If you are looking to find a great Fantasy artists then look no further than Ben Wootten
One of the newer masters of fantasy art, Ben is adept as a character and a background artist with an exceptional talent for lighting.
From his site … Ben was born in Essex, England in 1969, moving to New Zealand when he was three (his parents opted to follow the head strong youth), and has lived there since.
Art has always been a strong passion, combined with the love of fantasy, sci-fi, the direction of film, design and illustration seemed logical, but not so. As a young fellow Ben had aspirations of being the next Jacques Cousteau or David Attenborough, and accordingly gave up art as a subject when fifteen to follow the sciences.
A degree in Zoology followed, it was here that he could see the down side of pursuing this career, more than likely it was going to lead to a life time of living at school/university.
So after eight or nine years in remission a bad case of the arts flared up leading to a course in Visual Design and a chance meeting that found him working at Weta Workshop on the first pass at King Kong in 1996. The rest is recent history: LOTR, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and King Kong.
All of this has lead him to where he is now hunched over a computer at home drawing pictures for RPG books and the like.
If you were at the Nike US Open of Surf in Huntington Beach a month ago then you may have seen this art been worked on by local artists. If not enjoy it. It is really terrific graffiti art or street art. I don’t know the artists who did this but I think they are onto something.
Boris Vallejo is a personal favorite of mine and the Illustrators Journal. A lot of our readership and followers are fans as well so I am reposting this interview by Richard Vasseur/Jazma Online for all opf our enjoyment.
Vallejo is truly a unique talent with a smooth, luxurious painting style that is the perfect compliment to his subject matter. To me the style reflects the era we live in smooth, slick, over-the-top rendering of muscles and female forms. The promotion of which is intrinsic to the subject matter itself. He, along with Frazetta are the modern godfathers of fantasy art and we are lucky that he and his wife and partner sat down to discuss a little about themselves with Mr. Vasseur.
Richard: How did you first start oil painting and drawing?
Boris Vallejo: When I was thirteen years old my father got me a set of brushes and oil paints. I made my own canvas and had my first painting experience. Drawing was there ever since I remember.
Richard: Do you have any professional training?
Boris: I started art school at thirteen and studied for four years, although I did not graduate since I did not care for the academic subjects such as art history, perspective and so on. Later on I realized the importance of these things and read about them on my own.
Richard: Do you have a preference of drawing fantasy or super heroes?
Boris: I am primarily a fantasy artist.
Richard: How did you decide you wanted to be an artist?
Boris: When I decided that medical school was not for me.
Richard: Did you ever expect to become as famous as you have?
Boris: I try not to think about it at all. I don’t consider myself famous.
Richard: What about your art captures a person’s attention?
Boris: I guess that you would have to ask that question to somebody else as I cannot be objective about my own work.
Richard: You have designed more than 300 covers but would you like to or have you done a complete comic?
Boris: As I said I am a fantasy illustrator. I am not suited for comic book drawing although I love comics.
Richard: How did you first meet Julie Bell?
Boris: She was a competitive bodybuilder and she came to model for me.
Richard: You use erotica in your pictures as well as imagination where does your inspiration for these come from?
Boris: It is part of my nature. I paint what I feel. Inspiration comes from everywhere. I don’t look for it, it comes to me.
Richard: Which painters do you admire most?
Boris: Every artist is a source of inspiration. Some more than others. I cannot mention just a few.
Richard: How do you feel having so many people looking at your art every day?
Boris: It is great! I am grateful that I can make a living doing what I would love to do and I owe it all to the people that enjoy and support our art.
Richard: What advice do you have for new artists?
Boris: Work hard, be patient and don’t get discouraged. It takes time to get there.
Richard: Do you have any final words for admireres of your work?
Boris: Thank you for being there!!!
Richard: Lilandra is one of your most famous artworks how did you end up creating it?
Julie Bell: The people at Marvel Comics commissioned me to paint Lilandra as part of an X-Men trading card set. I think they liked the way that I portrayed strong women and also the way I painted metal. Lilandra has both.
Richard: Why did you decide to get into illustrating?
Julie: Because it is a total blast and I love it!!
Richard: Do you think you will ever fully retire from work someday?
Julie: Definitely not. I couldn’t even think of it. Painting is more than just a job–it’s part of who I am as a human being.
Richard: What do you find most satisfying about finishing a piece of artwork?
Julie: I really enjoy looking at a newly finished painting for a little while and then I get very excited to start the next one.
Richard: Would you like to draw a complete comic or have you?
Julie: When I was a kid I drew comics for my friends. I think that’s as far as it will go. Comic art is such a specialized field and it takes many years to perfect, so I just keep painting and enjoy the comic art of other artists.
Richard: You have drawn a number of super heroes do you have a favorite hero you have drawn?
Julie: They were all really fun to work on. I’m trying to think of a favorite, but there are so many and their super powers all present different challenges to paint.
Richard: What is the “metal flesh” technique?
Julie: It is a name that was attached to my way of painting shiny metal. Often people think that I use special paints or airbrush to do it, but it’s just the same old oil paint and sable brushes that I use for everything else.
Richard: How much of an influence has your husband Boris Vallejo been on your art style?
Julie: A great, great influence. He is a very special man and his art reaches people all over the world at a profoundly deep level. He is the one who helped me bring my work up to the professional level at the beginning of my career and he continues to inspire me every day.
Richard: When you modeled for Boris were you at all selfconscious?
Julie: Of course! It was the first time I had modeled for an artist.
Richard: How was Imaginistix created and what is it?
Julie: It is the joining of Boris’ and my artistic talent. We started doing paintings together and really enjoyed both the process and the outcome.
