Suzan Lovett

Name:	Suzan Lovett
Alias(es):
Type:	Fan Artist, Fan Writer
Fandoms:	Star Trek, Blake's 7, Starsky and Hutch, The Professionals, Wiseguy, Man From UNCLE, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Harry Potter, Highlander, Sentinel, Stargate SG-1, Lord of the Rings, Smallville, Star Wars: TPM, House MD, Torchwood
Communities:
Other:
URL:	http://www.partnersrmore.com/ Subpages for Suzan Lovett: Suzan_Lovett has no subpages to list.
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Suzan Lovett is a slash and gen writer, but best known in fandom as a prolific artist.

She started drawing for Star Trek in the early 80s. She has done hundreds of illustrations in many fandoms; het, gen and slash. Suzan is known for selling most of her originals, along with prints, being extremely friendly to newbies, and being a generally amazingly awesome person. Her artwork has won dozens of awards, including Fan Q Awards, Huggy Awards, Stiffies, Surak Awards, SlaSHies and Screwz awards, in addition to art show awards at various conventions. In 1997, she was the Fan Guest of Honor at the Farpoint convention, and has been a GOH at other conventions.

Suzan's fanfiction is available at her new Partnersrmore site. In the mid 1990s, she was one of the first group of Starsky & Hutch slash fan writers who agreed to allow their fan fiction to be publicly posted online.

Because Suzan began drawing in the 1980s and 1990s for fanzines and for sale at conventions, much of her work is not available on the internet. In the early 2000s, however, she sold prints of her art via the web, as seen in the Wayback archived sites squidge.org and kixxster.org (an incarnation of her old website). Some of her fantasy-based Blake's 7 art is currently archived at the Blake's 7 Guide and in a Blake's 7 Fan Art Gallery.

More recently she offered a beautiful print of her House/Wilson painting called Abiding Spirits for sale at housemd-guide.com and two Torchwood prints in the jackxianto community.

Her Fannish Start

1980, my very first con, Kansas City TreKon, where I saw my first fan Art Show and thought: Hmmm, I used to draw. I wonder...? I must admit that the real reason wasn’t so much for “art’s sake” as it was for sheer money, or rather, the lack thereof. The paycheck coming into the house at the time simply couldn’t cover too many indulgences, I’d just discovered zines, hankered for more and I thought contributors copies were a great idea. I put together a small portfolio, Xeroxed them and sent them to the editors of the zines I’d bought. I had all of three. Galactic Discourse, Contact—the editors of which both bounced back my drawings, Bev Volker & Nancy Kippax telling me they weren’t good enough to be in Contact, Laurie H. saying essentially the same thing about Galactic Discourse, but very gently... The third zine was R&R ...

Illustrator

Suzan's favorite medium is graphite pencil on cold-press pen&ink boards because of the way the pencil flows on smooth paper and the different results one can get just by simply layering and/or varying the pressure on the same tool, but work as a fanartist in the past was often limited by what editors could reproduce. For Suzan it meant that "getting pencil work reproduced was expensive, so I was told to draw in ink if I wanted to be in a zine, and for a while I did. It's an unforgiving medium, and my work needs a lot of forgiving, then and now, so I was really happy when I was finally able to get pencil drawings accepted."

Her early work in 1980 was pretty erotic. When asked to explain her limits, she said that she had no qualms about drawing erotic art, but there were some subjects (S&M, etc.) she refused to do and that she tried to capture love. "[I]n any case, though, I mostly want a drawing to give form to an idea and/or distill a story into an image." When she was asked what inspired her to draw K/S, she said that drawing K/S wasn't about expressing her own vision, but about giving life to someone else's alternate universe. Making a distinction between an artist and an illustrator, she explained: "I'm not an artist; I'm an illustrator, and illustrators are mainly story-tellers, in shapes and forms rather than words."

Back cover of Master of the Revels. An advertisement was used as the reference for this piece.

Suzan has commented that she is always flattered to be asked to illustrate people's zines, but she can never promise to deliver exactly what someone is envisioning, and writers must always allow an artist the option of saying no.

