I know John Blanche is mega-popular and churns out epic quantities of work, but how many people here are fans of his style and think it's a cool, semi-abstract explosion of his psyche, and how many think his work looks like doodles from a bored child's math book?

I fall into the latter category. There is sometimes decent imagery in his work but I've always felt he pales next to everyone else. I sometimes don't even think his drawings resemble the actual entity, eg that weird, ugly Keeper of Secrets that looks like a pink horror with Margaret Thatcher's head?

Now his models are something else. He captures the grim, gothic nightmare feel of 40K in a way that nobody else does, it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys which is EXACTLY in the spirit of 40K. The Imperium is a terrible regime of repression and murder, its armies are made up of brainwashed genocidal maniacs and uneducated slaves, not a bunch of heroic freedom fighters battling for justice, unless there's some kind of justice in destroying anything that isn't the same as you.

What do other people think?

I'm not a fan. It's skilled art, but I dislike that aesthetic. Fewer terminators with nose tubes and topknots and more stuff like, well, the current codex covers.

I really like it. As to your point about one of his keeper of secrets not looking like one; they are daemons, they aren't all going to look the same.

 NoPoet wrote:
I know John Blanche is mega-popular and churns out epic quantities of work, but how many people here are fans of his style and think it's a cool, semi-abstract explosion of his psyche, and how many think his work looks like doodles from a bored child's math book?

I fall into the latter category. There is sometimes decent imagery in his work but I've always felt he pales next to everyone else. I sometimes don't even think his drawings resemble the actual entity, eg that weird, ugly Keeper of Secrets that looks like a pink horror with Margaret Thatcher's head?

Now his models are something else. He captures the grim, gothic nightmare feel of 40K in a way that nobody else does, it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys which is EXACTLY in the spirit of 40K. The Imperium is a terrible regime of repression and murder, its armies are made up of brainwashed genocidal maniacs and uneducated slaves, not a bunch of heroic freedom fighters battling for justice, unless there's some kind of justice in destroying anything that isn't the same as you.

What do other people think?

A lot of the old guard at GW were very anti-Thatcher when they first started trading. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest lol.

Huge fan, from his quick sketches, to the box game covers of yore.

He defined so much of the gw world I loved and miss.

All the older artists each had their place, I adore gibbons for his technical work as much as Blanche for his vision.

Blanche is an artist, whereas others are more illustrative, if that makes any sense?

Love his work, both the paintings/sketches and his actual minis. His style is unique/genre-defining, and it's importance in putting 40k on the map can't be overstated.

JonWebb put it very well, when I was a kid getting into 40K during 2nd edition I hated Blanche and much preferred the more realistic artists like Mark Gibbons, but now I'm older I can appreciate his style a lot more. Nowadays I prefer his more out-there stuff to the more representational stuff he's done like the box covers.

It's not bad, but IMO it's really overrated. The early days of 40k have a lot of interesting ideas but the execution of those ideas is often lacking. Proportions don't match human bodies, endless piles of space marines face endless piles of enemies, with no apparent thought given to what surface they're supposed to be standing on, etc. And a lot of his work has way too much obsession with tiny details, without much thought given to whether those small features would be visible at the scale they're shown at or the composition of the overall piece. It's the same problem that happens with modern GW's models, where any flat surface on a marine must be covered in skulls and purity seals just to show off the technical abilities of GW's manufacturing process.

There is a difference between his art and his concept sketches. Unfortunately for the last twenty years he has produced hardly any art, and precisely 22 billion concept sketches, hence the coffee stains.

-

 WarMill wrote:
JonWebb put it very well, when I was a kid getting into 40K during 2nd edition I hated Blanche and much preferred the more realistic artists like Mark Gibbons, but now I'm older I can appreciate his style a lot more. Nowadays I prefer his more out-there stuff to the more representational stuff he's done like the box covers.

I'm similar... Didn't much like his stuff at all when I was younger. I still generally prefer a cleaner art style, but can at least see the appeal of his work. And so far as building am aesthetic picture of the 40k setting goes, it's pretty definitive.

I love his artworks. Very surreal and disturbing.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't greatly matter what I think. In this modern day and age there's very little voting with my wallet to be done on the subject, most examples of his artwork would be on the second hand market...

If I'm being less grumpy, I do like it a lot, and I hear he's a stand up bloke to game with, and a very good sport, which matters more to me.

Overall, I like it a lot.

The sketches, though, are a bit hit and miss for my taste. Some of them cool, others pretty forgettable.

Love it, the atmosphere and lack of uniformity is what I dig about the universe of 40k.

I like his designs and his blanchitsu pages in the old White dwarf but his art always comes off to me as unfinished doodles.

I greatly enjoy his works that are more on the finished end of the spectrum. His works that are on the "concept sketch" side are less appealing to me.

Hate to say it but John Blanche was yesterday's man, new artists are blasting past him and was saddened that they kept his artwork in Chaos Daemons, essentially they printed it in colour and not the previous B&W.

Hopefully when they update the Deamon Codex/Army books they have modern young artists to take up his legacy.

He's the best and most mature artist at GW. Really adore his stuff, and it's a shame the company no longer puts his latest work in the books and instead goes for outsourced, soulless deviant art CG drawn from finished models. A crying shame.

And to those who are convinced he's technically inept:

Some loser wrote:It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

Funny enough, John Blanche has two styles: the scribbles a lot of people dislike him for and then there's this stuff:



edit.

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Hate to say it but John Blanche was yesterday's man, new artists are blasting past him and was saddened that they kept his artwork in Chaos Daemons, essentially they printed it in colour and not the previous B&W.

