If I was told that for the rest of my life I would only be
allowed to look at the work of one artist, then it would probably be John Howe,
who is a big influence on the kind of work I like to do (namely dragons :D). John
was born in 1957 Vancouver and grew up in British Columbia, but he and his
family moved to France and so he went and studied at Ecoles des arts Decoratifs
de Strasbourg, as of right now he is a freelance artist living in Switzerland
with his wife and son, now that we have that out of the way let’s get onto the
art stuff.
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| http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=4468 |
John is very well known for his fantasy work for a number of
big films (most of which you have seen), these include the Lord of the Rings
Trilogy (one of 2 concept artists, other was Alan Lee), The Lion the Witch and
the Wardrobe, Pans Labyrinth and the up and coming The Hobbit. But he has also
done illustration for books, cards and board games, most notably the books of
Robin Hobb and cards for Magic: The Gathering, Wars and the Lord of the Rings
card game.
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| http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=65 |
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For John inspiration comes from practically everywhere, myths and legends are of course a big influence due to all the fantasy artwork he does, but a lot of inspiration comes from the real world, weaponry, armour, architecture, calligraphy, plants, animals, just about everything has a place in his work. This is due to him always having his work having a certain amount of reality to prop it up, which gives his work a sense of solidness to it, as though you could reach out and touch it, something I like to call fantasy reality, where while the dragon doesn’t exist in our world, we can give it shape, form and a solidness to it where we could believe it to be laying round the next corner, that is what John Howe is so good at and why I love his artwork. But not all of his painting sticks to reality, if at any point he feels that the atmosphere of a piece will be enhanced, if he changes something so that is not realistic, then he does it as atmosphere is more important than absolute reality.
But what does he work with? While these days a lot of artists will do a lot of work digitally, John doesn’t, preferring to work from a basic sketch and use more traditional mediums like pastel, watercolours and acrylics to work up to the final piece. At the end he will scan his work and do a bit of colour correction or if need be stitch his work back together again, but for the most part he works solely using traditional medium of which he has gained a mastery over. As such he doesn’t tend to put large amount of detail into the entirety of his work, instead preferring to put the detailing into the parts that truly matter, whilst leaving the rest fairly undefined. Another thing he tends to do is that he will put real world objects into his work, The Gate of Ivory is mostly made up of statues, ruins and bits and pieces that John has seen over the world, Old Man Willow was taken from this row of willow trees not too far from where John live, so as you can see while he is a master painter, he still paints from life, regularly too as he always carries around a sketchbook to do drawings in wherever he is.
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| http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=440 |
All in all, John Howe is a fantastic artist, capable of
breathing life into creatures, objects and places of which only exists in our
minds and I hope he continues to do this for as long as he can.
If you have any questions, please put them in a comment on
this post and I will try to get back to you, if you wish to look at more of John Howes work then look up his website at http://www.john-howe.com
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| http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=1040 |
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