Great SFF illustrators: Patrick Woodroffe

Mythopoeikon by Patrick Woodroffe (Dragon’s World 1976)

In the 1970s I started to collect books on the art of science fiction and fantasy. I am now using my blog to review some of the beautiful imagery and tell the stories of these craftsmen from the days before computer-designed art – in the hope their work will find a new audience.

Patrick Woodroffe in the 1970s

I bought the book Mythopoeikon by Patrick Woodroffe (Dragon’s World 1976) in the year it was published, when I was still at university. It is a soft-back book and the pages have been lovingly turned so often that I have now had to tie some of them back into the spine with white sewing cotton.

You can still find the book on Amazon and I would urge anyone interested in fantasy and sci-fi art to get a copy. Although maybe not one of the “new” copies priced at £75!

Patrick Woodroffe is still producing lovely work in 2010 and has some new books out, which you can find on this page of his website… You can also read all his news on this page

But for now I am concentrating on Mythopoeikon and a fascinating glimpse of the artist’s development in style and technique up to 1976.

Patrick Woodroffe was born in 1940 in Halifax, Yorkshire and in 1964 graduated In French and German at Leeds University. He started to exhibit his drawings in 1966 and gave up intermittent teaching in Cornwall to become a freelance illustrator in 1972.

He cites his early influences as Salvador Dali, the Viennese school of “fantastic realism” and above all the work of Dutch and Flemish so-called “primitives” of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Unto us a Son is Given (oil on panel) reflects the early influence of Flemish painters on Woodroffe, which I can see in the composition and that green colour. As usual the picture tells a story. The anatomy of the mother is deliberately distorted to express love and warmth; the sweet and sour colours of the fruit symbolise the joys and tragedies of life.

He says he suddenly realised that painting could achieve something photography could not, to reveal the world seen only within the mind.
And what a wonderful mind Woodroffe has.

Many of his favourite motifs are present even in the earliest pen and ink drawings he created while studying in France and then back at home in Falmouth. By this I mean all those forms from nature he seems to love – fish, snail, butterfly, flower and seed-pod, plus the female nude and the human skull. While Woodroffe worked, he was inspired by the music of Mahler and Bruckner.

In the early days Woodroffe also experimented with mixed media, combining flat painting in oils with tin tacks, copper wire, nails and glass beads made over a Bunsen burner. He was trying to make a new, more sumptuous setting in which to place his images.

At this stage as well as his favourite motifs from nature, he was using round, sun-disc faces.

Woodroffe experimented with mixed media. Here in Poseidon's Children we see the recurring motifs of fish, snail and those sun-disc-like faces – the one at the bottom is Poseidon...

Later, instead of using mixed media, he came to prefer “an even, regular surface on a painting; the illusion rather than the reality of three dimensions”.

Woodroffe used the Rapidograph pen enthusiastically for several years but then decided the evenness of line was not expressive enough and preferred “the swelling line of the traditional mapping pen or the subtle effects obtainable on an etching plate”.

Dis is the Personification of Death, Negation and Destruction, drawn with Rapidograph pen, uses skeletons and other symbols of decay...

This pen-and-ink drawing, Invasion from Mars, shows a friendly invasion by seed-pod aliens but later Woodroffe had to bow to commercial pressures and illustrate malevolent extra-terrestrials...

In his oil paintings he was inspired by artist Richard Humphrey in London and aimed to emulate the wide and busy canvases of Hieronymus Bosch and express the oneness of nature, creating paintings that could be read like a book.

The Birth of Animated Nature, oil on canvas, 1965, inspired by Hieronymus Bosch...

Part of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch...

This picture, part of a triptych called A Second Noah's Ark, was finished in 1972 and is SO of its time. The girl is very Biba, the butterflies are psychedelic and there's a Saturn V rocket in there somewhere. As Woodroffe puts it, `The spires of the new religion are the gleaming edifices of space technology'...

Soon after this Woodroffe had to teach full-time to support his young family and several imaginative book projects were rejected by publishers. He could not find work as an illustrator as only his own stories could match his unique style of illustration.