Hopefully when they update the Deamon Codex/Army books they have modern young artists to take up his legacy.

I am no expert, WH40K being only a minor hobby of mine. Can you direct me some young artists that bring to life the sense of decay, corruption and ugliness that made WH40K such a unique take on sci fi? (i.e. "rotten fantasy in space")

All I see in newer publications seems to follow the "bling-bling-pew-pew-CINEMAAA!-generic-'Murica!-art-in-space" mantra.
Granted, I do not buy a lot of GW paperwork, so maybe I am just not well-informed enough. Hence my question.

I strongly dislike him and his art, I feel he has nothing to offer me and felt it for a couple of decades now, his trademark throw water on everything and smudge it is nothing I can appreciate and his repertoire offers nothing new or exciting.

Sad when you can think this was one of his starting works


All the above been said when stars did align they chose him to illustrate Mordheim, a perfect combination of his smudgy chaotic illustration work and a nightmarish an excellent example of were his work can be used to a good effect.

 treslibras wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Hate to say it but John Blanche was yesterday's man, new artists are blasting past him and was saddened that they kept his artwork in Chaos Daemons, essentially they printed it in colour and not the previous B&W.

Hopefully when they update the Deamon Codex/Army books they have modern young artists to take up his legacy.

I am no expert, WH40K being only a minor hobby of mine. Can you direct me some young artists that bring to life the sense of decay, corruption and ugliness that made WH40K such a unique take on sci fi? (i.e. "rotten fantasy in space")

All I see in newer publications seems to follow the "bling-bling-pew-pew-CINEMAAA!-generic-'Murica!-art-in-space" mantra.
Granted, I do not buy a lot of GW paperwork, so maybe I am just not well-informed enough. Hence my question.

The thing these days, and the reason Blanche and his style has been somewhat sidelined, is that 40k is now largely complete as a setting. Blanche helped define that in the early days, he and the other artists at GW at the time basically invented grimdark as we know it today, but now there work is somewhat done. The blank corners are filled in, the setting is fleshed out to the extent that the dark spaces and blurred edges where Blanche's style thrived are gone. These days GW's art isn't part of building a universe, it's just to show what's in it, if that makes sense.

So the brief for a new piece of Codex art might not be 'draw what you think a Magos might look like' (although there would still be that in the concepting phase), it would be 'this is what the new Magos looks like, draw it doing something cool!'

 Paradigm wrote:

 treslibras wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Hate to say it but John Blanche was yesterday's man, new artists are blasting past him and was saddened that they kept his artwork in Chaos Daemons, essentially they printed it in colour and not the previous B&W.

Hopefully when they update the Deamon Codex/Army books they have modern young artists to take up his legacy.

I am no expert, WH40K being only a minor hobby of mine. Can you direct me some young artists that bring to life the sense of decay, corruption and ugliness that made WH40K such a unique take on sci fi? (i.e. "rotten fantasy in space")

All I see in newer publications seems to follow the "bling-bling-pew-pew-CINEMAAA!-generic-'Murica!-art-in-space" mantra.
Granted, I do not buy a lot of GW paperwork, so maybe I am just not well-informed enough. Hence my question.

The thing these days, and the reason Blanche and his style has been somewhat sidelined, is that 40k is now largely complete as a setting. Blanche helped define that in the early days, he and the other artists at GW at the time basically invented grimdark as we know it today, but now there work is somewhat done. The blank corners are filled in, the setting is fleshed out to the extent that the dark spaces and blurred edges where Blanche's style thrived are gone. These days GW's art isn't part of building a universe, it's just to show what's in it, if that makes sense.

So the brief for a new piece of Codex art might not be 'draw what you think a Magos might look like' (although there would still be that in the concepting phase), it would be 'this is what the new Magos looks like, draw it doing something cool!'

That's an excuse tbh. 40K can never be "finished", the scale is too big, that's part of what makes it appealing. There are millions of potential variations in Guard regiments, in how a member of the AdMech can look, in the panoply of cults Chaotic and otherwise, in minor xenos races, hive gangs, private militias, Ecclesiarchal grandees etc etc etc.

The problem is that GW as a corporate entity has lost interest in continuing to explore it. They don't want you to be inspired by some fantastic Kopinski Chaos Marine or Blanche Magos or psycho-cultist and go convert up your own miniatures, they want you to buy a box of Official(tm) GW(tm) Chaos(tm) Space Marines(tm, c, rr) or the New(tm) Shiny(tm) Official(tm) Cult Mechanicus(tm, c, rr) Magos Dominus(tm, c, rr) and nothing else(and before anyone chucks a hissy, I love the new Magos model, this isn't about that), so they direct their new wee army of freelance DeviantArtists to draw only sanctioned art of the existing plastic models. All the weird, freaky, fun, creative art gets locked away in the GW concepts vault lest it do something dangerous like provoke a creative impulse in their customers that would lead them to sculpt something themselves or convert something out of parts they already own.

Blanche continues to define 40K through his concept work, the only difference is the corporate management don't want to share that resource with the rest of us any more.

@Yodhrin: that was basically what I was getting at, and I should probably have prefaced the opening with 'as far as GW are concerned'. Instead of exploring new imagery and variations, they have decided what 'their' imagery is (the stuff you can buy as stock minis) and neglect any other variety in a setting that should really have as many depictions as they are players. I've no doubt some Blanche work gets through in the concept art, but by the time it's gone through the design, sculpting and production phase it might not be recognisable.

From a companies perspective I understand and respect that decision to be entirely honest, when people see an illustration, they want to buy the thing they see and not been told it does not exist take 5 different products and make it yourself with some sculpting of your own.

