Dragon Art by Michael Whelan

Michael Whelan is an American science fiction and fantasy artist, born in 1950 in Culver City, California. For more than 30 years he was one of the most sought-after book cover illustrators in the field, and he is among its most honored artists.

Dragon fans know Whelan best for his covers for the Del Rey editions of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, which gave many readers their first picture of Pern's dragons and riders. He also painted covers for Michael Moorcock's Elric books for DAW and for Stephen King's Dark Tower series, beginning with The Gunslinger. His art has appeared on album covers as well, including Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell and several records by Sepultura and Cirith Ungol.

Whelan has won more than a dozen Hugo Awards, along with World Fantasy Awards and many Chesley Awards. In 2009 he became the first living artist inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Starting in the mid-1990s he turned more toward fine art paintings of his own, and in 2024 he said his cover for Brandon Sanderson's Wind and Truth would be his final illustration assignment.

His work is often described as imaginative realism. He paints with careful detail and glowing light, and his dragons feel like living animals with real anatomy, set in worlds that seem both strange and believable.