spiralingcadaver wrote:I like Blanche (and he definitely influenced my own technical development) but if the substance of that quote is at all accurate... 1) existentialism isn't that hard to grasp and 2) Blanche has some wonderfully lively compositions and concepts but it seems odd that he'd be complaining about others' disinterest in rendering when I would not really call him excellent at that himself. For that matter, isn't "good" rendering how we got to the bland corporate looking illustrations that saturate modern
40k?
It's a fair point. I don't know Blanche's art education background, but his style has always screamed "self taught" to me. And yes, in his case, it was definitely a virtue that informed his unique style. On there other hand, Blanche hired Jes Goodwin out of art school, and Goodwin always had a better command than Blanche of depicting three-dimensional things on 2-D surfaces. I'm sure there are a lot of artists out there who are much better at it than Goodwin, too, but he's good enough at draughtsmanship to do his work, and he never lost his wonderfully unique style.
That said, this isn't the 1980's. Blanche got into this field when things were more wide open and competition was lighter. I can't really see
GW hiring people who can't do 3-d rendering well in this day and age. I doubt they even hire people who paint / sculpt by hand that don't work in digital media. Forge World doesn't. In that sense, to
GW your ability to hand-sketch a 3-d scene on paper or canvas actually
doesn't matter anymore. If you can't do it on a screen, you're toast. I'd bet they'd be fine with hiring a person who learned and mastered perspective, shading, etc. entirely on computers, without ever touching physical media.
It's not really true that all great, successful fine or popular artists can "really" draw, either. A lot of them can, but I've seen a good number that can't. This is true of a lot of miniature sculptors working today as well. But for my tastes, having a mastery of depicting realistic anatomy doesn't always lead to making the most compelling miniatures. I respect Kev White's work, but I like Bob Olley's a lot more. (Olley is another artist whose work sure looks self-taught, whether or not it is.)
Some people have more artistic talent than others, but learning to render and draw things in proportion is a skill. Like calligraphy, most people can learn to do it if they apply themselves, although some will be better at it than others. But there is a lot of photorealistic work by amateurs all over the internet that has accomplished technique, but isn't very exciting or interesting to look at. Good art requires a lot more than a command of perspective and anatomy etc. - it's what you do with those skills that makes the difference.
I haven't taken an art class in a long time, but I'd be very surprised if they weren't still teaching fundamentals like perspective, shading, still life, portraiture, anatomy, etc.
