Mirror Of Dreams by Tim White (book review).
Sometimes, I look at my artbook collection and wonder if any SF artist I like has been particularly quiet to see what they are doing now or any books showing their art that I’ve missed. In the case of Tim White, the latter falls into place with this 1994 book, ‘Mirror Of Dreams’. That’s quite recent compared to other older artbooks that I’ve been locating. Rather interestingly, the text is in four languages, English, Spanish, German and French, which you don’t see often in books anymore. This gives some history of the paintings and what White was out to achieve for his commissions for book covers and a little calendar work. This particular book is dominated more by fantasy and horror of the Lovecraft kind than SF but does show his versatility and he does some pretty mean demons whom you wouldn’t want to meet in the dark.
There are only a couple pictures that stretch across two pages. Most of the time, they are only single page art on the right and text on the left, with a couple design sketches made along the way.
Tim White’s backgrounds are obvious airbrush, but what always made him stand out for me is his colour contrasts using bright greens, oranges and violets, all shown here. In fact, his odd colour tone choices is what makes him stand out. In some respects, my colour sense says that they shouldn’t work and yet they do. There is also a selection of more subtle fare showing just how versatile White is.
If you own his other two artbooks, ‘Chiaroscuro’ (1988) and ‘The Science Fiction And Fantasy World Of Tim White’ (1981 reprint 1988), there’s only a couple pictures I recognise from there. It also gives you a snapshot of what was popular up to this book’s release from 1977-1993.
There aren’t too many copies of this book around so if you have a taste for Tim White’s art then don’t leave it too late.
GF Willmetts
August 2015
(pub: Norma Editorial, 1994. 82 page illustrated softcover. Price: really, really cheap these days so look around for a good price and copy. ISBN: 84-7904-243-5)
check out website: www.tim-white.co.uk/ and www.google.co.uk/search?q=Mirror+Of+Dreams+by+Tim+White&safe=off&rlz=1T4GGHP_enGB647GB648&biw=1268&bih=690&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAmoVChMInJDkxa_MxwIVAZMNCh2y0g2-#imgrc=Zr6hRAaGCbDJzM%3A
