The Art of Arantza

There are scores of artists working in the field of erotic fantasy but Arantza (a woman by the way) stands head and shoulders above most of the hacks by infusing her drawings of beautiful women with life. Here is an artist that knows how to draw and knows what a woman actually looks like. This may seem like a redundant statement, but believe me, it's not. Most artists working today have little or no sense of proportion, anatomy or composition. I will not name names, but they know who they are. By using pencil tones and a brilliant use of light/dark these drawings come off almost as paintings since these are not just a collection of sketches but fully realised works. Normally I don't include images from the interior artwork of a book, but here I'll make an exception so you can see what I mean.
The Illustrations lean heavily towards the dark erotic fantasy with many drawings of nude or scantily clad vampires, witches and gothic locales.
To me, Arantza follows in the same tradition as other Spanish artists like José González, Sanjulián, Esteban Maroto, Fernando Fernandez and Enrich, all of whom were true masters of the medium. Get this one while it's still in print!

Mark Schultz: Various Drawings Vol. 1

I first became aware of Mark Schultz with a couple of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs graphic novels I bought in the 90's and was immediatly impressed with his old-school style reminiscent of Frazetta and Alex Raymond, especially in the inks. Schultz often uses an inking technique called dry brush which really lift the drawings to another level by giving them more depth and tonal variety. Included are many character sketches from Cadillacs and Dinosaurs as well as some Conan pieces and various other works. It's all in black and white but believe me, it's much better this way since one can better appreciate Schultz' skill and beautiful fluid inking. Great stuff!

The Star Wars poster book

If you're a Star Wars fan, a student of film history or just a lover of great art, this book will appeal to you. With an oversized coffe-table hardcover format, the posters are reproduced large enough to really appreciate the detail and artistry of the pieces. A very informative text accompanies the pictures and gives a detailed overview of the evolution of the movie poster as a promotional tool for the movies. However, not just movie posters are included, from both the original trilogy and prequels, also those made to promote the various tie-ins like toys, snacks and other merchandise as well as those made for special events like the Star Wars Celebration. I remember that I owned a copy of the famous Hildebrandt poster (with Leia showing a lot of leg) for Star Wars, episode IV, and thinking it was the coolest poster ever!

Happy New Year!

A happy 2008 for everyone and happy reading! For myself I hope to minimize my list of books on my to-read pile. That's what I said last year but I just keep buying more books!

Children of Hurin for Christmas

Received The Children of Hurin for Christmas. Will start reading it as soon as I finish Rogue Angel - Destiny. Also, I just finished reading The Thirteenth Tale on december 24th.

James Bama: American Realist

I recently recieved my copy of James Bama: American Realist and let me tell I'm just floored by this incredible collection by a true master painter. Bama is relevant to this blog because his speciality was book covers, mostly of the mass market paperback variety where his incredible visions of adventure were needed to catch the eye of readers.
I knew him only for his iconic portrayal of pulp legend Doc Savage, but there is a whole lot more in this book, covers for westerns, war stories, science fiction and even romance and teen novels.
The highlight for me, of course, was the Doc Savage section, with cover reproductions of every single Bantam Books Doc Savage novel with a James Bama painting. These covers almost cry out READ ME as they are filled with incredibly visions of adventure. Sadly, these Doc Savage novels are long out of print so finding them can be a challenge. Nostalgia Ventures has reprinted a few Doc Savage adventures in 3 volumes but without the Bama covers (dammit!), opting instead for the original pulp magazine covers, which is cool, but still, the Bama covers would have been cooler.
The book ends with a section of Bama's western themed paintings which is what he does nowdays, and these too are fantastic evoking serene visions of cowboys, indians and wildlife, always with his characteristic realistic style.

Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos

I thought I'd write about this book which I purchased a few months ago and is one of my favorite art books, Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos. Basil Gogos is best known for being the cover artits for Famous Monsters of Filmland, a cult sf & horror magazine that existed from the late 50's to the early 80'.
What made Gogos' art stand out was his wild use of color. Up until then people only knew black and white versions of the classic movie monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein's creature, the Wolfman and others. His paintings use several colored light sources to illuminate his monster portraits giving them a very unique look to say the least. One of the main things about Gogos' is that he always manages to evoque an air of sympathy for the monsters he paints.
The book also includes a section with many astounding pencil drawings (or maybe charcoal) which really showcase a whole different side to his technique. My favorite is an incredible portrait of Elsa Lanchester as The Bride of Frankentsein that is as riveting as any of Gogos' color pieces.
Aside from the monster stuff we are treated to several examples of Gogos' illustrations for various men's adventure magazines with scenes of war and adventure in exotic locales. These are painted in a more traditional style without the crazy color schemes he would later use for Famous Monsters but they are nonetheless very good.
It's important to note that Gogos doesn't look down on his subject matter. He has great respect for the classic monsters and the actors that portrayed them, his portraits of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi are prime examples of this.