Iconic Sci-Fi illustrator and painter Vincent Di Fate

Vincent Di Fate is one of the most prolific Sci-Fi illustrators of all time. he has over five thousand works of art and a breath-taking portofolio that contains some of the top sci-fi authors of the genre. Vincent and I discuss art, life, and how to maintain such a high output.

What is your first time visual art struck you? Do you have an initial memory?
This is just an approximation of the chronology, but I can recall an early memory of being taken to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and of being struck by the work of John Singer Sargent. There was something in his application of paint that was magical and that transcended the simple fact that his paintings were just intended as commercial portraits and nothing more.

Another memory must have come a few years later, when I went to the Museum of Modern Art and saw “The Multiplication of the Arcs” by Yves Tanguy. Again, the painting was transcendent. It was an abstract, but a meticulously rendered one and it looked to me to be a sprawling cityscape.

And then there were the otherworldly landscapes of Chesley Bonestell that appeared in an important magazine series in Life Magazine called “The World We Live In”. His breathtaking astronomical paintings were transportive and Bonestell’s name was probably the first artist’s name I came to know, other than Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney.

How did you learn you wanted to create it?
I don’t really know. I always drew and had a good visual memory. I was able to draw from my imagination and that skill got progressively stronger as I got older.

Did you consciously decide to do it for a living?
By the time I was in high school I’d grown skeptical about making a living as an artist. One lingering fear was that I knew that artists like Sargent were born with the fantastic ability to make pictures that were truly art. And I knew I could never compete with that.

How do you separate needing commercial success with art for art’s sake?
I’m an illustrator. I create pictures--sometimes to very exacting specifications-- that tell a story. To me, that’s very different from creating art for art’s sake. There are many reasons why people make art—to express a point of view; to evoke an emotion; to create captivating images that remind us of the beauty surrounding us; to help us see our better selves---or simply to make money. An illustrator works within rigid parameters to tell a story—any kind of story, but seldom one that is his own. The task of making images to specifications and doing it well is highly demanding and is often drudgery, but it can also be exciting. I like that particular challenge.

What is your take on the starving artist?
Starving in the pursuit of making one’s art can be noble but, on the whole, it seems pretty short-sighted to me. Arguably, artists have always been underpaid, but no one has to starve making art unless they see it as a form of martyrdom—and that the martyrdom in itself is the goal, not the byproduct of something more virtuous. I shouldn’t try to second guess the motives of others, but perhaps the starving artist is just a false stereotype.

How did you get your start?
I won a scholarship to an art college and, with few other options available to me, I accepted it. I really wanted to be a filmmaker, but although I’d been accepted to the three top film schools, I couldn’t afford to go to them. Reluctantly, I took the path of least resistance, kicking and screaming the whole time.

How does your creative routine look? How do you keep momentum going?
I begin by reading the details of the project—a manuscript, a screenplay, a reader’s report, or whatever is given me to work with. I use a highlight marker to mark the key scenes and draw very rough thumbnail sketches in the margins to remind me of what the scenes are about and how best to organize my illustration. At the heart of an effective illustration is a strong abstract core—that’s what I draw initially, based on my spontaneous responses to the materials I've been given. I then seek the two or three imagines that I feel capture the essence of the story without giving away the plot. The art should grab the viewer; compel her/him to stop in their tracks and ask, "Hey, what's going on there?" The next step is to create a comprehensive color sketch--a version of the painting in miniature. That sketch becomes my guide and road map in completing the finished work.

There’s never an issue of lost momentum. Not that there aren’t difficult problems that need closer consideration and repeated attempts to solve. But when I read I see the images instantly. That’s why I’m an illustrator, because of this facility to translate words into pictures.

What was your first visual medium?
As with most people, I would guess that it was a pencil.

How has the process evolved?
It really hasn’t evolved much over the years. Computers expedite the process of research and provide a platform for quick sketching, but the process is still essentially the same. I'm a painter in traditional media--mostly acrylics.