Some might be inspired to do so, but the vast majority will be disappointed, Mark Gibbons was a master of making the miniature something evocative one wants to buy, admittedly that is post concept but that is what illustration GW and any company really needs for its products.

GW and other companies can tap the artistic need of more involved members of their community by releasing artbooks distinctively set aside from their main line which can give the concept art and other art that explores the world, but using them in the main line of products is wrong in my opinion.

I don't like John Blanche's artwork. I like it when people take that artwork, and turn it into something useable (like the Voystroyans, which are the most 40K-y Guard regiment GW's ever made).

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
From a companies perspective I understand and respect that decision to be entirely honest, when people see an illustration, they want to buy the thing they see and not been told it does not exist take 5 different products and make it yourself with some sculpting of your own.

Some might be inspired to do so, but the vast majority will be disappointed, Mark Gibbons was a master of making the miniature something evocative one wants to buy, admittedly that is post concept but that is what illustration GW and any company really needs for its products.

GW and other companies can tap the artistic need of more involved members of their community by releasing artbooks distinctively set aside from their main line which can give the concept art and other art that explores the world, but using them in the main line of products is wrong in my opinion.

Except they've stopped producing art books as well. They won't even reprint the ones they've already made. Seriously, sell me Gothic & Eldritch, you apparently money-hating galumphs.

And personally I don't agree with that view of things; I started messing about with GW stuff when I was six or seven years old - it was my mid teens before I started converting things and my early 20's before I got any good at it and began to try my hand seriously at sculpting stuff, but it was still the art and the fiction that drew me in and kept me hooked. I never once saw a piece of art that depicted something I liked but couldn't personally replicate and felt that it would be better if that art hadn't existed.

I'm trying to figure out how to express this, because it's more a difference in attitude than anything else, but essentially; GW can put the emphasis on developing the IP or on developing individual products. They have evidently come to prefer the latter, expanding the IP(in public anyway) only ever as much as is necessary to permit the introduction of a new plastic kit or faction book, and even then only in ways that specifically support those particular physical expressions of the expansion(see the recent AdMech books that feature almost nothing except soulless "action pose" drawings of the new plastics, or the way that most of BL's 40K output is now nakedly transparent tie-ins). I think that's, if not a mistake(and I think it very much could be that), certainly a worse outcome for customers.

I too struggled with it, but you must leave back the time you were young and entered the hobby (myself joined the hobby and GW at 10) the times and customers have changed as has social life and the value of time.

People these days want to get what they see.

I think his art is full of good ideas but I dislike the execution of it. His painted minis are amazing.

On a side note, back when I was a youngster I remember going to a Games Day when it was held in the Assembly Rooms in Derby, reckon it must have been the late 80's. Me, my brother and a couple of friends were walking through the main hall when one of my friends loudly whispered, "That's John Blanche" as he walked by us. He obviously heard and came back and chatted with us for a few minutes. I thought he seemed like a nice enough dude although perhaps a bit too keen and excited about the whole thing. When he walked off I asked, "Who was that guy?". In those days I used to skip past all the Blanchitsu stuff in White Dwarf so I could get to the cool stuff like the rules for using Judge Dredd in Bloodbowl, so had no idea who he was.

I think they both, his paintings and miniatures, look awful.

I'm not really fond of his artworks. Definitely not my cup of tea.

Don't much care for it, but I appreciate his finished pieces - in particular the old SoB cover, wonky perspective and all.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I too struggled with it, but you must leave back the time you were young and entered the hobby (myself joined the hobby and GW at 10) the times and customers have changed as has social life and the value of time.

People these days want to get what they see.

I do not know how old you are but I suspect you transfer your experience of your personal circumstances to teens in general.

And didn't you rather want to say "People these days want to see what they get"? Because the "want to get what they see" is precisely the motivation to go out, start scratch-building etc. and one of the best arguments for weird and not-related-to-existing-products artwork.

For better or for worse, Blanche's stuff is different...

And yet, there are facets of it that are recognizable and familiar. Isn't that what 40K is in essence? A thousand fantasy and sci-fi tropes and cliches all combined with a unique spin...

I am not a fan.

I prefer cleaner lines and colours other than orange. Also I like my grim darkness a bit less gothic.

He does openly admit that his style has changed significantly over the years.

His earlier art works were inspired by great artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci but over the years his style has graduated to more of an expressionist style.

I will admit I prefer his earlier works but then again I can accept that his later work is trying something different for a sci-fi artist.

However I think some of the greatest 40K art was done by people like Ian Miller, who really captured the "grim dark" aesthetic of 40K.

I am a big fan of his work.

Everything from his weird creepy depictions of humanity to the large scale battles that I could stare at for hours as a kid.

I keep wanting to build some techno barbarians and all I keep thinking is "got to make them Blanche styled"

In fact that is a term I use a lot to describe even physical models sometimes.

 treslibras wrote:


I do not know how old you are but I suspect you transfer your experience of your personal circumstances to teens in general.

And didn't you rather want to say "People these days want to see what they get"? Because the "want to get what they see" is precisely the motivation to go out, start scratch-building etc. and one of the best arguments for weird and not-related-to-existing-products artwork.

Slightly younger than you it seems, so I am afraid the teen years have passed me a long time ago.

What I do is observing the conversations in groups around me both online and local, see what consumers really want (within our hobby) and observe what companies who are open to discussion discuss about their products and what consumers want, at present, the vast majority of consumers are time starved and usually use more than a single line of products. they want to get what the illustration they see show and not craft themselves the images they see, the community has moved from the time of the old people (old when we were young) who had plenty of time balanced their games themselves and made half of the troops they needed themselves and moved to people who don't have the time to invest in such a things and want or need as much end product as they can get.