He finally succeeded with a first book for younger children, called Micky’s New Home. Micky is a hermit elephant…

An illustration from Woodroffe's book for children, Micky's New Home...

During this time Woodroffe’s frequent symbolism of dolls in distress reflects the responsibilities of new fatherhood. This is one of my favourites from that time…

The Thorn Apple Tree - dolls in distress reflect the anxiety of parenthood...

In 1972 Woodroffe retired from teaching to pursue a full-time artistic career and began with a successful exhibition at London’s Covent Garden Gallery. Then, more importantly, he was offered his first commission for a scifi book jacket Day Million by Frederik Pohl.

Woodroffe's first scifi book cover, for Day Million by Frederik Pohl...

This was the start of a highly successful career designing book covers, although sometimes Woodroffe’s imagination went a bit too far as in his surreal and possibly inappropriate cover designs for Dashiell Hammett’s thrillers.

A design for Red Harvest by Dashell Hammett - which Woodroffe admits is inappropriately surrealistic - but I love those recurring bright red shiny spheres in his work, whether blood or cabouchon jewels...

Some more examples of that lovely red - as jewel-like blood or blood-like jewels or jewel-like eyes...

Woodroffe delights in inventing new animal species and hybrids or portraying mythical beasts such as dragons, and fortunately scifi book commissions usually gave him scope to play. Although he was clearly a little frustrated by the small scale and poor reproduction of paperback book covers and by the fact that the top of the picture had to leave “blank” space for the book title.

Some of Patrick Woodroffe's brilliant scifi book covers from the 1970s...

One early success was Woodroffe’s covers for the books of Michael Moorcock, for Quartet Books. Closer to fantasy than scifi, the tales suited Woodroffe’s organic imagery.

Cover art for The Oak and the Ram by Michael Moorcock...

Woodroffe found it hard to treat space ships seriously – preferring to treat them as whimsical adaptations of insects and buildings. They appear Victorian, childlike, small and unconvincing.

Woodroffe wasn't naturally very good at illustrating realistic spaceships - this cover for The Best of Robert Heinlein looks like a Victorian toy...

Woodroffe eventually got the hang of realistic spaceships, but they are still not his best work, in my opinion. This is part of the cover for New Worlds Eight, in acrylic gouache with ink and marbling...

Woodroffe is in his element, though, when illustrating humanoids and alien beasts and monsters.

Octopus with a demon's face - cover art for Dwellers in the Mirage by A Merritt, for Futura Books...

Cover art for The Gray Prince by Jack Vance, for Avon Books USA. There is something of Mr Punch about the face and the hat reminds me of that bronze head of the Queen Mother from 16th century Benin in Africa, inset...

Cover art for The Seedbearers by Peter Timlett, for Corgi's Transworld books - it's about the fall of Atlantis. Again we see that lovely gemstone red in the eyes...

Cover art for The Radio Planet by Ralph Milney-Farley for Ace Books...

Cover art for Waldo by Robert Heinlein, for Pan Books in 1974, about a man dependent on prosthetic limbs...

It may be hard to believe in these days of little CDs, but in the 1970s, album sleeves for big long-playing vinyl records were considered an art form in themselves. King of this was Roger Dean, but Woodroffe also had success with some sleeves, notably for Budgie, Judas Priest and Greenslade.

Record-sleeve art for Greenslade's Time and Tide, featuring the Magician character created by Roger Dean...

The original Magician created by Roger Dean for Greenslade album sleeves...

Woodroffe is still tremendously creative and busy, as can be seen from his own website, where you can find information about recent books such as The Forget-Me-Not Gardener, Master of Fantasy and La Tour de Prisonnier.

This is an example from Patrick Woodroffe's more recent work - click on the picture to go to his website

It’s just a shame many of his pictures aren’t now available in book form – maybe it’s time someone produced a lavish “best of” Patrick Woodroffe book? Anyway, I wish him well and hope more people will discover his out-of-this-world work.

You may also be interested in my earlier “Great SFF illustrators” posts about Frank Kelly Freas and Frank Frazetta.