Richard: What is the most important thing in your life?
Julie: Everything!
Richard: What about body building did you enjoy and why did you stop doing it?
Julie: I enjoy most forms of exercise and movement just because I love the feeling of it. I haven’t stopped doing bodybuilding, I simply don’t compete anymore. The competitions take a very hard toll on the body and I had my fill of it. It was great fun to compete and it was a wonderful learning experience.
Richard: Any last words of advice?
Julie: Enjoy your life and be respectful of yourself and everyone around you!
Many apologies for missing yesterdays birthday boy. April 5 is Fragonard’s birthday. Simply put this frenchman was a fabulous sketch artist who had command of the human form like no other. His paintings are fairly light in their subject matter but that doesn’t mitigate his talent which was extraordinary. A true frenchman in his treatment of romantic themes.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard 5 April 1732 – 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings (not counting drawings and etchings), of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father’s circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth’s rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin‘s atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of “Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf”, but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-André van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the “Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles” now at Grasse cathedral. On 17 September 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire.
While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761.
In 1765, his “Coresus et Callirhoe” secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV‘s pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork; such works include the Blind man’s bluff, Serment d’amour(Love Vow), Le Verrou (The Bolt), La Culbute (The Tumble), La Chemise enlevée (The Shirt Removed), and L’escarpolette (The Swing, Wallace Collection), and his decorations for the apartments of Mme du Barry and the dancer Madeleine Guimard.
A lukewarm response to these series of ambitious works induced Fragonard to abandon Rococo and to experiment with Neoclassicism. He married Marie-Anne Gérard, herself a painter of miniatures, (1745–1823) on 17 June 1769 and had a daughter, Rosalie Fragonard (1769–1788), who became one of his favourite models. In October 1773, he again went to Italy with Pierre-Jacques Onézyme Bergeret de Grancourt and his son, Pierre-Jacques Bergeret de Grancourt. In September 1774, he returned through Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Frankfurt and Strasbourg.
Back in Paris, Marguerite Gérard, his wife’s 14-year-old sister, became his pupil and assistant in 1778. In 1780, he had a son, Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (1780–1850), who eventually became a talented painter and sculptor. The French Revolution deprived Fragonard of his private patrons: they were either guillotined or exiled. The neglected painter deemed it prudent to leave Paris in 1793 and found shelter in the house of his friendMaubert at Grasse, which he decorated with the series of decorative panels known as the Les progrès de l’amour dans le cœur d’une jeune fille, originally painted for Château du Barry.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard returned to Paris early in the nineteenth century, where he died in 1806, almost completely forgotten.
The brilliance and the lighting mastery of Moreau is simple awesome. A fantasy artist before they really existed.Like Frazetta and Boris Vallejo, Moreau lefts our vision to other worldly dimensions.
Moreau (6 April 1826 – 18 April 1898) was a FrenchSymbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.
Moreau was born in Paris. His father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau, was an architect, who recognized his talent. His mother was Adele Pauline des Moutiers. Moreau initially studied under the guidance of François-Édouard Picot and became a friend of Théodore Chassériau, whose work strongly influenced his own. Moreau had a 25-year personal relationship, possibly romantic, with Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux, a woman whom he drew several times. His first painting was a Pietà which is now located in the cathedral at Angoulême. He showed A Scene from the Song of Songs and The Death of Darius in the Salon of 1853. In 1853 he contributedAthenians with the Minotaur and Moses Putting Off his Sandals within Sight of the Promised Land to the Great Exhibition.
Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864.
During his lifetime, Moreau produced more than 8,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings, many of which are on display in Paris’ Musée national Gustave Moreau at 14 rue de la Rochefoucauld (IXe arrondissement). The museum is in his former workshop, and began operation in 1903. André Breton famously used to “haunt” the museum and regarded Moreau as a precursor of Surrealism.
On the Thursday April 5th, 2012 broadcast of ‘This Week in Digital Media’, our special guest is artist, and illustrator specializing in fantasy and concept art Matt Gaser.
Lon Levin, executive editor, Illustrators Journal, and chief creative officer of XanateMedia, chats with Matt about the current state of fantasy art, his take on illustrating for the exploding entertainment and gaming sectors, and key trends to watch, including what to expect from the continuing convergence between gaming, illustration and the digital arts.
From Matt’s youth and active support of his artistic calling by his parents to his training at Art Center College of Design and his current free lancing portfolio journey we see the world of illustration and digital arts through a very talented practitioner’s eyes.
EDITORS NOTE: We had a few audio gremlins upfront and during the wind down of the interview, but other than that all went well.
One of the newer masters of fantasy art, Ben is adept as a character and a background artist with an exceptional talent for lighting.
From his site … Ben was born in Essex, England in 1969, moving to New Zealand when he was three (his parents opted to follow the head strong youth), and has lived there since.
Art has always been a strong passion, combined with the love of fantasy, sci-fi, the direction of film, design and illustration seemed logical, but not so. As a young fellow Ben had aspirations of being the next Jacques Cousteau or David Attenborough, and accordingly gave up art as a subject when fifteen to follow the sciences.
A degree in Zoology followed, it was here that he could see the down side of pursuing this career, more than likely it was going to lead to a life time of living at school/university.
So after eight or nine years in remission a bad case of the arts flared up leading to a course in Visual Design and a chance meeting that found him working at Weta Workshop on the first pass at King Kong in 1996. The rest is recent history: LOTR, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and King Kong.
All of this has lead him to where he is now hunched over a computer at home drawing pictures for RPG books and the like.