There are hundreds of art instruction books out there, with a wide range of topics, approaches and degrees of value, but Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn’t Exist by renowned painter, illustrator and Dinotopia artist James Gurney, is exceptional in several ways.

Before I go too far, I’ll point out that although this is essentially an instructional book, it also works well simply as an art book; and fans of fantastic art in general, and Gurney’s work in particular, will quickly find it a “must-have”. (See my previous posts on James Gurney, also here and here. As a side note, Gurney is part of the Enchantment Artist’s Symposium and Exhibition at the University of Hartford’s Joseloff Gallery, 6 November 2009 to 17 January 2010.)

First, this book is unusual because of its topic. Most art instruction books concern themselves with drawing and painting aspects of the real world, and this is certainly the most fundamental and important factor in representational art. But for those in working in areas that demand the creation of images of things that do not exist, whether of real but extinct animals, scenes form the historic past or visionary imaginings of undiscovered worlds, the challenge is to take those fundamentals of drawing and painting from life and extend them into the realm of the imagined.

This is increasingly important for contemporary illustrators, movie and gaming concept artists, animators and comic book artists. Figures, faces, animals, creatures, scenes and entire worlds need to be conjured from the the artist’s imagination and made visually manifest.

Gurney tackles the skills needed in this kind of art head-on. He goes through an extensive array of topics, from generating ideas to initial sketches to models and maquettes, through materials, mediums, techniques, perspective, composition and finishing. In the process he covers elements like imagined architecture and landscapes, vehicles, dinosaurs, history painting, characters, creatures and aliens. The topics are arranged in short, but densely informative two-page topics and sub-topics, lavishly illustrated with Gurney’s own work and occasional nods to the masters.

Steeped in the traditions of classic representational art and the firm artistic foundations of 19th Century academic art in particular, Gurney starts from his interest in those traditions and opens with a brief look at the history and origins of imaginative art, with an acknowledgement of the value of studying the work of artists that have defined the field.

The topics are at once wide ranging and surprisingly consistent. I say that because of the other, perhaps most important, stand out characteristic of this book, its rather unique origin.

There are several approaches to the creation of art instruction books. We can eliminate those that are mediocre or downright terrible and concentrate only on books we would consider valuable.

Among these there are books that are proposed by editors in publishing houses, and fulfilled in a perfunctory, but capable manner by artists and writers chosen for the task. There are books that are proposed by the artists themselves in an effort to leverage their knowledge into financial stability beyond its application in their own work. There are books that are created from the artist’s inclination to take on the role of a teacher.

Rarest of all, there are art instruction books that are born out of the artist’s sheer enthusiasm for what they have learned and the desire to share it with any who are inclined to benefit from that knowledge. Imaginative Realism is one of those rare gems.

The contents of this book didn’t originate as a book project, but were gleaned from posts to Gurney’s superb blog, Gurney Journey, in which they have been offered up for free over the course of the last few years.

Over the extent of it’s run, Gurney’s blog has evolved from chronicling a book tour into a personal journey of artistic exploration and discovery; in the course of which Gurney has shared his insights into painting, composition, color, light and a variety of keen observations about the nature of creating art. As you can imagine, in the course of writing Lines and Colors I have occasion to visit hundreds and hundreds of artists’ web sites and blogs. Gurney Journey is one of the exceptional few that I return to on an almost daily basis.

The book started as an idea in a blog post, and further posts followed it’s creation and eventual publication. In this one, Gurney explains his intention in creating the book.

The resulting book is beautiful. It’s printed in a nicely oversize format on heavy stock, with printing values that make the hundreds of illustrations jump off the pages. The reproduction standards follow in the tradition of the superb reproductions and excellent printing evident in Gurney’s popular Dinotopia books (particularly the most recent one, Journey to Chandara), and his refined use of color is vibrantly present.

I also haven’t seen many art instruction books as information dense as this one. Not that the book feels visually cramped in any way, the book design is clear and elegant, but every one of its 200+ pages can be mined for nuggets of art technique gold. This is likely due to the origin of the book in blog posts collected over a long time, rather than a book project that had to be filled out from its inception. Instead of having to put together enough material to create a substantial book, Gurney probably had a job sifting through that wealth of material and deciding what to leave out.

Gurney even goes the extra mile and gives an insightful overview of art careers based on the techniques he outlines in the book, including paperback covers, film design, storyboards, concept art, video game design, toy design and even theme park design.

The one glaring omission is comics, perhaps because it’s an art form in which Gurney doesn’t personally work, and, though he pays plenty of attention to drawing, his emphasis is on painting. I do work in comics, however, so I’ll take in on myself to point out that virtually all of the concepts in the book can be applied to the creation of comics in addition to the other areas mentioned.

The last way in which Imaginative Realism is different from most other art instruction books is the feeling it carries of a start-to-finish labor of love; from its origin in the artist’s enthusiasm for the subject, to the fulfillment from a lifetime of experience, observation and work, to it’s refined finish, crafted like one of Gurney’s own paintings. It is instructive not only in how to draw and paint from the imagination, but in how to create an outstanding art instruction book.

In short, an absolute treat.

Anyone who has read my previous post about comics art great Al Williamson, knows that he is high on my personal list of adventure comics artists, but I have to admit that even I was surprised by the new book from Flesk publications, Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic, that collects all of his art for several comic book incarnations of Alex Raymond’s iconic space hero.

