Hugo-winning artist Jim Burns recently took on an exciting new assignment, just a little outside the fantastic territory with which he’s mos familiar. That job found him creating new visual versions of Pennywise and other creatures from the imagination of Stephen King.
Burns is the illustrator for the new edition of King’s It (1986) from The Folio Society.
The limited edition features a new introduction by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. Just 500 copies will pre printed. The edition features 11 double-page black-and-white illustrations and 6 double-page color illustrations from Burns, as well as box, binding and endpaper design by David Curtis.
The limited edition will be quarter bound in leather with printed cloth sides and printed edges and presented in a clamshell box covered in cloth with a printed lining. The box also includes instructions on how to make a paper boat, designed by Curtis, which recalls the boat which sends Georgie into the sewers in King’s story. Every element of the production has been approved by Stephen King himself and will feature signatures from Del Toro, Burns and Curtis.
Burns, who studied at St Martin’s School of Art in London, has worked as a freelance illustrator since leaving there in 1972. His work has often been mostly in science fiction and fantasy genres. In addition to science fiction/fantasy Hugos, he has earned 14 BSFA Awards and a Chesley Lifetime Achievement award.
Occasional film work includes concept designs for Blade Runner and The Chronicles of Riddick, as well as the cancelled remake of Forbidden Planet. He works in a variety of media — drawing in pencil, oils, acrylics and digital.
Burns recently fielded some questions from Wicked Horror about his work and his efforts on It.
WH: You’ve crafted many fantastic worlds with your artwork and worked with visionaries such as Ridley Scott and Harry Harrison. What drew you to the world of Stephen King’s It?
Jim Burns: I was offered it by The Folio Society, somewhat out of the blue at the Glasgow World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Summer of 2024. It was somewhat outside my normal comfort zone but I’ve always been up for a challenge — so I went for it. And Folio are of course a pretty prestigious outfit to work with.
WH: It is a massive and much-loved work, and now there are various interpretations of figures in the book and the world of King’s Derry, Maine. How did you go about choosing what you’d illustrate for the Folio edition?
Jim Burns: There was certainly plenty of imagination to choose from. It was suggested by the Head of Editorial at Folio, James Rose, that I take the approach of producing the bulk of the work in the style of my quite well-known large ‘mythical beast’ drawings in pencil, which James seemed to be a fan of. This would comprise 10 of the full double spread pieces leaving the remaining 6 spreads to be completed as paintings. So 16 images in all plus a 17th as the title page frontispiece. It was my idea to employ the pencil work to mostly show the specific fears of the Losers’ Club children… so we see the mummy-clown, the werewolf, the leeches attacking Patrick etc… whilst the paintings would depict somewhat more narrative moments from the book.
WH: What about decisions on what would be in color and what would get black-and-white treatment? Which did you find most effective for creating the right mood and tone?
Jim Burns: A lot of the decisions were taken on the basis of the fact that my time on this project was very constrained owing to the contracted Rights obligations — so in many ways the pencil work, which is much faster to produce, seemed the obvious choice for the specific monstrous incarnations. Leaving the fewer, much more labor intensive paintings to create more by way of narrative moments, with backgrounds and various extra details. The drawings are very much simpler.
WH: What went into deciding what style to use since you’ve worked in a variety of media?
Jim Burns: Time was the biggest potential problem on this one — I had to commence the job in October and have it finished by the very beginning of February… and with Christmas falling very inconveniently right smack in the middle — so as a consequence the paintings are smaller works than my usual output these days. It was made pretty clear though that Folio really did want some painted pieces and some pencil pieces. This was never going to be a digital job. Generally speaking the work follows my usual painting and pencil approaches — although with this one I attacked all the pieces as a single large job, hopping from one to another and bringing it all together as one, rather than finding myself with just a week to go and still some paintings not even started. Which would be panic stations.
WH: How do you begin to take what’s essentially a description in an author or creator’s imagination and give it shape and form on the page? Is there a consistent process for you?
Jim Burns: I have a pretty good imagination and can perceive (I think) what the writer’s intentions are. I follow the text very minutely so as not to miss vital or often quite trivial details. I think one owes it to the writer to try and at least approximate what I think is going through his mind when he’s putting this stuff down on paper. I get a lot of pleasure from that kind of devotion to the written word and it has stood me in largely good stead with writers over the years.
WH: What did you enjoy most in creating illustrations from this book? Did any creature or character or any combination stand out?
Jim Burns: I really did enjoy doing the drawings most! If I’d had longer and a bigger chance to indulge myself more on the paintings you might get a different answer. Whilst the drawings are complete and I wouldn’t want to do any more to them… as is always the case I, without exception, reckon that my paintings are simply never finished. I’ve discovered that other artists feel the same thing. It was particularly so on this job but in the end I think I did a pretty fair job of producing acceptable and entirely relevant to the book pieces of work. Of the drawings I have a particular favorite in the Mummy-Clown clambering over the bridge railing. Also the Doberman Pincher-headed clown. I think my painting — the first in the book of Pennywise down in the storm drain holding the paper boat — is pretty damned effective…and also the rotting corpse of Belch in the old Plymouth Fury motor car.
WH: We have to talk about Pennywise. What did you find in the text that helped in developing your vision? What did you strive for most?
Jim Burns: He only appears once in my pictures as Pennywise The Dancing Clown — namely that first spread where he peers up from the storm drain. Trying to push and combine that idea that Stephen King presents of a being that is smiling and friendly with the clear sense that he’s also evil and dangerous. This meant pushing paint around a fair bit to see how far I could exaggerate him without going over the top into a different realm of weirdness that would have little Georgie running away in the very first moment and abandoning his paper boat — in which case we wouldn’t have had a story! I wanted him to somehow arouse Georgie’s curiosity. In the book he does it probably more with his cajoling voice but I had to try and get it simply with the image. I liked how through many of the images, whatever horrible form ‘It’ takes to strike fear into the kids — he still wears at least part of his clown outfit.
WH: Much of what you’ve worked on has been sort of in the science fiction realm under the umbrella of speculative fiction. What was it like shifting gears into the fantastic and horror realm? And rather that envisioning futuristic or distant worlds, you were looking back to America of a past era. Did a realistic approach still work or did you need to do any recalibration?
Jim Burns: I’ve tackled the occasional horror job over the years and I do rather enjoy trying to inject a bit of the ‘darker side’ into my work at times — but you’re right, science fiction has been the mainstay of my work down the years. And this was certainly my first major foray into the horror genre. I’ve always tried to be flexible in my approach to commissions, happy to have a crack at whatever comes my way (within limits). I’ve never liked the idea of being ‘typecast’ if you like…I’d get very bored with having to repeat myself over and over. And I think it’s this approach, this willingness to take on new things, that has helped to keep me in work for so long… it being 53 years now since my first published bookjacket commission. Which was actually a war novel!
So my predilection to some degree for the darker side of things meant that this was inevitably an exciting return to producing a lot more — and to be honest I wouldn’t complain at all about more coming my way. One can get a little weary of spaceships and aliens at times!