How does life influence your work?
My low self-esteem seeks constant shoring up, so I immerse myself in the work attempting to do the best job I can. I never succeed, but after each painting I remind myself that there will be other challenges and other opportunities to do better. Other than that, I try not to let the affairs of my personal life intrude on the work.

What draws you so deeply to Sci-fi?
There’s no simple answer to this. I was born shortly after the end of the Second World War and the new technologies that came out of that conflict held great promise for the future. Stories and articles about space and the potential for interplanetary travel filled the magazines, movies and TV of those days. It all seemed too abundant and far too fascinating to ignore.

What Sci-Fi books or films are you in to right now?
I can’t go into the specifics without slighting a number of writers with whom I work, but my heart really goes to the classics—writers like Verne, Wells, Heinlein, Bradbury, van Vogt, Asimov, Clarke, etc. I think many of the newer writers are skilled at literary technique, but many of the contemporary SF novels that I’ve encountered have little science in them, concentrating on character and socio-political intrigue instead. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but I miss the days when each novel I picked up was full of fresh ideas about how new science and technology would impact us in the future.

Do you still read the Sci-Fi magazines?
Yes, but, clearly, the magazines no longer play the defining role they once did. Magazines in general have fallen on hard times, due largely to changes in consumer reading habits and the growing reliance of readers on e-books and the Internet. I also think we have a stronger interest in epic and engrossing narratives, whereas, once shorter works were the most popular forms within the genre. The magazines were primarily a haven for them. Even the novels that were published were serialized in short installments and later reprinted in book form. I still believe that the SF short story or novella are the lengths at which the genre really shines.

Tell me about your studio layout, also what computer software do you use? Do you use a computer at all in your art?
My studio is laid out in typical fashion for a painting studio—a drafting table, a taboret, flat files for storing art, shelving for storing painting materials, file cabinets full of research materials.

I do occasionally work digitally, but mostly my work is executed in acrylics on gessoed hardboard. When I work digitally, I typically integrate the use of paint in the process. I believe that a good painting should remind the viewer at every passage that this is a work done by hand, by an artist who uses the properties of his medium to interpret his subject rather than to mimic a photograph or other reference source. I understand the lure of painting photo-realistically, but I also feel that the kind of subject matter I specialize in draws much in having the viewer participate in interpreting what he is seeing. In the pattern and energy of brushstrokes, much can be implied rather than spelled out.

When you work digitally what software do you use?
I do very little digital work and, when I do, I almost always integrate work with a paintbrush into the project. Even though digital software mimics traditional media, there are simply some things that can only be done with a brush. I use Photoshop, Illustrator and Painter and am not very good at any one of these—which is why I keep my brushes handy.

What’s your favorite medium?
I paint in acrylics and, very occasionally, in oils. For black and white work, I use pen and ink on Claybord or scratchboard.

What visual artists are you watching right now? Who is interesting to you?
There are so many good artists working in my specialty that it’s almost impossible to list them all. I’d prefer to tell you of my art heroes growing up. In no particular order: Chesley Bonestell, Charles R. Knight, Stanley Meltzoff, Robert E, Schulz, John Berkey, Paul Lehr, Jack Schoenherr, Virgil Finlay. There are many more, but you’ll note that they’re all illustrators.

Among fine artists: Rubens, Velasquez, Carravaggio, Sargent, Tanguy, Magritte, Dalì, …

Do you have any up and coming authors you would recommend?
Again, while I’d hate to exclude anyone, it’s worthwhile to note that there are a number of female authors to look to—authors like Martha Wells, Susanna Clarke, Rebecca Roanhorse, etc. We’ve come a long way from the days when women had to write under male pseudonyms for what was once an almost exclusively male readership.

Who is someone you have always wanted to work with, but never got the chance?
There are a great many authors that I never got to work with, but I regret never having illustrated anything by Ray Bradbury most of all. Having said that, I don’t think he’s particularly easy to translate to visual form, despite the descriptive nature of his prose. Arthur C. Clarke, by contrast, forms immediate word pictures as you read, but with Bradbury it’s more a matter of mood and atmosphere. Also, for most of my career I’ve been regarded as a “tech” artist, so I’ve probably never been the first person to come to mind when a Bradbury manuscript came up.

