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OH GOD NOT MY FACE

 Selym wrote:
OH GOD NOT MY FACE

(rubs your nose in a pool of glorious colour) EMBRACE THE PAIN!

PourSpelur wrote:

Look at this hack work. It's just a bunch of dots and splashes of color. The proportions are all wrong. What's that thing on the left? A tree? Saruman's tower? The trash heap this painting belongs on?
Whatever it is I'm glad this scribble will be instantly recognized as hot garbage.
OK, I'm not implying that Blanche belongs on the wall next to Van Gogh. What I'm implying is that good art provokes a response. I get that response from Blanche. If you don't that's fine. What I disagree with is the assertion that because you don't like it, it's bad.

Thing is, that is horrible art. If his other art work wasn't so great, then nobody would have batten a eye lash over this.

Horrible is horrible. For what ever reason the person became popular and that is why anything he does is "great work" now. Just like Howard Stern, people will go crazy over his art work just because of his name. Is he a great artist? No, he will even say it himself, but people still go crazy over it because of who he is, not what he actually painted. That is the only reason why people will go crazy over this artwork that is posted. Not that it's nice or good but because of the name associated to it.

Horrible artwork is horrible artwork. It's because the name on it that makes it so "great".

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I feel like this is obligatory





The second edition was a weird time.

lol, oh man yeah the old chapter icons that looked like a child drew them!

personal fav, the space sharks



raaaar!!!


I've kinda got a soft spot for the old hair metal noise marines. They look like members of GWAR

I really really do not like that bright clean flat style.

Funnily enough Rainbow Warriors are some of the least rainbow marines in 40k

As for Blanche, eeeeehhhh. I mean saying its 'surreal nightmare art' doesn't really work for me all that well when he's supposed to be drawing actual humans. I mean even with massive amount of cybernetics humans are still supposed to have human proportions. I've found them more goofy then scary. Surreal nightmare art to me is like....Zdislav Beksinki stuff. I don't see H.R Giger in those colorful collages of blurry space marines.

And regarding 'atmosphere', thats a tricky subject as I find it pretty subjective. I don't think more blur = atmosphere. And having the same atmosphere repeated ad naseum doesn't do 40k art justice either. Diversity would help flesh out different factions better if you ask me. Why can't I see any Eldar art with a sad, somber tone? Or humorous Ork art? Or Chaos art that doesn't feel like Imperium art? And that AoS ghoul picture I posted earlier in the thread, cmon how can you say that doesn't have atmosphere? :/

 Don Savik wrote:
Funnily enough Rainbow Warriors are some of the least rainbow marines in 40k

As for Blanche, eeeeehhhh. I mean saying its 'surreal nightmare art' doesn't really work for me all that well when he's supposed to be drawing actual humans. I mean even with massive amount of cybernetics humans are still supposed to have human proportions. I've found them more goofy then scary. Surreal nightmare art to me is like....Zdislav Beksinki stuff. I don't see H.R Giger in those colorful collages of blurry space marines.

And regarding 'atmosphere', thats a tricky subject as I find it pretty subjective. I don't think more blur = atmosphere. And having the same atmosphere repeated ad naseum doesn't do 40k art justice either. Diversity would help flesh out different factions better if you ask me. Why can't I see any Eldar art with a sad, somber tone? Or humorous Ork art? Or Chaos art that doesn't feel like Imperium art? And that AoS ghoul picture I posted earlier in the thread, cmon how can you say that doesn't have atmosphere? :/

I sort of agree, but Blanche isn't supposed to be drawing actual humans. I've said it before in this thread, but he's drawing to convey to us the horror of the grim darkness of the far future.

I also mentioned it's subjective - most of the "horrific" art others posted I found flat and boring. Blanche's art just conveys much more atmosphere and emotion for subjective me.

I do agree different art styles though, and I'd say Blanche's art is generally in the realm of the Eye of Terror, while many of the others are more realistic, but less atmospheric. The ghoul one specifically didn't do much for me, it was just ghouls with a lot of skulls and skull iconography. Just "skulls" isn't horrific. It looked like a D&D illustration.

Not exactly GrimDank, but I found an image that shows the kind of art you could put into 40k that would actually enhance the universe:



This is a good one because, (surrealism aside), it brings up waaay more questions than it could ever answer.