Many of the male figures that Suzan drew were based on professional photos and advertisements. The back cover of Master of the Revels came from an ad for home pregnancy test kits in the 1990s. In Chalk and Cheese there is a drawing of Bodie in a tux with his tie undone and Doyle, wearing blue jeans and a cut off top as he shoves Bodie up against the wall. In the original advertising book, the Doyle character was a woman and Bodie was the man in the tux. The body of Bodie in handcuffs on the cover of Leather and Blue Jeans 2 was lifted completely from a photo ad for " The Dungeon" in The Advocate, a gay magazine. Fans would often play "guess the ad" and would approach Suzan at conventions who would cheerfully confirm her sources.

Her Evolving Art Style and Fandom Reactions To Her Art

As noted above, Suzan's early style was often limited by what fanzine publishers could easily reproduce. Her initial Star Trek ink illustrations are often spare and simple. In fact, as Suzan herself wryly points out, her first few art pieces were rejected by zine publishers:

interior art from R & R #14, 1981. An example of Suzan's early work.

Bev Volker & Nancy Kippax, the editors of ….Contact...both bounced back my drawings...telling me they weren’t good enough to be in Contact. Laurie H. saying essentially the same thing about Galactic Discourse, but very gently, and also suggesting that if I want to be printed in zines I might want to draw in ink rather than charcoal as I had done, since ink was cheap to print unlike charcoal/pencil work that required negatives & plates. The third zine was R&R, and—well, Johanna Cantor kept it cheap mostly to give the new writers and artists a place where they had a chance of getting printed. She sent me two stories to illustrate, mentioning she’d prefer ink, but if I preferred otherwise, she was fine with that, as long as I understood she’d be simply Xeroxing them and I shouldn’t expect perfect quality. She’s the only reason I kept on drawing. She kept sending me stories and printing my drawings until I got better and the other zine editors started noticing and asking for work, accepting pencil work, until I had more and more reasons to improve."

Like many budding artists, it took a few years before her artwork began to appear on fanzine covers (samples of some of Suzan's interior art across the years have been labeled in the gallery below and can also be found on the individual zine pages). Once there, however, Suzan dominated zine covers for many decades. She even inspired a tongue in cheek cartoon in which one of the characters from Blake's 7 (Vila) can be seen with a coloring book for sale while another character (Avon) comments sarcastically "Give him a box of Crayolas and he thinks he's Suzie Lovett."

When fanzines began incorporating more pencil art, Suzan's characteristic style began to emerge. Her use of male (and female models as stand ins for men) in their prime from magazine ads often elevated the physique of the actors to mirror the imaginations of readers and viewers. Many fans also preferred Suzan’s realistic style over the more surrealistic drawings of Gayle F or the strong line art of Gee Moaven. Among these, some expressed a preference for her black and white pencils, feeling that they captured more detail and nuanced emotions.

cover of Awakenings #2, 1996. The art shows typical elements of Suzan's art - multiple images and faces in backgrounds and intricate Celtic bordering.

As more and more color appeared on fanzine covers, Suzan’s style became more detailed and intricate. She would bury multiple images and faces in backgrounds, add ornate borders and build layers into each art piece. Fans would spend hours studying the zine covers trying to absorb and take in all the facets of her work. Viewing a Lovett drawing was, in many ways, like reading a story, with twists and turns and a narrative path. The interior artwork from Harlequin Airs is most often cited as an example of this multi-layered approach; however most, if not all of her zine covers eventually contained similar tableau elements.

Not all fans responded to Suzan's new lush art style. Some didn’t like the fact they could recognize the magazine ads and sources that the poses were taken from; others felt that the female model proportioning should have been changed to fit the fact that the characters were male. Others didn’t like borders or cluttered, multi-imaged backgrounds. The popularity of Lovett's art led some fans to feel that the art shows of the 1990s were blurring together, filled with Lovett-like art and lacking the raw sexuality and diversity of earlier art shows. In addition to complaints about her overshadowing art shows, some fans felt uncomfortable with a perceived disconnect between the pricing and the quality of her art: "The art of Suzie Lovett, not counting the few prints on my walls, is overrated, overpriced, and overdue for some serious competition." The majority of fans felt differently, seeing in Lovett's work a tenderness and emotional intimacy that mirrored their feelings for and love of the characters (and of the characters for one another). Still other fans enthusiastically embraced what they saw as the lusty sensuality of her drawings:"Suzan Lovett's artwork," commented one fan, "should come with free vibrators."

