior year, the newspaper came out with a double spread about Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings. It was an anniversary. So that got me into fantasy.

And when I really Got going on my career, it was in the 80s, which we now look back on as the golden age of the science fiction convention. And I had gotten a job at Hallmark Cards, but I just doing production art, very technical work that needs a very fine hand, but boring is all.

Get out.

And when I realized I might be able to make a living doing what I loved, doing, science fiction art, I said goodbye to corporate life and started freelancing.

So did you just kind of draw on your own then and have your own sketchbooks or.

Oh, yes.

What's your process for that?

Well, I've been drawing my whole life painting, and I've actually taken classes with individual artists for portraiture and still life to increase my skills, which I then applied to doing illustration work. Growing up in Michigan, I didn't have a chance to get the kind of education you might have in New York or someplace like that.

But I adapted all the little bits and pieces of my education and experience and put them together. One of the key parts for my career in Kansas City was that we had one of the largest Renaissance festivals.

And through the clubs and through the Renaissance festivals, I had many, many friends who wore costumes. I would invite them to my home where I'd set up a little photography studio.

I also had experience in photography and they would wear their costumes and I would pose them. And indeed that was like where my Women Wizards series came from. Were women wearing costumes, posing for me.

I had a whole setup and then I would use the photography as a reference and sketch it all out and add fantasy elements.

Wow, that's really interesting. You mentioned your education in that and I did see on your website that you had attended some different community colleges.

Yes.

As a community college chair at lcc, tell us a little bit about your experience with, you know, lcc. In fact, you even mentioned earlier that you had attended.

So tell us a little bit about your experience specifically with community colleges and then your kind of your development as an artist.

Well, I love community colleges.

After my experience as a four year degree, which I loved, but which was not practical in any way, I love that you can, for much more affordable tuition, get very practical learning at a community college that can actually be used for your career. And so Lansing Community college combined with my fine arts experience landed me the job at Hallmark Cards.

And then later on, much later on, I wanted to get into Photoshop and some of the newer things. I realized that was the, the direction that the whole industry is going in.

So again, I attended community colleges where I was living, one in Champaign, Illinois, another In Grand Rapids, I moved a lot.

I don't know if I made it back to LCC or not, but on those occasions, I was focusing on Photoshop Illustrator and checking out other things to see if they were a possibility. I even got my toes wet trying some animation, but that was a little over my head.

And I came to realize that I couldn't compete with young people who grew up with computers. But I now look on Photoshop as another medium. I love oils, I love acrylics, and I love Photoshop.

And it's a great tool now doing illustrations where I can combine elements from paintings I've already done to create a whole new image that will be good for a book cover.

That's so cool. It's like you never quit, really learning, right? And experimenting.

I love learning and experimenting.

Yeah. And growing, right. When we learn, we grow and we learn new things.

And that's really cool.

How did you kind of get involved in going to conventions?

Well, my very first two conventions were some of the first Star Trek conventions.

Okay.

I rode the bus with my schoolmates from Siena Heights to a convention in downtown Detroit where I met Chekhov.

Sulu.

And I had little drawings. I did a pen and ink of the characters and they sold and I got the bug. But then it was quite a while before I found another one.

And at another community college when I moved to Kansas City, one of the largest suburbs is Johnson county, and they have a community college and they sponsored a literary science fiction convention where I got to meet authors and I exhibited my art and it sold. And then I went to other conventions regionally and belonged to a science fiction club.

So we were all checking all this stuff out and realized I could do this full time.

Ooh. The one that really stood out to me is you mentioned worldcon when it was in Chicago and you were able to display there.

And the reason I know about that is because of the Hugo Awards, which is book awards for sci fi. What was it like being able to be at that convention and to have your art there at that convention?

It's amazing. A little overwhelming. I was very fortunate. Some of the golden age illustrators.

Frank Kelly Fries is a very well known illustrator from the golden age. And he was great about giving advice to young, starting up illustrators. And we'd yank them all over the art show to come critique our Work.

So I got to meet big names, Frank Frazetta and a few other ones.

But so my follow up question would be, what advice was he able to give and was there anything you would pass along to our listeners and other folks that he told you.

Oh, it's been a while. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, Understandable.

I think of something specific that also. That the industry has changed so much.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's not so much like the sci fi conventions anymore as it's more of the Comic. Comic Con.

Comic Con, yeah. All the conventions. Very few of them are still run by fans. They're for profit now. I can't even afford to attend them like I used to.

It's changed so much.

Right. Do you have to have, like, pay some type of fee to have a table?

You have to pay a substantial fee to get in to have a table. Some of these don't even have art shows. They're all geared only for the media. Like the comics and the superhero movies. Exactly.

They're not interested in artists who might be exhibiting their own work or trying to sell their own work. It's unfortunately.

