Jon Arfstrom

[1] An accomplished watercolorist, Arfstrom combined his public life as a commercial artist, with its focus on Americana, with a private, surreal, imaginative world, expressed in his many notebooks and journals.

Too young for service in World War II, Arfstrom lied about his age and went work on board the big Great Lakes freighters and excursion ships, where he "sold beverages and did portraits of passengers."

[1] From his early teenaged years, Arfstrom began to send his work to the magazines he enjoyed to read, seeking sales and commissions.

[1] Arfstrom began, very early, to submit cover art and illustrations to 'the pulps', the magazines that were publishing science fiction and fantasy stories during this period.

He had some early successes, selling interior illustrations, then, in January of 1952, Dorothy McIlwraith, Weird Tales's editor, bought what would be the first of three covers he created for the magazine.