What is it?
It looks like an entryway, but the passage does not extend behind the arch. Why?
Does it lead out of the reality in which the arch sits?
If it is an entryway, why does this door thing not have any visible way of opening?
Could it, perhaps, not be a door?
If it's not a door, why is it blocking the entryway?
It has a face, so can it see?
What would it see?
Why would a door or barricade need to see?

Some things do better outside of written depiction, and many things in 40k could benefit from such images accompanied by a mere title.

Ironically, the artwork i probably hate most of all is the official art of purturabo. Where is head is like 80 times smaller than the actual headspace of his armour and his eyes are glowing for some reason.

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:
Ironically, the artwork i probably hate most of all is the official art of purturabo. Where is head is like 80 times smaller than the actual headspace of his armour and his eyes are glowing for some reason.

Pretty sure it's supposed to be him as a daemon.

Also whoever did the artwork in the Necron codices (especially 3d edition) gets my praise.

 Selym wrote:
Not exactly GrimDank, but I found an image that shows the kind of art you could put into 40k that would actually enhance the universe:



This is a good one because, (surrealism aside), it brings up waaay more questions than it could ever answer.

What is it?
It looks like an entryway, but the passage does not extend behind the arch. Why?
Does it lead out of the reality in which the arch sits?
If it is an entryway, why does this door thing not have any visible way of opening?
Could it, perhaps, not be a door?
If it's not a door, why is it blocking the entryway?
It has a face, so can it see?
What would it see?
Why would a door or barricade need to see?

Some things do better outside of written depiction, and many things in 40k could benefit from such images accompanied by a mere title.

Stealing that for a 40k RPG. I have just the thing to do with it...

 ChazSexington wrote:
I sort of agree, but Blanche isn't supposed to be drawing actual humans.

Yes he is. He's done it countless times. And, like most of his attempt at producing something that might be called "Art", he failed.

Seriously, stop making excuses for him. Even if you like some of the guy's art, you can still admit when it's bad. FFS, even I, a well established hater of the bland Blanche art that people seem to be fooling themselves in to loving, am willing to say he's still better than someone like Rob Liefeld.

I might be weird, but I like the old stuff by Blanche and Gibbons and artists like that. Yeah, it's cartoony or odd looking in some ways, but it really just captures the overall feel of the universe perfectly, in fact, defined it really. When I think "Great 40k art", these are the names that come to my mind. Those styles just really do it for me. They have that 80's heavy metal look and often combine that with some old medieval artwork styles to get something that really fits that sort of "central dark ages europe in SPAAAAACE" thing that is 40k.

It's really the newer stuff that mostly fills my "worst 40k art" thoughts. It may be better executed in technical terms, may have more vivid colors and flashier stylings, but does not feel appropriate to the setting to me. Newer stuff tends to just feel stylistically inappropriate, a lot of it looks like someone just redid a piece from League of Legends or World of Warcraft or the like, and lacks the atmosphere and that sort of 80's heavy metal "feel" that I really think defines the 40k universe. A lot of the newer stuff also just copies the models far too literally, often down to including sculpting compromises made to accommodate plastics manufacture, and that just doesn't look right.

 Melissia wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
I sort of agree, but Blanche isn't supposed to be drawing actual humans.

Yes he is. He's done it countless times. And, like most of his attempt at producing something that might be called "Art", he failed.

Seriously, stop making excuses for him. Even if you like some of the guy's art, you can still admit when it's bad. FFS, even I, a well established hater of the bland Blanche art that people seem to be fooling themselves in to loving, am willing to say he's still better than someone like Rob Liefeld.

nobody needs to "fool themselves into loving" anything...
get over yourself...
people like what they like...

look at Davor's post calling Starry Night "horrible art"...
there is nothing horrible about it, unless it doesn't float your boat...
if it does, then it becomes a beautiful interpretation, or impression , of the night sky...

John Blanche has a great amount of technical skill, as shown by his early works, like We are Legion, Nuln, Knights Panther, the Battlefleet Gothic box cover, and others...
he has gone through a few iterations of style, and arrived at a place where he is comfortable enough to get loose, and work to capture a feeling, rather than photo-realism...
if all art had to be realistic, it would end up boring...

do you think that Picasso couldn't draw, simply because he decided to develop his Cubist style???
is Impressionism "bad art"???
is Expressionism???
even Liefeld has done some pretty incredible drawings

styles differ...
look at the explosion of Chibi minis in the last few years...
the style is not for me, at all, but i am not going to call it bad, and get angry at the fans...
at least the style has inspired some pretty cool paint jobs, and got people being creative...