Can I just say, Dakkadakka rocks hard. I never expected so many thoughtful replies... maybe I should have, as that seems to be Dakkadakka's trademark

Someone mentioned that "the stars aligned" when Blanche did Mordheim and Necromunda. That says it perfectly. Blanche's work is unsurpassed at the maddened, creepy horror that belongs around the corners of a page. He's terrific at creating images of lunatics and weirdos. He is old-school, like early 80s style, a Realm of Chaos artist.

Unfortunately while he's good at illuminating pages darkly, I feel he falls apart when drawing at the wider scale. Yeah he's produced classic art (didn't realise the Black Templars pic was him but it's obvious when you look), but it isn't exactly what I want to see in an army book I paid £30 for. I still contend that when seen side by side against someone else's "illustration" (good word for some of the art they use), Blanche's style seems somewhat amateurish to me, like he sketched it out in ten minutes while delirious. It's not what I'd define as "art".

Guess that's how the world works though - to each his own, with nobody being right or wrong.

Blanche, when asked "whats the first thing you do when you start painting?" his response "start drinking".

His art I like for the pure grim dark nature of it and it certainly fits SOME of the setting but not all of it. The extreme grim dark nature of the majority of the art he is known for has its places but I wouldn't be interested in seeing Blanche grim dark for a lot of it.

I've always loved his artwork. The Ratspike book is one of my most treasured possessions.

Some of the pictures in Ratspike have small birds tied up hanging from strings. I always thought that was so strange and bizarre, at one point in my Nurgle army I had them hanging from the army banners.

I was able to meet him once when he went on the tour for the book. He was very friendly and when I was showing him a sculpt I was working on he was very helpful and showed me a few tips. I guess it helped that I was sculpting the female warrior from the Krokodil Tears book!

One of the sketches he was working on that day was a large Tyranid creature (looked like the predecessor for the Carnifex) for the new range, but the actual drawing he made was used as a prize for a Space Hulk competition.

As naive as it sounds, my whole career path had been to one day be able to work with those guys at the design studio. Since I don't work digitally, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. *sadness*

 Paradigm wrote:

 treslibras wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Hate to say it but John Blanche was yesterday's man, new artists are blasting past him and was saddened that they kept his artwork in Chaos Daemons, essentially they printed it in colour and not the previous B&W.

Hopefully when they update the Deamon Codex/Army books they have modern young artists to take up his legacy.

I am no expert, WH40K being only a minor hobby of mine. Can you direct me some young artists that bring to life the sense of decay, corruption and ugliness that made WH40K such a unique take on sci fi? (i.e. "rotten fantasy in space")

All I see in newer publications seems to follow the "bling-bling-pew-pew-CINEMAAA!-generic-'Murica!-art-in-space" mantra.
Granted, I do not buy a lot of GW paperwork, so maybe I am just not well-informed enough. Hence my question.

The thing these days, and the reason Blanche and his style has been somewhat sidelined, is that 40k is now largely complete as a setting. Blanche helped define that in the early days, he and the other artists at GW at the time basically invented grimdark as we know it today, but now there work is somewhat done. The blank corners are filled in, the setting is fleshed out to the extent that the dark spaces and blurred edges where Blanche's style thrived are gone. These days GW's art isn't part of building a universe, it's just to show what's in it, if that makes sense.

So the brief for a new piece of Codex art might not be 'draw what you think a Magos might look like' (although there would still be that in the concepting phase), it would be 'this is what the new Magos looks like, draw it doing something cool!'

Wrong way around, John works 5 years ahead of the studio, so it's more like 'this is the concept sketch that became the magos'

 DarkLink wrote:
I'm not a fan. It's skilled art, but I dislike that aesthetic. Fewer terminators with nose tubes and topknots and more stuff like, well, the current codex covers.

See, to me at least, the newer art looks less and less "40k", often something more stylistically appropriate to something like League of Legends or World of Warcraft.

I'm all about that weird, funky 80's-esque asthetic. That's what defines 40k's visual theme to me.

I've never been a fan of his work. It just comes across as 'messy' to me, and completely unattractive. I know there are many fans of his work out there, but to each his own.

'Different', as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread... that would be a good word for it. But for me, 'unappealing' also goes hand-in-hand with that.

 BrookM wrote:
Funny enough, John Blanche has two styles: the scribbles a lot of people dislike him for and then there's this stuff:

Spoiler:

edit.

Actually, that second one is exactly the kind of Blanche art I hate. It's just a pile of space marines without any thought given to artistic composition or pesky details like what the marines are supposed to be standing on or how far away they are. And it looks just like every similar "pile of space marines" picture he's made. It's just bland, unappealing work regardless of how many tiny skulls he added.

The first one is pretty good though, it has all of the obsessive fine detail but it's used well. There's actually empty space and good composition to get your attention, and TBH that's the reason why the BFG picture is an iconic piece of art while the pile of marines isn't.

 JamesY wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:

 treslibras wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Hate to say it but John Blanche was yesterday's man, new artists are blasting past him and was saddened that they kept his artwork in Chaos Daemons, essentially they printed it in colour and not the previous B&W.

Hopefully when they update the Deamon Codex/Army books they have modern young artists to take up his legacy.