It is unfortunate. Yeah. Because it sounds like some of these conventions were kind of an entry for you into the industry.

Well, back then, science fiction was very much an outlier. It was not mainstream. If you wanted to meet other fans, this is where you had to go.

And if you wanted to meet professionals like Frank Kelly Fries, like published artists and writers and the publishers themselves, they were very. You could meet them at these conventions. They actually talk to you one on one. You could hobnob with them. They would give panels.

And I've been on panels myself, giving advice to others how to get published or how to come up with ideas.

And honestly, for me, because I've had a few opportunities like that to meet authors at conventions or other. That was kind of part of my idea for the show. Right.

Is like to have a podcast where we can have those kinds of conversations that, you know, you might have previously had at conventions in that as well. So it's such a. Such a helpful thing to do.

Yes.

To change course a little bit here.

I noticed on your website you've also done some murals and you have a mural at a natural history museum and tell us a little bit about what it's like to create a piece of art like that.

I had been freelancing as a science fiction artist for about 12 years, was getting burnt out and was looking more widely afield when I discovered an industry for painting murals and illustrations for natural History museums and nature centers. Now, we didn't work for just one museum. We were. The museums don't really want you to know this. They don't do most of the work themselves.

So I was so excited when I discovered this company and it mentioned that we did not need to know computers. Yay. Because though I was starting to learn, didn't know enough.

And that it was mural work for backgrounds for dioramas at the nature centers and in museums. And all of a sudden I'm looking at this going, dinosaurs, I'll get to paint dinosaurs.

And indeed, there's a museum up in Rochester, Illinois, the Burpee Museum. We don't think it's related to the seeds, but they had gotten their hands on a young T. Rex skeleton. And he wanted a huge mural of a T. Rex.

I got to do the mural, 25ft tall, 40ft long, of a T. Rex attacking some other dinosaurs and some triceratops in the background saying, okay, kids, out of the pool. We're out of here. That was.

I must have been a pain in the butt to work with right that time because I was like a 12 year old for 9 months working on that painting. So that's one of my pride and joys. And you can at least see a reproduction of it still at that museum.

If you were to go there, that was for Chase Studios.

You said it took nine months to. Yes. Yeah. And how do you start? Is that something you do it on paper?

Oh, yes, First.

But the scale. And how would you.

Well, you need to really work on the anatomy based on the skeletal structures. There's a whole approval process. We know ahead of time, the dimensions. So once you.

Most of the work that nine months is just planning it all out, which species. And we were just finding out that some dinosaurs may have had feathers. So I inserted a velociraptor with some feathers on him.

Then we do something called gridding it out. It's much too big to like project your drawings up, but you make like a grid with chalk for like two foot squares over the entire thing.

And then like each square, it could be the equivalent, say of a 1 inch square on your drawing.

So then since it's gridded, you're doing it a little piece by piece to fit the square, making sure the lines fit correctly in each square so that when you're all done at full size, you've drawn it in the same proportions that was in your drawing. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm always, I'm just Always fascinated by how you go from, you know, a piece of paper or, you know, small scale to such a large scale when it's that big.

A lot of artists would use projectors, but it's too big. You can't. And you don't want distortion. So the gridding it out makes sure it stays pretty accurate.

Yeah. When you were talking about projectors, I thought, oh, you probably don't want to do that because of distortion.

Distortion, yeah. And one interesting thing is oils was always my favorite medium before. Oils are not the right medium for this.

And I was never a big fan of airbrush, but we used airbrush for, like, clouds, and we even use those big airless sprayers like you can spray. Spray paint a house with to get the background sky colors in. So you really would speed it up.

And we use, like, latex paint to block in the basic shapes and then change to acrylic with brushes for the detail.

So there was. Was there, like, a team that you worked with that did, like, the.

That kind of thing on this particular mural? I'd say I did 90% of the work myself. Well, we have a whole team for setting up building.

The mural was actually too high for the warehouse we used as a studio, so we had it set it up so we could do the sky first, and I had to very carefully compose it so nothing important would be in, like, the top third, because then we lifted the whole canvas up, flipped the top third over, and re hung the rest of it on stretchers so that I could finish painting.

Wow.

Yeah. That's a process. Yeah.

Nine months.

Right.

And then there's a whole team to take it down and then go to the museum and set it all up. Put everything up.

Yeah.

Wow. That's incredible. That is a moment. Something to be proud of for sure. Yeah. I'll have to look for it. And is it any.

Or do they have any, like, images of that online?

If you Google mine.

Okay.

It'll. It'll come up.

All right, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna check that out.

I refer to that as the Cretaceous mural.

Okay.

In case you want to look it up.

All right.

Okay.

That is cool.