Blanche inspires, and that is the best part!!!

cheers
jah

Alright, I'm tired of the Blanche fight. Mods have been alerted.

Drop it. Seriously, no one is going to "win" the argument.

While I don't think mods are needed here, this kind of argument IS essentially "my opinion is better than your opinion".

Anyone up for suggesting art styles that could improve 40k?

I don't know about style, per se, but it definitely needs to move away from the clean-cut model tracing. The art can be so much more than digital (or pen and ink, or paint, or whatever medium you choose) copies of Official Citadel Models battling; that's a huge issue in Age of Sigmar art and it's a problem in 40k, too. More pictures of giant hive cities. More pictures of insane landscapes. More pictures of grim manufactorums and weird-looking servitors and little dudes in robes holding auto-quills. Battle scenes are great, but the decision to focus on 40k - and Age of Sigmar - as a wargame over a setting is really hurting the brand. I got interested in the wargame because I like the setting, and I doubt I'm alone. The art has so much more room than the models to explore and get really wild, and the thing that all these settings have - 40k, the Warhammer World, even Age of Sigmar - is that there's a lot of space for creativity.



This is a big part of what I'm talking about. It doesn't look like something that belongs in any Warhammer-linked universe; those don't look like elite soldiers of Chaos mounted on twisted daemon-steeds, they look like generic villains on lizard-horse-monsters. Where's the baroque gribbly bits? The tentacles? The leering faces? I see a couple of spikes and horns and two skulls, and the less said about tiny Archaon in the background, the better. That could be anyone's setting.

I guess the Stormcast are pretty representative of what Stormcast are, but that's it's own problem.

I'm also in the "move-away-from-model-tracing"-camp. Personally, I absolutely adore the black-and-white drawings that grace the older codices, like this one from an old CSM codex:



This is the sort of artwork that really catches my attention. There are so many little details and oddities that just make you wonder about what's running around in the rest of the setting. It sends my imagination into overdrive, and it's something that just doesn't happen to me when I look at the more recent artwork.

Culexus strikes again. Lots of motion in this one - the kind of thing that nakes you wish you could make such scenarios haplen.

 Selym wrote:


Culexus strikes again. Lots of motion in this one - the kind of thing that nakes you wish you could make such scenarios haplen.

You can, he seems to be firing his animus speculum.

Exactly. Art should inspire you to take to the TT.

All I know is that everything in the Mordheim books are just the right kind of bad. I think they are Blanche work, but still so much more evocative than "modern" stuff.

 Ezra Tyrius wrote:
I'm also in the "move-away-from-model-tracing"-camp. Personally, I absolutely adore the black-and-white drawings that grace the older codices, like this one from an old CSM codex:



This is the sort of artwork that really catches my attention. There are so many little details and oddities that just make you wonder about what's running around in the rest of the setting. It sends my imagination into overdrive, and it's something that just doesn't happen to me when I look at the more recent artwork.

This is a reaqlly good example of Chaos artwork done right, to me.

Ugh that picture of chaos reminded me of something I hated. I'm not defending the art thats model tracing, I could give less of a crap either way, but when I see cool as hell art in a miniatures game I kind of want to.....you know......buy the miniature of it.

Seriously I would pay 20 bucks for that marine with the 4-eyed mask. But its art thats 'way too intricate for GW to make into a miniature' which is both a good and bad thing I guess.

 Don Savik wrote:
Ugh that picture of chaos reminded me of something I hated. I'm not defending the art thats model tracing, I could give less of a crap either way, but when I see cool as hell art in a miniatures game I kind of want to.....you know......buy the miniature of it.

Seriously I would pay 20 bucks for that marine with the 4-eyed mask. But its art thats 'way too intricate for GW to make into a miniature' which is both a good and bad thing I guess.

Well, GW did try to do X-treme detail. With failcast...

Bought some failcast swooping hawks recently, they didn't make the abdomen at all. Behind the arms is a block of resin.

 Melissia wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
I sort of agree, but Blanche isn't supposed to be drawing actual humans.

Yes he is. He's done it countless times. And, like most of his attempt at producing something that might be called "Art", he failed.

Seriously, stop making excuses for him. Even if you like some of the guy's art, you can still admit when it's bad. FFS, even I, a well established hater of the bland Blanche art that people seem to be fooling themselves in to loving, am willing to say he's still better than someone like Rob Liefeld.