I am no expert, WH40K being only a minor hobby of mine. Can you direct me some young artists that bring to life the sense of decay, corruption and ugliness that made WH40K such a unique take on sci fi? (i.e. "rotten fantasy in space")

All I see in newer publications seems to follow the "bling-bling-pew-pew-CINEMAAA!-generic-'Murica!-art-in-space" mantra.
Granted, I do not buy a lot of GW paperwork, so maybe I am just not well-informed enough. Hence my question.

The thing these days, and the reason Blanche and his style has been somewhat sidelined, is that 40k is now largely complete as a setting. Blanche helped define that in the early days, he and the other artists at GW at the time basically invented grimdark as we know it today, but now there work is somewhat done. The blank corners are filled in, the setting is fleshed out to the extent that the dark spaces and blurred edges where Blanche's style thrived are gone. These days GW's art isn't part of building a universe, it's just to show what's in it, if that makes sense.

So the brief for a new piece of Codex art might not be 'draw what you think a Magos might look like' (although there would still be that in the concepting phase), it would be 'this is what the new Magos looks like, draw it doing something cool!'

Wrong way around, John works 5 years ahead of the studio, so it's more like 'this is the concept sketch that became the magos'

Yeah, I was more talking about the stuff that actually gets published in codexes. I have no doubt that a great deal of the stuff that gets produced in both art and models starts off in Blanche's sketchbook, just that we as the end consumer get very little of that in the final product. The emphasis on most new art seems to be entirely on the stuff you can buy as minis, right down to weapon designs matching the ones on the sprue ect.

That said, there has been the odd great piece in the newer style, like the double page Terra spread in the 6th Ed rulebook and the Raven Guard Thunderhawk pic from the last SM book.

 Paradigm wrote:
Raven Guard Thunderhawk pic from the last SM book.

Which pic was this?

On the RG pages in the fluff section in the 6th ed book, it's a landscape full page with a T-hawk, stormeagles and Stormravens.

This one:

Ah, that one.

Yes, it's good.

I always liked this pic, with the coins nailed to his pauldron like they were trophies.

Mechanicalhorizon, that picture encapsulates what I've always felt about Blanche: it's perfect grimdark, very old-school, but as a Space Marine? He looks more like Albert Steptoe. And the flying things above his head remind me of Nurgle imagery.

 NoPoet wrote:
M...but as a Space Marine?

He's not a space marine. Note the Inquisitorial rosette on his breastplate...

 insaniak wrote:
Note the Inquisitorial rosette on his breastplate...

And in the ring and on the shoulderpad, he is an inquisitor.

I never thought about it before, but Blanche may be the reason why 40k fell from the great post apocalyptic theme it had when it started to the mess it is now, where almost everybody is a walking shrine.

 Peregrine wrote:

 BrookM wrote:

[/spoiler]

Actually, that second one is exactly the kind of Blanche art I hate. It's just a pile of space marines without any thought given to artistic composition or pesky details like what the marines are supposed to be standing on or how far away they are.

I think that's a bit unkind (emboldened section in particular). Remember that the image had to work in a number of ways...

As a landscape box cover with a large logo:


As a portrait rulebook cover with the (then-standard) frame:


...as well as a standalone background.

In fact, I think that image is a pretty good example of what JB does very well; and that's effectively communicate the mood of the setting. From the colour palette to tonal contrast to the multiple-triangle composition (look how the central 'cone' of figures leads the eye up into the logo, for example), there's a huge amount of work gone into communicating the pseudo-dark age feel of the 40k galaxy, as well as harking back to the desperate last stand feel of John Sibbick's original Rogue Trader art.

Compare it with the Warzone box cover from roughly the same period:

Whether you like the style or not, there's a lot of technical points in favour of Blanche's composition, colour choice and tonal structure.

Les Edwards' Heroquest's box cover is an iconic piece; and here the styles are hugely different. I highlight it because it's a good example of a similar colour palette to that 3rd ed 40k cover. While it's a fantastic painting, I don't think it communicates the chaotic mood of the Warhammer universe – these figures, while beautifully rendered, could easily be from another setting; which is at the heart of why I like Blanche's art so much – it is indivisible from the Warhammer worlds in a way few other artists were. As an aside, I always felt Gary Harrod's, Wayne England's and (to a lesser extent) Paul Bonner's work always felt 'properly Warhammer' in a way that Ian Miller's (as an example) did not (though I also like Miller's work a great deal).


The Heroquest could of course be argued that it's not in the Warhammer world at all, so on the same theme, Jim Burns' Space Crusade box art is similar to my objections to Heroquest's box art – that while it's beautifully executed, it doesn't 'feel 40k'.


In both, the composition is very carefully – classically – structured by master artists; but it doesn't communicate the universe like Blanche's art does.

Anyway, that was giant wall o'text! Sorry. Just wanted to point out that the 3rd ed. cover has had a lot of thought and experience poured into its composition.

 NoPoet wrote:
his work looks like doodles from a bored child's math book?

Sounds like people who were never drawing anything at school or never were drawing anything at all.

From looking at his work, it is clear to me that he finished an art school and puts a lot of effort in his work. His drawings have lots of detail and are coloured with washes - it's an absurd to compare them to primary school doodles or any school doodles at all.

Not to mention his paintings like Inquisitor Tannenberg and Adepta Sororita and Black Templars covers. (Though the Black Templars suffer from the remains of the 2nd Edition ultra-tackiness). (though it's interesting that for example something as important as HH: Collected Visions wasn't considered to warrant as much work as Inquisitor Tannenberg and they only put in his drawings and not paintings.)

 NoPoet wrote:
There is sometimes decent imagery in his work but I've always felt he pales next to everyone else.