As filmmakers go, I regret that I never got to work with George Pal. The films he produced not only defined the early SF film genre, but his films were visually rich, producing some of SF’s most iconic images.

What advice do you have for new artists?
If you aspire to be an illustrator you must learn your craft. Only those who can draw, paint, compose, use their resourcefulness and their imaginations will survive in this most competitive of fields, but also, illustration is being used today is so many unexpected ways that finding out its uses is yet another challenge in sustaining a career. When you go to those big special effects summer blockbuster movies, those long, tedious crawls at the end are loaded with the names of artists. Moving image fields—TV, videogames, the movies—could not exist without us. And the technology, as it expands, opens up more opportunities. Those who say that illustration is dying or dead, are reflecting a concern that the fields and mediums familiar to them are falling away, but clearly, new and more challenging ones are opening up all the time. For the freelance artist, as for most of us in our day-to-day lives, the sky is always falling. I've been hearing that for the half-century that I've been in the business--but somehow, we're all still here and still working.

What is the best way to learn one’s craft?
I’ll take a wild stab at this and suggest—how ‘bout going to art school? The number of viable illustration programs on the college level is dwindling for all the wrong reasons, but anyone interested in a career in illustration must learn how to draw, must learn anatomy, perspective, the mechanics of motion, composition, color-theory, etc. in order to sustain a career and to remain competitive.

You studied at the Phoenix School of Design in New York right?
Yes, the Phoenix, named for its founder, Lauros Phoenix, was a very traditional art school. I majored in illustration there. I got my masters degree at Syracuse University and firmly support the idea of higher education, particularly in the arts. I’m also a full professor in the State University of New York system, have taught at SVA, Syracuse University and the University of Hartford and teach courses in Illustration and in Film at FIT in Manhattan. I co-founded FIT’s MFA program in Illustration and also the FIT Film program.

Why was school so valuable?
To expect any kind of longevity in the highly disciplined craft of illustration, a comprehensive foundation is essential. A decent art school allows an aspiring artist to accelerate the development and refinement of his skills.

In an age of rapid online learning why do you think higher education is so beneficial?
The internet offers many virtues, no doubt, but the recent pandemic demonstrated for me the difficulties of trying to teach students how to paint online. Expecting that the internet is a viable substitute for a good, hands-on education is tremendously short-sighted. Could you imagine learning brain surgery on the internet? Would you trust a surgeon who’d gotten his degree that way to work on you? Since the internet is a pure democracy where anyone with an opinion can voice it, there are no standards for accuracy or honesty, nor any means to enforce them when they’re absent.

What do you do to continue to grow as an artist?
I go to museums, I go to bookstores and look; I go to the movies. More importantly, I explore new media. I’ve just recently taken up sculpture and am exhilarated to learn yet another new way to make art.

What museums do you recommend people visit given the chance?
Any museum is worth the effort to visit, because museums exist to preserve our culture and to remind us of those things that make life worth living. Even minimalist art makes us think—makes us react, and that, in itself, is important. Visiting art galleries isn’t a bad idea, either, nor is going to the bookstore and looking around to see what passes for commercial art these days. I think most people would be surprised by the richness and diversity of images one can come across in a bookstore.

What was your breakout work? How did you get connected to do covers of such huge authors?
I don’t know as I actually ever had a “breakout” work. The first important SF book cover I did was for Ron Goulart’s Broke Down Engine and Other Troubles with Machines. It’s atypical of the sort of thing I’m known for now and, even though it was one of my first commissioned works, it was kept in inventory for about a year and a half before it was released. In the meantime, I’d done covers for the magazines which, though produced later, beat Broke Down Engine to press.

As far as being “connected” to do works for major authors, whoever is the most visible at any given time tends to get the most high-profile assignments. I’m an introvert. After more than half a century in the business, I know very few people, am not a part of the genre’s social hierarchy and am pretty hard to get ahold of. I’ve just been pretty lucky at times during my career.

