Fantasy & Sci-Fi

A Statement on Fantasy Work

In 1983, a friend showed me this game called "Dungeons and Dragons". What a quirky game? Weird-looking dice, no board, no pieces, no winners, no losers. Just pure imagination... I took the books home and read through them in a few days. I was hooked from then on. It was through D&D that I was introduced to fantasy artists like Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Keith Parkinson, Jeff Easley, and others. During that time I was reading DragonLance and Lord of the Rings too. Yep, I was hooked…

Years later, in high school, I began turning away from fantasy art and became interersted in the old masters after a museum field trip. I was especially drawn to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. I wanted to do more than just copy art, I wanted to learn the techniques behind art and how it was made. I figured Da Vinci and Michelangelo were a good starting point. After high school, I attended the Maryland Institute - College of Art for a brief time before running out of money. Practically homeless without two pennies to rub together, I joined the Army. Art got put close to the back burner for the first three years in the Army until I changed my career field from infantryman over to graphic artist. I ended up staying in the Army for 12 years. During that time I earned a fine arts degree, served as a combat artist, taught drawing, painting, design, and computer graphics. I amassed quite an art book collection, and learned a great deal about art history along the way.

The fantasy art bug bit again in 2003 when I picked up a volume of Spectrum - The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. Wow! Here, I was introduced to a whole new generation of fantasy artists whose work I admired. Artists like Brom, Matt Stawicki, Donato Giancola, Justin Sweet, and countless others. This, in addition to buying the Brother's Hildebrandt: The Tolkien Years book rekindled my interest. Not to mention the renewed interest that the Lord of the Rings movies had brought along with the amazing work of Alan Lee and John Howe. Seeing all of this new work, especially after years of studying the old masters, brought me back full circle. Now, I see fantasy art in a new way, including the process behind it and how it was crafted. I'm a little psyched.

I hope to accomplish taking my knowledge of past art and artists techniques and my love for fantasy art, role-playing, and literature and applying it to fantasy art. Let's see what happens!