Several artists have pointed to Suzan's work as being influential on their fannish art development. For example, Suzan's artwork for "Timeless" (included in the gallery below) was one of the inspirations that led enednoviel to create her Starsky & Hutch Roman AU drawing The General and the Slave. In her 2007 interview, Caren Parnes stated that "Suzan Lovett and I were roughly contemporary, and our styles were very different, but she had an influence on me (as she did on so many artists), with her intricate Celtic bordering and elaborate framing compositions—bringing decorative art and illustration together.”

Selling Fanart

Suzan sells art mostly at gen and slash cons; usually these are art prints, but she has also auctioned off some of the originals. Being able to afford a Lovett print or a Lovett original was considered by many fans to be the pinnacle of fannish collecting. While the originals would often sell for over $500 (one piece sold for $3,000), in later years unframed prints could be purchased for $20 a piece. Because her art was popular and commanded such a high price, Suzan's work is sometimes mentioned as an example of fandom's inconsistent approach to profit: selling fanart and fanfic are often received quite differently. Fanzine publishers were not unaware of the draw of Lovett's artwork, knowing that a Lovett cover could boost their zine sales. In 2002, one zine publisher briefly considered the idea of releasing some of Suzan's art (with her permission) in the form of an art book. While the art book was never published, the idea remained a popular one for many years. Over the years, several of Suzan's Professionals, Lord of the Rings, Sentinel, Buffy and Smallville art prints have been turned into cross stitch patterns by admiring fans. Fans can also buy her artwork printed on coffee mugs and t-shirts.

Parodies and Works Inspired by Lovett's Art

• 

  cover of Dark Fantasies #2. Title: "Liaisons Dangereux" -- "Part of what placed this zine in my hot little hand was the cover. In this striking, black and white piece entitled "Liaisons Dangereux," by Suzan Lovett, Bodie and Doyle are dressed (or perhaps it is more proper to say, semi-un dressed) in eighteenth century garb. Doyle holds a riding crop and Bodie a candle."

• 

  Karen Eaton's back cover parody of Dark Fantasies #2: Karen Eaton's cartoon version of the picture (featured on the back cover) suggests possible uses the characters may be contemplating for these items.”

Notable Art

Suzan's work was used on the front cover of Enterprising Women

Cover of the zine Harlequin Airs (1993) -- This zine, popular for the art as well as the writing, still continues to fetch top prices when sold, sometimes several hundred dollars.

In the '90s, Suzan did an entire series of 25 images featuring Bodie and Doyle from The Professionals in circus garb to illustrate Ellis Ward's AU novel Harlequin Airs.

Scanned images of the art have been archived on the Pros Circuit Archive, and are also embedded in the story itself.

At Anglicon in 1993, Suzan Lovett sent a set of original Harlequin Airs color drawings for the art show that the con organizers didn't hang "because they were art for a slash zine", even though they were not at all explicit, and they did choose to display a print of a completely naked Tasha Yar draped over a clothed Data.

Beyond her Pros art, several of Suzan's Sentinel, Starsky & Hutch and.... art pieces have been singled out for praise:

• "The cover [of Primal Instincts (Sentinel zine)Primal Instincts #3] is actually my favorite Suzan Lovett Sentinel piece--and probably my favorite Sentinel piece of artwork, period. A nice, simple look at Jim and Blair, laughing in bed. Aside from the fact I think it's her best depiction of their faces, especially Jim's, I love the pose (Blair on top of Jim in bed, both wearing white shirts, heads thrown back in laughter). There's also just a *joy* in the picture."

front cover of Primal Instincts #3: "Sense and Sensuality" -- "The cover is actually my favorite Suzan Lovett Sentinel piece--and probably my favorite Sentinel piece of artwork, period. A nice, simple look at Jim and Blair, laughing in bed. Aside from the fact I think it's her best depiction of their faces, especially Jim's, I love the pose (Blair on top of Jim in bed, both wearing white shirts, heads thrown back in laughter). There's also just a *joy* in the picture. It's fun.

• "Yes, nudity can be sensual without being sexual; let me refer you specifically to three Lovett pieces: "Haven" (SH). It's beautiful, it's soft and gentle and I swear I stared at the piece a dozen times before I realized that Hutch's head was resting in Starsky's lap for a *reason*. "Needing Someone, for Just a Little While", from Majickal (or Master? whichever one Suzie illo'd); Bodie & Doyle are naked, shown from the waist up, holding each other with such emotional strength and pain it makes me want to die. Love it love it love it. And lastly, the B7 piece... mentioned last week, I think (I forget its title). Avon & Blake wrapped around each other, emotional stuff everywhere, complete and total nudity with no penises displayed."

