I’m saddened to hear that noted fantasy artist Darrel K. Sweet passed away today. Sweet is best known for Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, but he did hundreds of SF and fantasy covers. Here is a sampling.
His most famous creation, however, was a commercial job to create the original logo for Captain Morgan Spiced Rum (the image has been changed now; I can’t find his original online).
A great name in the field of fantasy cover art.
He did Xanth! I aged out of Xanth at about book 17 in the trilogy but I recognize those paintings anywhere. RIP.
Man, this guy pretty much defined the look of the fantasy/sci-fi shelves while I was growing up. Never actually liked his stuff very much, but it’s still weird and a little sad that there won’t be any new Sweet covers anymore.
Damn! He did a lot of the Jack Chalker covers. Say what you will about Chalker’s writing (and there’s a lot to day, both ways), he came u with picturesque aliens, and Sweet put 'em on the cover.
He also added cute touches. On the cover of The Devil Will Drag You Under the bottle of Jack Daniels on the table, if you look close, reads Jack Chalker.
But the best cover was for the collection of Chalker’s short stories, Dance Band on the Titanic. The cover has what is apparently Chalker at his desk, surrounded by miniatures of his characters gamboling around and apparently climbing up. It’s like a hundred other short story covers I’ve seen. Only it’s different, because the figure of the writer isn’t Chalker – it’s Darrell K. Sweet. As Chalker explains, on the inside back cover, “That’s Darrel Sweet on the cover, who illustrates my stories. This is Me:” followed by a full-face shot of a mean-looking, scowling Jack Chalker. “Now you know why.”
