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Self Portraits

Adam Rowe

• 3 min read
Self Portraits
Detail of a 1972 John Berkey illustration

I really enjoy tracking down self-portraits from retro sci-fi artists.

Plenty of artists get around to doing a self portrait. Many of these capture some subjective element of how the artist sees themself, or at least how the artist wants others to see themself. I just looked up the French artist Jean "Mœbius" Giraud for a silly quote-tweet, and found he's done a wide variety of fascinating self portraits. Here are just four of them:

A stern self-portrait by Mœbius, where he's sitting in a chair drawing something
A trippy self-portrait by Mœbius, where he has a bunch of knick-knacks coming out of the top of his head
A self-portrait by Mœbius, depicting a statue of his own head and shoulders, with a tiny guy nearby staring up at it.
A simple self-portrait by Mœbius, at a drawing board

However, for commercial artists in particular, the self portrait often takes on a new meaning: These book cover artists frequently worked on a tight deadline that gave them a week or less to complete an illustration. This would force many of them to find a photo reference model from whoever was handy. This might be a friend or family member, but often they'd have to rely on themselves.

Here's one example from one of the biggest US sci-fi cover artists of the 70s, John Berkey. This is unmistakably Berkey himself, appearing on his own 1972 cover for Asimov's The Caves of Steel.

For the rest of this issue, I'm covering a selection of my favorite self portaits.

Here's an amazing self-portrait, from 1973, by sci-fi and fantasy artist Greg Hildebrandt, titled “A Very, Very Close Encounter.”
A 1975 self-portrait from Walt Simonson in a DC comic.
A Jack Gaughan self portrait, undated
An early self portrait of Michael Whelan, pulled from the back of his studio and posted on his tumblr a while ago.
Self-portrait of artist Jon Lomberg
HR Giger, Self Portrait. This one's pretty grim, even by Giger's standards!
Jack Kirby has a great simple-yet-funny self portait here - yet another example of the economic approach that made him a master of comic book art.
I couldn't resist one more Moebius self portrait!

Finally, here's a particularly cheeky self portait to end on, done by the famed Frank Frazetta for the cover to a 1964 issue of Tales From the Crypt.

There are a wealth of similar examples, so I might return to this theme in the future. Like I said, it's a fascinating topic for me! Feel free to hop in the comments if you have any favorites from this era that I didn't include.

Next Time: 'Epic' Sci-Fi Art