Notable Fiction

• Goliath, a gen h/c Starsky & Hutch novel, with great art by her and an even better story: an excellent exploration of Starsky and Hutch's relationship post-Sweet Revenge.

• A Fine Storm, a Starsky & Hutch slash novella that appeared in Code 7 #4, built around a painfully believable misunderstanding plot.

• The Road to Hell, a Blake's 7 story that was originally published in Powerplay #1 (1987) and later was reprinted together with Suzan's other four Blake's 7 stories (online versions available here) in the British edited The Road to Hell and Other Stories. The Road to Hell is a second season AU. Summary from the online version: "Blake is in desperate trouble, and it's up to Avon to rescue him. The rescue turns out to be far harder and takes much longer than Avon expected because Blake is not exactly himself." Many consider The Road to Hell, Lovett's first and longest story, one of the best Blake and Avon stories ever written.

"People think of her art when they think of [Suzan], which I think is almost too bad. She wrote one of my all time favorite B7 stories (A Road to Hell, .... and by far one of my fav Starsky and Hutch stories (A Fine Storm, Code 7, #4). I'm not a very visual person--if there is a line of text below an entire beautiful picture, I often read the line and turn the page hardly noticing the art--I would love to see her write more and draw less. She is definitely in the first rank of fan writers to me."

Zines

Below is a list of zines Suzan contributed artwork to:

5th Season #5 | The Adult Kirk | All the Queen's Men | Angel in the Dark | Antinomy | Avon Calling #1, #3 | Awakenings #1, #2 | Back to Back | Before the Glory | Brothers of Shadows... and Son of the Light | The Boys Are Back #2 | Catch a Fallen Star | Classified Affairs | Commitment | Continental B&D | Cross the Line | Crystal Blue Persuasion | Dangerous Lives, Dangerous Visions #1 | Dark Fantasies #2 | Distant Shores | Dyad #24 | Essential Sentinel #1, #2 | Favorite Things | 5th Season | Final Frontier, inside art | First Principles #2, 3 | Harlequin Airs | Heatwave | Heroes | A Hunting We Will Go | If Love is Real: Addiction | Indigo Boys #4 | Iron and Silk | Kaiidth | Leather and Blue Jeans #1 | Legend's End | Liaisons #2 | Master of the Revels | Mind Meld #1, 2, 3, 6 | Motet | Murder on San Carmelitas | Never Far Apart #1, #2 | Nightlight #1 | No Easy Answers | No Holds Barred #11, 12 | Odyssey #5, 6, 6.5, 7, 8 | The Pandora's Box Affair | Panning for Pyrites | Perestroika | A Place in the Sun | Powerplay #1, #6, #7 | Primal Instincts | Progressions | Race with Destiny | Raising Hell covers #1-4 | Reflections in a Shattered Glass | Return of the 7 #3 | Revolution | Sanctuary | Sardonac | Saurian Brandy Digest | The Sensual World | The Sleeping Beauty Affair | Sodality | Songs of Experience | Songs of Innocence | Summer's End | Taemon's Cuckoos | Thank You Kindly | There Are Three | Those Who Favor Fire | The Thousandth Man | Timeless | Total Eclipse of the Heart | Trilogy | Tunnels of Love #6 | Turned to Fire | Vault of Tomorrow #7, #9, #11, #4, #10 | Warriors | What If | Whisper of a Kill

Gallery

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  1996. cover of Angel in the Dark. This interior frontspiece was used as the basis of the zine flyer to help boost sales and draw attention to the zine. Because of the popularity of Suzan's art at the time, the inclusion of this image on the flyer made the flyers collector's items. Even non-Pros fans would scoop them off convention flyer tables in spite of the fact that the image was largely obscured by the flyer text.

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  2006. cover of Antinomy The art piece is titled: The Eagle Nebula. It is an example of Suzan illustrating her own zine. Note the miniature portraits of each of the characters in the left border, another Lovett technique.

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  1995. the first issue of Awakenings “This zine dabbled in a bit of every fandom, which was one of the things that first wanted me to get the zine. (Okay, that and the Suzi Lovett color WISEGUY cover.)” Lovett's signature style includes multiple portraits, intimate poses and elaborate borders.

