Fantasy Art

Fantasy art is a pretty vague thing and I felt really dumb when I was presenting my thesis, in front of the three teachers that would grade me.
I say that fantasy art is vague, because in all the time that I was researching about it, I couldn't find nice and thorough information, like you'd find if you looked for Cubism, for example. I mean, yeah, wikipedia has an article about fantasy art, but it's really short and only has kind of a definition of it and doesn't have the history and hardly any of the ones that practice it.

According to the research I made, Fantasy art has been present from the beginning of man kind, because it has to do with magical and mysterious things that we humans don't have an explanation for. It can overlap with science fiction and horror, but science fiction touches, as the name says, scientific things and horror, fear. So they CAN be filtered from each other. It can also overlap with a bunch of other shit, simply because there's tons of things that we don't understand about the world and ourselves and we tend to make up stuff about them, 'cuz that's just how we humanz work.

Fantasy art was present when we were drawing things in caves, because there's the theory that those drawings, although based on reality, were actually some sort of magic spells. Because the cavemen would draw themselves being successful in the hunt as a good luck charm that would make them successful when they ACTUALLY went out to hunt.

I don't remember WHERE I gathered all that shit from, but definitely part of it was from the wikipedia article and a pretty spiffy book called "The Encyclopedia of Fantasy Art by John Clute and John Grant".

ANYWAY, yeah. I'm incredibly fond of Fantasy art and wanted to make this entry about it and mention some of my favorite Fantasy artists.


1. Luis Royo: One of the things that I seriously like about his work, even if it becomes kind of monotone sometimes, is the atmosphere he creates. As if there was this super thick humidity, that makes everything look as if it was covered in myst.
I also like how it's blurry and detailed, at the same time. The women he draws are incredibly beautiful and they manage to stay beautiful, even if everything around them is decadent.
And it's far out how obsessive he is about his work to the point of not having sex and showering.


2. Brom: I don't know exactly what it is I like so much about this guy's work. Maybe it's how NEAT everything looks, the amount of color, just the right amount of reality, proportion and cartoon and how you are CERTAIN there's a story for each image. And I also admire and I'm super envious of him having already written three graphic novels.


3. Dorian Cleavenger: (If you don't have a Mac, you'll probably be able to view his website just fine >=/) What I've always liked about this guy is the stupid amount of IMAGINATION he has. Like, yeah, cat women are cool and so are mermaids, but that kind of shit is also really generic and COMMON and you see it a lot all the time; but this guy has the strangest creatures ever and, although I may not always like what he comes up with, it's definitely always refreshing, interesting and INSPIRING to look at his work.
That image I put up there is my favorite one of his.


4. Boris Vallejo:Boris Vallejo is awesome, because even if he's painting Fantasy subjects, he makes everything look so REAL. The amount of color he uses is super respectable and enviable and his love of the human body is amazing. And I dig that he respects the human body in his paintings and in real life, because the guy is also a body builder or something XD
And HOLY SHIT BALLS they have a blog here, too *dies* Here *follows*
Also, his wife, Julie Bell paints some super spiffy shit, too.