To me, he pales only to Rees (in the Rogue Trader period) and maybe to Miller. The rest is horribly generic (except the one who made that painting of Ultramarines fighting tyranids. Oh God! Was it a single thing or are there more Wh40k paintings like this one D: ?).

 NoPoet wrote:
Now his models are something else. He captures the grim, gothic nightmare feel of 40K in a way that nobody else does, it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys which is EXACTLY in the spirit of 40K. The Imperium is a terrible regime of repression and murder, its armies are made up of brainwashed genocidal maniacs and uneducated slaves, not a bunch of heroic freedom fighters battling for justice, unless there's some kind of justice in destroying anything that isn't the same as you.

Yeah, his miniatures are absolutely sick. I find them fascinating.

Personally I don't like John Blanche's style but it clearly is the product of an educated mind and trained hand.

I always liked this one

He's very hit or miss really, a lot of his stuff I don't really like like the stuff in the Daemon 5th book. But then other stuff he has done has looked good or almost good.
This for example had decent potential, but suffered from the blob of people thing he continually did. Not to mention the random heels that take away more than they give to the aesthetic.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Note the Inquisitorial rosette on his breastplate...

And in the ring and on the shoulderpad, he is an inquisitor.

I never thought about it before, but Blanche may be the reason why 40k fell from the great post apocalyptic theme it had when it started to the mess it is now, where almost everybody is a walking shrine.

And the book thing on his forehead.

John Blanche is up there for me with H.R. Giger, Salvador Dali, and Francis Bacon as one of the greats of dark surrealism. As with those other artists' works, many people do not enjoy them because they betray some traditional rules of art. Whether consciously or subconsciously, our eyes naturally want to find a place to rest, and as a result, compositions usually have some negative space. Because Blanche's paintings and sketches tend to be hyperdetailed with hardly any breathing space, the normal reaction is an uncomfortable one. It's hard not to feel claustrophobic when every possible space is filled by skulls and aquilas, but that's part of the reason why I like Blanche's style. It's pretty reflective of how I view the 40k universe, with its floating skulls, teleporting demons, crusading priests in space, and abundance of hungry xenos.

I think he carries on a fine tradition.


http://www.dafne.com/news/hieronymus-bosch/

http://gothicpunk.tumblr.com/

Just spent a fun 15 mins browsing this blog that collects a lot of his stuff. Such as shame so much was rendered in dirty sepia colour tones but reproduced in B&W! Seeing old art in new ways for the first time is fun!

I've never been a huge Blanche fan. I think his ideas are great, but poorly executed, I've never been a fan of that silly scribbly style he has.

I also find his artwork a collection of hits and misses, more misses.

IMO not even close to the artwork of Paul Bonner.

I still look at my 'Ere we go and Freebooterz for the best GW artwork ever.
(Lost and the Damned, Realm of Chaos are quite good too, but not that good)

Some of his latest minis for inq28 gaming i love the character and story he can get across in just the paint jobs.

I indeed DO love his miniature work!

Those space Skaven

Well there's a new project...

I love the creativity and originality. I think the computer-rendered images you see a lot now are boring by comparison. They look exactly like the models and only the models. I like the art that shows you what else is in the 40k setting and sparks my own imagination. It is the crazy, odd, mysterious, twisted art that makes 40k a unique setting and inspired many of us to create the conversions and storylines that keep us addicted to this hobby. To me, I like the art to be interesting, inspiring and unusual, rather than the stuff that is technically perfect, clean and yet often boring and predictable.

I like the strangeness of his ideas more than the actual art.

 The Riddle of Steel wrote:
I love the creativity and originality. I think the computer-rendered images you see a lot now are boring by comparison. They look exactly like the models and only the models. I like the art that shows you what else is in the 40k setting and sparks my own imagination. It is the crazy, odd, mysterious, twisted art that makes 40k a unique setting and inspired many of us to create the conversions and storylines that keep us addicted to this hobby. To me, I like the art to be interesting, inspiring and unusual, rather than the stuff that is technically perfect, clean and yet often boring and predictable.

Indeed. The new stuff lacks any feel or atmosphere, and could easily all be mistaken from something from Blizzard or League of Legends or the like. When you see stuff from Blanche, it oozes 40k, it screams 40k, it defines 40k in so many ways.

I love Johnny B!

He's one of my favorite artists out there... love his stuff... then again I grew up liking a lot of his type of stuff and the stuff you see in older Heavy Metal magazine. Today's artists are cool too but I really like Blanche as well.

 Paradigm wrote:

 treslibras wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Hate to say it but John Blanche was yesterday's man, new artists are blasting past him and was saddened that they kept his artwork in Chaos Daemons, essentially they printed it in colour and not the previous B&W.

Hopefully when they update the Deamon Codex/Army books they have modern young artists to take up his legacy.

I am no expert, WH40K being only a minor hobby of mine. Can you direct me some young artists that bring to life the sense of decay, corruption and ugliness that made WH40K such a unique take on sci fi? (i.e. "rotten fantasy in space")

All I see in newer publications seems to follow the "bling-bling-pew-pew-CINEMAAA!-generic-'Murica!-art-in-space" mantra.
Granted, I do not buy a lot of GW paperwork, so maybe I am just not well-informed enough. Hence my question.

The thing these days, and the reason Blanche and his style has been somewhat sidelined, is that 40k is now largely complete as a setting. Blanche helped define that in the early days, he and the other artists at GW at the time basically invented grimdark as we know it today, but now there work is somewhat done. The blank corners are filled in, the setting is fleshed out to the extent that the dark spaces and blurred edges where Blanche's style thrived are gone. These days GW's art isn't part of building a universe, it's just to show what's in it, if that makes sense.