Can you talk a bit about being an introvert and navigating the commercial art world?
I think that being an introvert is not necessarily a prerequisite for being an artist, but it’s certainly not uncommon. I think that most of us are drawn to making pictures as an alternate form of communication, rather than writing or speaking. I’d like to think that I’ve been successful in my career because of the quality of my work, not because of my domineering and relentless salesmanship. If I were indeed more aggressive in selling my work, I’m certain I’d be a good deal richer today, but my commitment to art and to the genre has very little to do with money. I believe in the future as an opportunity for us to make tomorrow better than today. What could possibly be more interesting or more important?

I have heard it said that Dune killed pulp SF as after Dune came out everyone wanted to write giant space operas. Do you agree? Do you think we will ever see the SF short story reemerge?
Well, I hope so. For me, the short form is where the literature of SF truly shines. Also, “pulp” SF died with the pulp magazines in the mid-1950s (TV and government legislation that broke up the big distribution chains brought the pulps to an abrupt end). Dune came along a good deal later.

I don’t know as you could blame Frank Herbert for encouraging longer and more ambitious works, but I will say that Dune was one of the genre’s early bestsellers—and who wouldn’t envy the success and attention that the series had garnered? But I also think that the penchant for authors to write longer, more involved and ambitious works was inevitable as SF was gradually accepted into the mainstream. TV’s Star Trek and the blockbuster SF movies of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s helped to expand and cultivate SF’s audience. Today, SF is the mainstream.

What was the inspiration of Infinite Worlds and what was the main goal of the book?
For as long as I’ve been alive I’ve been fascinated by art of this type. I wrote Infinite Worlds in the hope that it would expose more people to the art of the genre and that they might learn the names of some of its greatest practitioners. Although the book was well reviewed and sold quite well, I had hoped that it would inspire others to delved deeper into the genre and write more critically of these works. As a working illustrator with much of my career still ahead of me, I was unable to do that on my own, for very practical reasons. There have been many art books published since devoted to the art of the genre, but little of it is scholarly or particularly insightful. So, if that was one of my goals, then I must admit that I failed in that effort.

What other scholarly Sci-Fi art books should one read once they’ve finished Infinite Worlds?
I’m not attempting to be flip when I say that, except for a few impressive essays here and there, and some graduate theses that will be given only limited exposure, I’m unaware of any scholarly works on the broad subject of fantastic art. And I wouldn’t consider that Infinite Worlds is a scholarly work, either. It was intended as a general introduction to some of the many wonderful artists who have worked in the genre. There have been some great monographs on individual illustrators like Howard Pyle, Harvey Dunn, J. C. Leyendecker, Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish, J. Allen St. John, etc., but nothing that looks intelligently and analytically at the trends and techniques of artists who have worked in the specialty and who have shaped our popular visions of the future. As I mentioned earlier, it was one of my failings with Infinite Worlds that I was unable to inspire more serious study of the subject.

How do you find clients?
I don’t. They find me. My website draws a considerable amount of traffic and, along with it, inquiries about possible commissions. While I'm happy to receive them, I probably accept less than 25% of those inquiries.

Whats your morning routine?
I wake up, shower, eat, read the newspaper and get to work.

How Long do you paint everyday?
I don’t paint every day. I don’t particularly enjoy painting, either. When I’ve got work to do, I typically put in about a twelve or fourteen-hour workday unless I’m up on deadline—in which case, I work until the painting is finished.

You put in 12 to 14 hour days? how many days a week do you do that?
Over a career that has spanned more than half a century there were literally decades that I worked that intensively; usually putting in a five or six-day work week, depending on my deadlines. I no longer have the need or the impulse to work that hard. In recent years I’ve seldom worked more than two or three days a week at painting. I write regularly and, now, I’ve started sculpting, so my work time is divided among those three areas.

How in the world do you have time to read when working so many hours?
As I’ve said, I do not work that intensively unless I’m up against a deadline, and I decline more work than I take on these days. I read quite a bit because reading is part of the job. And knowing what’s out there, who’s writing what, and what the literary trends are, are all part of the responsibility of being a genre artist.

