We’re sorry to report the passing of American SF and fine artist David Schleinkofer, who died earlier this week, of Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

David was a professional artist and illustrator for over 40 years who had a distinct airbrush style, who received his art training at Bucks County Community College and The Philadelphia College of Art, now The University of The Arts, both in Pennsylvania.

“His work was eminent in the 1970s, especially on the cover to a book called Tomorrow and Beyond in 1978,” noted fellow artist Bob Eggleton on Facebook, “sort one of the first books to collect the works of many many SF/Fantasy artists of the 1970s. It became the granddaddy inspiration of the Spectrum annuals in the 1990s.

“David’s work featured in this book and he was on many SF paperbacks and in the 1980s, on a short-lived but visually stunning magazine called Science Digest.”

In a 2013 interview, David himself felt he had inherited his talent from grandfather, who was also an artist, and revealed his first commercial work was for Cars Magazine, after touting his portfolio around New York agencies for some time, followed by work for Stereo Review, the latter thanks to support from fellow artist Alan Magee.

Across his career, David’s commercial work was used by many of the advertising agencies in New York, utilised by companies such as Bailey’s Irish Cream, BASF, Levis and in a TV commercial for Schmidt’s Old Time Bread; as well as publications such as Champion International Paper and USA Today.

During his time as a client of agent Joe Mendola, he also created back box art for the first generation of Transformers toys for Hasbro, Hot Wheels art for story books for Mattel, and Milton Bradley games; and worked on box art for numerous computer games including Absolute Zero, Sim City, and more.

His cover work for book publishers featured on series such as Battlestar Galactica; and Robotech, his work used on all of the first printings of the novels by “Jack McKinney” a pseudonym used by authors Brian Daley and James Luceno; as well as creating art for many other science fiction paper backs for publishers such as Ace, Ballatine/DelRey, and Simon and Schuster.

“Whether he painted for an array of sci-fi publications or other projects, David brought a perspective to his subjects that was striking, provocative, or subtly haunting — or a combination of all of the above,” noted the team beh