I simply will not. I love his art and it's done in a particular style on purpose. It's different, but that works for me. Art is subjective, and you can no more convince me his art is bad than you can convince me opera is good. I fething hate opera (it seriously stresses me out), but I still understand why people can appreciate it. I understand why you don't like Blanche and I cannot change your taste in art anymore than you can change mine.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I might be weird, but I like the old stuff by Blanche and Gibbons and artists like that. Yeah, it's cartoony or odd looking in some ways, but it really just captures the overall feel of the universe perfectly, in fact, defined it really. When I think "Great 40k art", these are the names that come to my mind. Those styles just really do it for me. They have that 80's heavy metal look and often combine that with some old medieval artwork styles to get something that really fits that sort of "central dark ages europe in SPAAAAACE" thing that is 40k.

It's really the newer stuff that mostly fills my "worst 40k art" thoughts. It may be better executed in technical terms, may have more vivid colors and flashier stylings, but does not feel appropriate to the setting to me. Newer stuff tends to just feel stylistically inappropriate, a lot of it looks like someone just redid a piece from League of Legends or World of Warcraft or the like, and lacks the atmosphere and that sort of 80's heavy metal "feel" that I really think defines the 40k universe. A lot of the newer stuff also just copies the models far too literally, often down to including sculpting compromises made to accommodate plastics manufacture, and that just doesn't look right.

My thoughts exactly.

 Selym wrote:
Not exactly GrimDank, but I found an image that shows the kind of art you could put into 40k that would actually enhance the universe:

Spoiler:

This is a good one because, (surrealism aside), it brings up waaay more questions than it could ever answer.

What is it?
It looks like an entryway, but the passage does not extend behind the arch. Why?
Does it lead out of the reality in which the arch sits?
If it is an entryway, why does this door thing not have any visible way of opening?
Could it, perhaps, not be a door?
If it's not a door, why is it blocking the entryway?
It has a face, so can it see?
What would it see?
Why would a door or barricade need to see?

Some things do better outside of written depiction, and many things in 40k could benefit from such images accompanied by a mere title.

Love the Grimdark typo!

Saw something similar yesterday in a park. Zordon's gaze followed me.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
All I know is that everything in the Mordheim books are just the right kind of bad. I think they are Blanche work, but still so much more evocative than "modern" stuff.

I LOVE the Mordheim book! That was the ultimate representation of everything I loved about the warhammer fantasy universe, which is a shame because it's basically the dead opposite of the AoS universe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Don Savik wrote:
Ugh that picture of chaos reminded me of something I hated. I'm not defending the art thats model tracing, I could give less of a crap either way, but when I see cool as hell art in a miniatures game I kind of want to.....you know......buy the miniature of it.

Seriously I would pay 20 bucks for that marine with the 4-eyed mask. But its art thats 'way too intricate for GW to make into a miniature' which is both a good and bad thing I guess.

Well, maybe too intricate for GW. Forgeworld tho:



(fifty seven pounds sterling though although he does come with some awesome bodyguard figs)

Damn you, Forgeworld, why must you be so awesome... and expensive

Also, I get where you're coming from, Don Savik. There's plenty of stuff in the artwork that looks awesome as hell and would be lovely to get on the tabletop, but part of the appeal of said artwork is that not all of the things depicted are available as miniatures.

I believe artwork (and fluff, for that matter) should not only serve as a medium to show how awesome, badass and grimdark the models we know and love are, but also as a source of inspiration for our own creations.

For example: before Forgeworld's Primarch models, there were few actual models of said Primarchs (AFAIK, though, I have heard there were some Primarch/Daemon primarch models in Epic). There was, however, artwork and fluff of the Primarchs, and those things inspired people to create their own versions of famous characters like Angron, Fulgrim, Mortarion, etc.

After much conversion work, green stuff, blood, sweat and tears, they had their own Primarchs to lead their armies. Were they as good as FW's Primarchs are now? Of course not. But they were impressive nonetheless, and in turn they inspired others to do their own thing with was available.

To me, it's always about finding a balance between accepting that your bought model is an identical clone to a thousand others, or investing considerable time and effort into making your own, with the risk of it going wrong.

A very good example of this is Krautscientist's currently WiP Daemon Primarch Angron, who's also based off some of the available artwork on the world's angriest Primarch

Regarding art styles I'd like to see with 40K material...I love Jakub Rozalski's style.

While it's all computer quasi-fake-oil painting...he has a really good eye for atmosphere.



I can see something like the above being on an Imperial world etc.

Now THAT is some good Knight World art!