So the brief for a new piece of Codex art might not be 'draw what you think a Magos might look like' (although there would still be that in the concepting phase), it would be 'this is what the new Magos looks like, draw it doing something cool!'

Even if isn't about building an universe but just about what's in it, the recent art is still absolute garbage. 5th edition artwork was about "what's in it" as well but it was still saying something, just look at the one with one armed space marine holding a banner, or the one with a catachan strangling an ork and putting a knife to its neck.

It's not that the recent deviantartey artwork is just worse than Blanche's art (it is ofc), it's also not just worse than 5th or 6th edition drawings. It's just crap in general, if the first pic of 40k I saw was the deathwing dreadnought from recent DA codex, I would never have bought a single model. The 7th editiin codieces art is soulless, pathetic, cheap and a spit to the face of anyone who buys.

I started with GW in 1984... and Blanche was highly influencial from the beginning in defining the background and lore of the settings, even though I preffered Joe Dever's more comic book style back then, his art work in Orcs Drift is still how I see the Warhammer world.

I never liked Blanche as a kid, but now, 30 odd years later, I find his artwork to be the ones I remember the most and the ones that now remind me of the setting. I have warmed a great deal to his work as my tastes have matured.

But really there is a huge wealth of GW artwork out there from the 80s that is rarely seen anymore. Thankfully I can sit and pour over the books at home and revel in the glory of such things as the Realms of Chaos books.

Big P wrote:

But really there is a huge wealth of GW artwork out there from the 80s that is rarely seen anymore. Thankfully I can sit and pour over the books at home and revel in the glory of such things as the Realms of Chaos books.

Turned out a lot of the WD artwork pre-2000s was bought on freelance "First publication only" contracts - GW had the right to publish it once, then rights reverted to the artist. And they never even realised... Russ Nicholson mentions it on his blog - he describes how, during the Chapterhouse case, GW got in touch with their older freelancers to ask if they wouldn't mind, er, donating the pieces to GW...

Ian Miller always defined 40k for me, but I've loved his style since ??The Tolkien Bestiary. In a way though, so much of Blanche's work runs through GW's 80s stuff that it becomes definitive almost by default. Many of the pieces in WD were also in the Warhammer 3rd rulebook, Runequest 3 and so on.

Those conversions are stunning though. Weirdly, I've also just used a lot of Skitarii bitz for some space skaven. Mine won't end up as nice though...

I find I agree with the hit or miss. Most of his older stuff I really enjoy. I still have StD and LatD, and I love looking through those books and reading the stories in them. Every time I look at them I find something new in each picture that I missed before.

His minatures are just little jewels that I love to look at.

It sounds a little rude, but I love that his minis are not the most technically flawless, perfect and smooth creations out there. They're organic, fun, and creative.
If you scratch the surface, you could make them at home if you had time and inclination. They're much more human and tactile to me than all the clean faced sparkly studio painter creations.

Can't stand the guy's paintings and illustrations but his mini's are vomit-inducing good - makes me wish space skaven were a thing.

ORicK wrote:
I also find his artwork a collection of hits and misses, more misses.

IMO not even close to the artwork of Paul Bonner.

I still look at my 'Ere we go and Freebooterz for the best GW artwork ever.
(Lost and the Damned, Realm of Chaos are quite good too, but not that good)

Oh my yes, Paul Bonner had some great pieces in those old Ork books. His Orks had such character and charisma, and his style is so crisp but very exaggerated.

As for JB, I generally like his more singularly focused pieces, like when he draws a single Inquisitor or a pair of Magos. His large scale batte pics generally aren't my favorite, except for those battlefleet gothic pieces.

Has anybody ever noticed that when it comes to battle scenes in 40K, almost everybody fights on the side of, or on top of, a hill

 insaniak wrote:

 WarMill wrote:
JonWebb put it very well, when I was a kid getting into 40K during 2nd edition I hated Blanche and much preferred the more realistic artists like Mark Gibbons, but now I'm older I can appreciate his style a lot more. Nowadays I prefer his more out-there stuff to the more representational stuff he's done like the box covers.

I'm similar... Didn't much like his stuff at all when I was younger. I still generally prefer a cleaner art style, but can at least see the appeal of his work. And so far as building am aesthetic picture of the 40k setting goes, it's pretty definitive.

I'm not sure if I like his stuff even now. For the classic pin-ups he was one of the weakest (apart from maybe Wayne England, who's flat volumeless style and repetitive skulls were just annoying). But John Blanche brought something to the background that none of the others did. Weird nightmare images that didn't seem to be anything to do with the 40k background. And yet they seemed to pave the way for future background. Without Blanche I doubt we would have the sprawling hive cities, or the huge gothic ships, or any of the wierd ad-mech gak like servo skulls. So even though I'm not a huge fan of his crude and scribbled style, I admire his creativity.

 mechanicalhorizon wrote:
I always liked this pic, with the coins nailed to his pauldron like they were trophies.

Spoiler:

It is Inquisitor Kryptman,no? IIRC. It has been a long time since I paid attention to any of the 40k lore.

I like it when artists develop a distinctive style. Blanche has. I see the artistry in his work, and the skill. I respect him and his work, but his art does not appeal to me at any level.

 Red Harvest wrote:

 mechanicalhorizon wrote:
I always liked this pic, with the coins nailed to his pauldron like they were trophies.

Spoiler:

It is Inquisitor Kryptman,no? IIRC. It has been a long time since I paid attention to any of the 40k lore.

I like it when artists develop a distinctive style. Blanche has. I see the artistry in his work, and the skill. I respect him and his work, but his art does not appeal to me at any level.