Do you think about real world technology as well? If so, do you have any predictions for the future?
Yes, of course. I produce a fair amount of work every year for the computer, aerospace and defense industries as well as for books and magazines.

I’m not a prophet, but I see big breakthroughs in the next decade or so in terms of entertainment and, specifically, in terms of full-emersion technology that literally places the viewer at the center of action, surrounded on all sides.

I also think that battlefield invisibility and Heinleinesque power suits are just around the corner. I just hope they’re never put to practice use.

Do you have a favorite piece of art?
Yes, many—none of them by me.

What are your favorite records of all time?
As a child of the ‘50s, I like DooWop. All of it!

What do you listen to while you work?
Nothing. I work in silence.

How do you work in silence? Do you get lost in your own head?
Simply, yes.

What is your favorite novel?
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, anything by Heinlein, Clarke, R.A. Lafferty…

If someone wanted to get into Heinlein, what book do you think they should start with?
The reader’s age would be a factor. I think the first Heinlein novel I read was The Star Beast, or possibly Red Planet. For teenagers, I’d recommend something like The Puppet Masters or Double Star. While not all of his novels are masterpieces, it’s difficult to go wrong with Heinlein and, in the Golden Age, he was at the cutting edge.

Where do you look for inspiration?
It may sound trite, but it’s true—I look within.

Did growing up in New York influence your visual style?
It must have. Who is not a product of his own environment? New York offered museums and schools that helped form who I am.

You have over 3000 published works. How many pieces are you able to finish in a year?
The number probably exceeds 5,000 drawings and paintings by now. I’ve cut back considerably as I’ve gotten older, but for most of my career I consistently produced between 80 and 100 pieces a year. I now do about 20 or 30 in a year, much of which is concept work for films and TV that most people will never see.

Did you ever get to try your hand at film making?
I do concept work for film and television all the time, but again, I am not the auteur. I have to read a screen treatment or a script and visualize what the author clearly could not—especially when it comes to fantastic subject matter. My work, however, is typically very early on in the development process. By the time my images get to the screen they’ve been pretty severely altered. I also see my work appropriated--without permission or payment--in dozens of SF and horror films. Since I have neither the time nor the inclination to go around suing people, I look at it as a form of flattery. In addition to my freelance work for the publishing and aerospace industries I’ve been doing concept work for film and TV almost from the beginning of my career—long enough to have learned that I lack the temperament to work in a field so driven by ego. Most of the people I’ve worked with have been great, but the stories I’ve heard, and some of the experiences that I’ve been wise enough to sidestep before getting too heavily invested, show me that I chose the right path after all. Even though I do essentially the same kind of work in all of these areas, it’s enjoyable to be involved in a variety of markets. Each market has its unique needs and challenges.

How do you maintain such large output that is so high quality?
Is it high quality? I seriously doubt that. All I can say is that I take my work and my responsibilities seriously and have never missed a deadline. Somehow, the work gets done. I try my best—always, but the worst pieces I suffer with the most and work the hardest on. Fortunately, no one seems to notice.

How do you keep the work life and personal life so separate?
Unless I’m working to a specific deadline, I usually take the weekends off to live my life and spend time with family and friends. Decompression is part of the creative process. If life were nothing but work, it would truly be drudgery.

Do you ever face burnout? If so, how do you deal with it?
Always. Who doesn’t face burnout when you do this for a living? I just keep plugging along and reminding myself that there’s always another opportunity to do better.

Anything you want to discuss [that]I haven’t asked you?
Not particularly, Chris. You’ve been fairly thorough in your questioning.

If I had a comment to make about the way things are in the world these days, it would be about my frustration in listening to people who advance countless conspiracy theories about the Moon landings, about Covid 19 and so many other things that most sensible people believe in. If we’ve reached a point where nearly half of us can no longer agree that our hair is on fire, how will we ever be able to move forward into the future? Climate change, the advent of artificial intelligence and a host of other things on the horizon require us more than ever before to look sensibly and realistically at the challenges ahead.

What’s your favorite hot sauce?

I enjoy some hot foods, but I don’t use hot sauce. Sorry.

Get in touch with Vincent at his website