“Tomorrow is Too Far” Cover Illustration, Dean Ellis (1971)
I ran across this book while perusing the massive sci-fi section of a local used book store (which I have to post about specifically later on) and was totally floored. Too awesome! The artist is Dean Ellis, who I managed to find a little bit of information on through some Googling:
Detroit-born artist Dean Ellis (b.1920) studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Boston Museum School of Fine Art and worked for art studios in Cleveland before moving east in 1958. In the 1960’s he produced much work for Bantam Books including covers for numerous Ray Bradbury titles. In the 1970’s his work was largely for Ballantine Books, and included covers for books by Larry Niven and Lester Del Rey, among others. His paintings frequently portrayed vistas of outer space or breathtaking alien landscapes realistically rendered in saturated colors (often blues or greens) and exhibiting a clean, simple style.
Is your time space limited? I also found a list of some other books that he’s illustrated covers for, though I don’t think its exhaustive as this book isn’t listed. Apart from Dean Ellis, I happened across another book with a cover by a different artist that I couldn’t pass up. I’ll post that one up later.
Sci-Fi-O-Rama » Dean Ellis - Hal Clement Covers November 9th, 2008 at 9:54 am
[...] Two retro cover’s for the Hal Clement SF Novel’s “Natives of Space” & “Cycle of Fire” – Cover art by American Artist Dean Ellis (thanks for the tip there Jonathan). Some more information on Dean Ellis here at http://blog.sans-concept.com/?p=197 [...]
kati semones (arits) March 25th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
hi eric,
i have been researching an artist dean weaver ellis. i am really hoping you have found the same man here. in “47 when he was dating my grandmother & painted a huge portrait of her that has only been in her posesstion (& now min). so there are no images to follow online searching for her portrait. i do have his autograph & was hoping someone could point me in the direction of how i could find high enough resolutions of his work online that is that i could zoom in in photoshop to try to match the signature. have any sugestions? any info would help! does he have a small cult following that i could track down private collectors?thank you again for any help you could offer me & my family.
-kati
Justine Blair October 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Dear Eric: I am a close friend of Dean Ellis who I am sad to report died last week here in Saratoga Springs, NY. I am in the process of trying to help his wife Lois compile a comprehensive catalog of his work. A daunting task as Dean never had an Agent as he was a very humble artist and the extent of his work is vast being so prolific. (illustrations for SciFi books; US Postal Stamp works; individual Paintings; Advertising, etc. You mentioned a “list of some other books” here but that url is no longer available. Would you happen to still have it? If you do, could you send it to my email address as I think it would be helpful in tracking down some of the Illustration Covers he did, mostly in the 70’s. Any information you might have re: Dean Ellis would be so greatly appreciated! Thank you for your consideration of this request Eric. Kind regards, Justine Blair
Larry November 8th, 2009 at 1:02 am
If I hadn’t judged Andre Norton’s “The Last Planet” by it’s Dean Ellis cover, I might never have begun reading speculative fiction. Several decades and several thousand books later, I’m still struck by how uniformly engaging his work was. Kelly Freas died a few years back, and with the passing of Dean Ellis, it feels like my windows into other worlds are breaking one by one. I’m sure that reads silly… but I was mesmerized by the gift these artists had: Freas for works that stoked my sense of wonder and Ellis for works that sometimes seemed liked painted photography. I hope that some original Ellis paintings now go on sale… If I could find the original for Norton’s “Star Born,” for example, I might just build an alter of some sort. (Okay… that probably read silly, too.)