Ballantine/Bantam's Michael Whelan books
Michael Whelan's Works Of Wonder
The Art Of Michael Whelan

Michael Whelan's Works Of Wonder (1987 - Del Rey/Ballantine) At 10.5-by-12.5 inches, this book is a bit larger than the standard, but it is almost the ideal thickness for that size. Of the book's 128 pages, there are 49 color plates with striking reproduction, which include a large number of long paintings, intended to be wraparound book covers, held here to a single page. Almost all of these plates are faced by a page containing the artist's thoughts about the piece, accompanied by depictions of the typographed book cover itself, frequently with sketches, color & grey-tone roughs, prelims & alternate-takes, as well. 14 images here repeat from the Whelan books recommended before this one, BEYOND SCIENCE FICTION and WONDERWORKS, (a couple of the long ones are better presented here . . .). The captions include the the displayed painting's book title itself, its author, publisher & year, size & medium. After no shortage of interstitial pages, you can also find bio, foreword, a technique-section & book-introduction, as well as the artist's own introductions to the art-groupings of commissioned works for entire book series (including Asimov's Foundation & Robots, Burrough's Mars, McCaffrey's Pern, Anthony's Incantations Of Immortality, Niven's Smoke Ring, and Lovecraft at-large). This book is a great compromise between breathless artist-worship and flippant 'just-show-me-some-pretty-pictures' disregard.

The Art Of Michael Whelan (1992 - Bantam) By our own idiosyncratic standards this square-ish book is too heavy (thick), almost two times too heavy, for its 11.5-by-11.5-inch size. It's got 206 high-quality pages, of which 67 are large plates of Whelan's paintings (five of those spread over the central gutter, but all remain acceptable doing so). Another 47 pages each feature an art piece, frequently a preliminary, or an alternate version of an exhibited painting. And another 28 pages gather multiple images together. This site recommends BEYOND SCIENCE FICTION, WONDERWORKS and MICHAEL WHELAN'S WORKS OF WONDER before this one, and know that 15 pieces from those are repeated here. This book shares Whelan's thoughts & anecdotes about every plate, as well as a seven-page interview about his career and an 11-page one about his 'materials and methods'. There's a preface and a profile, as well as seven pages of alphabetical captions for the plates (with thumbnails. but no page numbers) providing for each the title, creation-year, medium & size, and the commissioning entity, if such. Know that a significant portion of this exhibit are personal paintings where the artist endeavored to work out what he calls the "confluence of thoughts, themes, symbols, and feelings." In summary, this hefty tome is an ART BOOK, all in capital letters, respectfully giving this artist the best of production, but in a vague, perhaps stodgy, by-the-numbers, routine. The art exhibits are all under rigid control, so they won't run amuck, but at the same time, Whelan's unique personality is constantly on display, shining through.