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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.