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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.