So I did notice, talking a little bit more about your work, that you have a series that you're calling Rejoicing in Our Differences.

Yes.

And you called it Modern Americana, and I love that term. So tell us a little bit about your thoughts and feelings behind that series and what it represents and what direction you're headed in with that.

It's kind of a Funny story, I love doing jigsaw puzzles, and I really got into them, like so many people. And there was a few particular ones that were scenes of Americana, which I really enjoyed doing.

But I did by the same artist, three or four of them, and I suddenly realized a pattern. They're all white people. And I did research into Americana and was rather alarmed to find this very much a white person term.

It's a cozy America is seen by white people only.

And it occurred to me, how about, could we do a modern Americana that's of our time period, but shows the wonderful diversity of America in a warm and friendly way, like classic Americana, but there are people of all colors and religions. And how about some disabled people just hanging out? So, like, I did one of an art fair again with all different races.

I've got a person in a wheelchair, another, a couple, two women who look like they're animatedly talking. They're actually speaking in sign language. They're a deaf. Deaf friends.

I have another one called Farmer's Market, and there's a man and a woman, and the man has a guide dog with him, but everyone is enjoying themselves. And these are based on my own experiences.

I lived in Oak Park, Illinois, for a while, and one night after work, I was working as an illustrator at a company there. I came home at twilight on Halloween.

The streets were literally filled with what seemed like hundreds of children of every race just filled with them. And it was such a delightful experience that inspired my painting, Halloween in Oak Park.

Yeah. They're beautiful paintings that you have listed on your website, and I was so impressed.

And the feeling that you get from them, too, of that feeling of.

Yeah.

Yes. Just seeing diverse faces and people. And that is our modern day America, isn't it?

Like so many, it's under threat and there's a lot of fear and anger. And that's kind of the current popular way to do protest pieces, and I honor those.

But I wanted to do something that evoked what are we searching for? What are we fighting for? Our values, our joy, our peaceful coexistence with each other as America. Yeah, yeah, that's.

That's a wonderful, wonderful thing. And great.

Thank you.

Yeah. And I would encourage our listeners to take take a look at those paintings because they really are beautiful.

Thank you. Yeah, There's a good chance they're going to be exhibited later this year.

I'm still working out the details, but I do announce things like that on Facebook.

Okay.

And we're kind of talking about it now. Where can folks learn more about your work and where you might be exhibiting it.

Well, I do have a website, Lucy Singh Fantasy Art, and a presence on Facebook. I also belong to the Mid Michigan Art Guild, a local art group that exhibits at many places. Also the Lansing Women Artists Collective.

We have exhibits right now at the Neighborhood Empowerment Center, Best Sellers in Mason and the Riverwalk Theater. I also have a series of spacescapes that I am exhibiting at Laura's Gallery in Realtown right now.

Yeah, I did notice that on your website too. Some of the really interesting. Kind of going back to your sci fi days a little bit there I am.

And I'm incorporating them, getting back to doing illustrations. I know a publisher, Weird Sisters Publishing, is putting out a bunch of science fiction books for some women authors that I've done some covers for.

But also they're going to reissue some books by the science fiction author women. Warren Norwood was very well known in the 90s and has since died.

While I am using my abilities, my spacescapes, I'm using Photoshop to mix and match planets with backgrounds, change the backgrounds to fit the right format for the books. And if all goes well, they're going to be publishing several of Warren Norwood's books which with my covers and illustrations in it.

And what's really fascinating is that I'm also combining the work of a few other artists who will be credited because I can paint people and dinosaurs and planets and stars. But I am not really very good with spaceships.

So using Photoshop, we combined another artist, his first name's Chess, his spaceships with my backgrounds to create the illustrations.

That's wonderful. I definitely will be on the lookout for that if those come out and when they come out.

So I love the collaboration there too, with others and it's exciting. Mixing of mediums and that too.

So how neat. It's giving me a shot in the arm, a whole new interest. Interest in doing published work. Yeah, wonderful.

Well, that's about the time we have today. So thank you, Lucy, very much for being on the show. And could you give your website one more time, please?

Lucy Cink, Fantasy Art. And remember, the last name is spelled S Y N K. Wonderful. Yes.

Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. It was wonderful to talk with you.

Thank you. And thank you for listening. And check out Lucy's work. It's wonderful, beautiful, artistic.

It's just great.

So I would encourage our listeners to check that out and everything will be linked in our show notes too, for her website and that. Thanks for being here and thanks for listening.

Thank you.

You have been listening to Written in the Stars: Books and Beyond. Visit lcc.edu/library to find the titles discussed in this episode. You can find previous episodes of Written in the Stars and other LCC Connect shows at lccconnect.com and in the words of Miguel de Unamuno, "I hope, reader, we shall meet again and we shall recognize each other."