Yes that is da Crypt Man!

 Red Harvest wrote:

 mechanicalhorizon wrote:
I always liked this pic, with the coins nailed to his pauldron like they were trophies.

Spoiler:

It is Inquisitor Kryptman,no? IIRC. It has been a long time since I paid attention to any of the 40k lore.

I like it when artists develop a distinctive style. Blanche has. I see the artistry in his work, and the skill. I respect him and his work, but his art does not appeal to me at any level.

To go slightly off topic, Kevin O'Neill is another example of a very distinctive style that works incredibly well. I disliked his stuff in 2000AD (Nemesis The Warlock) but in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen he brilliantly marries his spiky distorted look to highly recognisable characters from life and fiction.

You could always google the term schizophrenic art and look at the images. Blanche's style reminds me of some of that stuff. I bet it may be deliberate. He is certainly not schizophrenic.

Blanche's best is amazing, iconic,inspired. His worst is poorly executed, unfocused, messy.

He is one of my favourite artists. Superb.

 Red Harvest wrote:
You could always google the term schizophrenic art and look at the images. Blanche's style reminds me of some of that stuff. I bet it may be deliberate. He is certainly not schizophrenic.

Then you'll have a field day with Outsider Art. Especially the religiously inspired works of William Thomas Thompson.

The RT-era Ork books and Realms of Chaos stuff is, for me, the best art ever made for the 40k IP.

But, Blanche's work is still what I think of when I think 40k. And no amount of skub arguments are going to change that.

John Blanche had a very interesting interview in local Nottingham magazine Left Lion.

Personally, I love having my very own concept artist! Concepts ooze with potential, where as 'finished' work (while also nice), has a lot less room for exploration. For this reason I love John Blanche's prolific output!

Seeing as JB went to art school (sorry if I've butchered this quote), but "It took four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to relearn how to paint like a child" might be relevant here?

John Blanche (and Ian Miller) are the best things that ever happened to Warhammer 40k.

Visually, the Realm of Chaos books, which contained a huge amount of Blanche and Blanche-inspired artwork, helped to define 40k as it is today. Before that it was a mess of 2000AD clones and anime robots.

Blanche is also one of the best surrealist artists alive. 40k would be pretty gak without Blanche having pretty much defined it visually (and served as art director for it)

I love that the Tau Codex is almost entirely devoid of his artwork!

Nomeny wrote:
I love that the Tau Codex is almost entirely devoid of his artwork!

Why would their most imaginitive artist provide work for the bland race?
I'd love to see his take on tau.

-

That's as Grimdark as Tau will ever be.

Joyboozer wrote:

Nomeny wrote:
I love that the Tau Codex is almost entirely devoid of his artwork!

Why would their most imaginitive artist provide work for the bland race?
I'd love to see his take on tau.

Here's what John Blanche had planned for the Tau before they had even decided upon them as the next race to add to 40k:

(warning: image is quite large)

EDIT: dammit, ninja'd

Before entering the thread I assumed that this would be a Blanche praise thread. I am genuinely surprised by the number of posters that do not like his work. But like any art it is obviously subjective so his work was always going to be divisive amongst fans of 40k/Fantasy.

Personally I have always loved his work. For me his aesthetic is very visually pleasing and memories if his art are a big part of my early days in the hobby so I guess there is a fair bit of nostalgia in there too. I also love how his bigger compositions told a myriad of mini stories with so many unique characters and possibilties. Yet I can see how his style and often limited pallete could be off putting to some.

But, for me, a massive thumbs up and thank you to Mr Blanche.

I like Blanche's work. Its what I think of when I think of 40k.

I like JB artwork. He can express a sense of 'realism' in his drawings that more 'realistic' artists don't do, in that his feel like someone illustrated a real person, expression, or object (even though it is a fictional construct), while a lot of modern artists seem to be drawing showroom cars rather than people.

It might be just the trained hand and educated mind that Kilkrazy mentioned earlier, but I do think it shows, even if his artwork doesn't float everyone's goat.

I know that I've already had my say, but looking back on my first encounters with 40k when I was in ~4th grade, Blanche's artwork scared the hell out of me. In art class we had been given a pretty heavily simplified lesson on Picasso & pointillism. The major takeaway was that if you look at anything closely enough, it will eventually look like nothing at all. Later that week, my friend brought in his dad's copy of what I'm pretty sure was the 3rd-ed 40k rulebook, and I can remember holding my eye almost directly to the cover, trying to find a single spot that still didn't tell a story of its own. The complete overload of details (and of course the spooky skulls) was terrifying & gave me a headache, but it totally changed my perception of art. I can entirely see why a lot of people don't like Blanche's style. I've only started to truly appreciate it over the past few years now that I'm old enough to realize how important it was to how I view art.

@ youidiot kid: Yes, absolutely!

I didn't like Blanche's artwork much when I was a child, and looking back it's because I found it really uncomfortable and unsettling to look at – exactly the qualities that I now find so attractive and resonant about it.

An old lecturer of mine once told me something that stuck with me – 'great art should make the viewer uncomfortable, because it demands something in return.'

@ youidiot kid
It's very simple why looking closely at JB's work always yields more detail; he actually draws all his details with a skull fractal stencil; If you look closely at his art you will see every detail is made up of skulls.

Further too this, if you look too closely at any of these skulls you will see they too are made up of skulls. This pattern in Blanche's art continues down all the way to the sub atomic level.

To paraphrase a famous quote 'Its skulls all the way down'.

In 10 thousand years scientists will investigate this, and it will be come the first documented evidence of warp-stress in the real world.