• 

  Castaways 2: The Castaways art series was one of the many pieces of Suzan Lovett turned into a cross-stitch pattern that fans could buy. The seller wrote about Castaways 1 which was somewhat explicit, a rarity with Suzan: “Once again, Suzan's use of framing and the bright flashes of colour made this picture an immediate hit with me. Then there's the lovely, sensual pose of the two figures. This is one of my favourite Stargate fan art pieces." Castaways 1 is more like Lovett's other nudes: sensual without being explicit.

• 

  1997. The cover of Crystal Blue Persuasion was the inspiration for the story of the same name. According to the author's note in the zine, this was Flamingo's first Starsky & Hutch story and was inspired by the illo "Crystal Blue Persuasion" by Suzan Lovett. "I saw it at a friend's house and asked Suzan where the story was that inspired it. She told me there was no story...yet. The illo became the cover of the zine by the same name."

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  2008. cover of A Hunting We Will Go -- As typical with Lovett's art, the background details contain a hidden narrative - each image square references a key scene from episodes during the first season. The t-shirt Sam is wearing reads: “Sometimes he *is* heavy” referring to lyrics from a 1960s song "He ain't heavy, he's my brother." In the case of Supernatural the sibling obligation between Sam and Dean results in much angst. To see the details click for a larger version.

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  1993. cover Continental B and D: Have Partner, Will Travel: “…one such purchase [a slash zine] led to a bit of excitement the other day. The postwoman knocked on my door with a second-hand zine I'd ordered from the States. "Continental B/D” had left the USA discreetly concealed in one of those UPS Priority Mail envelopes, but when the postwoman handed it to me, it was in a Post Office transparent wrapper. ‘It came open in the Post,’ she said. ‘I'm sorry. But it doesn't look damaged.’ And she gave me a very nice smile, so I can only assume she liked the Suzanne [sic] Lovett cover..." Another fan said: “Susan [sic] is a wonderful artist, but sometimes, to me, the figures seem a bit cold and stilted. This cover conveyed a passion that was very evocative.” The awkward pose of the male characters may be the result of Lovett modeling her art based on advertisements (see discussion above).

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  1981. Illustration for the Star Trek fanzine Kaiidth. Much of Lovett's early art was printed in fanzines before color illustrations became affordable to publishers. As a result, she would often experiment with more abstract black and white styles that could be easily reproduced. The vast majority of fans today would not recognize this as a Lovett work.

• 

  2010. cover of issue Dangerous Lives, Dangerous Visions #5: An example of her work in recent years, this one from 2010, illustrating a continuation of Decorated for Death. The drawing shows an edgier style and a blending of drawn and photo-manips, which suits the stories subject matter. In more recent years, Lovett has moved away from drawings into pure photo-manips.

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  1997. The front cover of Motet #1. It shows Bodie and Doyle as children. This image is notable because although Pros fanfic and fanart embraced a wide range of tropes and themes, stories featuring Bodie and Doyle as children were rare. The vast majority of the fiction, and thus the art, focused on them as adults, possibly due to the gritty nature of the original series. The artwork, titled “In A Different Reality" inspired the writing of the story “The Promise.” One reviewer wrote that the story “is a shorty at two pages long but sweet nonetheless. It's inspired by a gorgeous Suzan Lovett picture featuring Bodie and Doyle as two beautiful, serious-eyed children.”

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  1982. from R & R #17, a very early illustration by Suzan for her story The Web -- this story was nominated for a 1983 Fan Q Award. You can see the beginning of Lovett's use of detailed backgrounds to create a multi-layered narrative.

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  1992. cover of Whisper of a Kill: One fan wrote: "I *definitely* consider good artwork an excellent reason to pay more for a zine. I've had more than one experience where people have purchased two copies of "Whisper of a Kill," Lois Welling's novel, so they could cut off the wraparound cover from one and frame it, whilst still keeping an intact copy for reading." Here, Lovett uses reflections to hint at the characters' hidden motives, a twist in her typical style that often buries multiple storylines into a single drawing.

• 

  2000. cover of Thank You Kindly, her piece called "Holding Beauty" won a Huggy Award in 2000. Lovett would often "rebuild" the physiques of the actors with more sculptured muscles to match fandom's imagined versions of the characters rather than pure photo-realism.