I had seen a few of the the stories collected here, but by no means all. The 5 or 6 collections I have of Williamson’s work hinted at even more terrific Flash Gordon pieces by Williamson, with short excerpts and individual panels, but until I got this collection I didn’t realize how consistently amazing his Flash Gordon work was.

In terms of his wildly imagined and intricately detailed science fiction settings, it easily rivals his stunning work for the classic EC Comics stories from the 1950’s, but the sophisticated renderings of figures and faces from some of the later stories bring with them the elegance of his work from the Secret Agent Corrigan strips.

In many ways, Williamson was the inheritor of Alex Raymond’s role as one of the artists who carried the superb draftsmanship and refined pen and ink techniques of the turn of the century illustrators into the 20th Century world of adventure comics

The book collects three periods during which Williamson worked on Raymond’s most recognizable character, from the King Comics stories of the 1960’s, the 1980’s adaptation of the campy motion picture (of which it was by far the best aspect) and the easily missed Marvel Comics miniseries from 1994, as wall as including much supplementary and related art in its 256 pages.

I have Williamson’s 1980’s Flash Gordon movie adaptation as published by Golden Books, in which the printing is terrible and the art is lost in sloppy over-saturated color and poor reproduction values in general. I didn’t realize how beautiful the art for that story actually was until I saw the same story printed here in it’s original glorious black and white.

This kind of comic art, when printed in black and white, is like having a book of classic pen and ink illustration that happens to tell terrific pulp adventure stories.

If you look at the pages in the book you’ll see that in many places the black areas are shades of dark gray rather than solid black. This is not because the quality of the printing is in any way off; Flesk Publications is a small niche-publisher devoted to creating superb editions of books about classic illustrators and comics artists, and the standards of book design and printing from Flesk are always high.

Those areas are, in fact, not quite black because the quality of the printing is superb, and the majority of the art has been reproduced not from stats or mechanical copies, as wold be the usual procedure with this kind of collection, but from brand new scans of the original artwork, allowing you to actually see the tones of ink as laid down by the artist! Wonderful.

Mark Schultz, who acknowledges being tremendously inspired by Williamson’s work, was instrumental in working with John Fleskes to assemble the book, and contributes the major essay. There is an interview with Schultz about the collection on Newsarama.

For admirers of great adventure comics art (and I obviously include myself here), Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic is one of the must have books this year. It can be found in better bookstores and comics shops, or ordered from Amazon and other online bookstores, as well as directly from the Flesk Publications.

For more on Al Williamson, see my previous post.

Don Ivan Punchatz was one of the outstanding talents in late 20th Century illustration. It’s unlikely that you have not seen his illustrations somewhere, whether on book covers or in magazines like Time, Newsweek, Playboy, Esquire, Rolling Stone, National Geographic or National Lampoon.

Personally, I remember being struck by his cover illustrations for the Avon editions of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.

Punchatz had a versatile range, a solid command of painting technique, and a wild imagination. He particularly excelled at conceptual metaphor, carrying complex ideas through in images that had more than one layer of meaning.

Ray Bradbury said of him: “His ability to touch men with acrylic and melt them into beasts, or touch beasts with oil and ink – and: voila! they are senators or brokers – is endlessly stunning. Metaphor, after all, is the universal language. He could teach at Berlitz!”

In addition to his work as an illustrator, Punchatz was influential on other illustrators in a more direct way. He was one of the few to move away from the New York publishing center, and established a studio in Texas that became the model for several others.

Due to the detailed nature of his style, and the difficulty of creating images on deadline, he hired several assistants, and, according to illustrator and comics artist Gary Panter, who was one of them, ran his studio like a Renaissance workshop. As was also the case with Renaissance workshops, many of his assistants went on to become accomplished artists in their own right.

Punchatz taught illustration and graphic design at Texas Christian University and was a guest instructor at Syracuse University. He was also recognized outside of the illustration field, and his work in in the collections of the Dallas Art Museum and the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery.

Don Ivan Punchatz died of cardiac arrest on October 22nd. Unfortunately, I can’t find a major collection of his work online, but I’ve gathered a few sites below that either have bios or examples of his work.

Many are familiar with Punchatz primarily for his famous cover for the hugely popular game Doom, for which he unfortunately turned down royalties, opting instead for a flat fee. Like many freelance artists, Punchatz was not as strong at business as he might have been.

Also like many freelance illustrators and artists, Punchatz was without medical insurance, and his widow is now facing a mountain of medical bills from his hospitalization. Donations can be made to Sandra Punchatz, c/o Lewis Glaser, TCU School of Art, TCU, Box 298000, Fort Worth TX 76129.

[Suggestion and donation address courtesy of Larry Roibal]

(Any of you Republicans out there want to tell me again why you’re conducting this embarrassingly shameful fight to prevent health care reform in the U.S.?)

Addendum: Despite my comment above, I have suspended comments on this post. I simply don’t have time to admin a continuing political debate, as valuable as lively discussion may be. The original post is about Don Ivan Punchatz, and I have let his son Greg close out the discussion in the comments section. -Charley

Donato Giancola, the renowned science fiction and fantasy illustrator that I wrote about previously last year and in 2005, has a new instructional DVD (more details here), published by Massive Black Media, in which the camera follows him through the creation of “The Mechanic” (larger version here), an painting that was created specifically for the demonstration.

While you might expect a painting developed for an instructional DVD to be more quickly realized than Giancola’s highly finessed professional work, he turns in a work worthy of the 18 Chesley Awards he has garnered, showcasing his strengths not only as an imaginative science fiction artist, but as a strong figurative painter, steeped in the techniques of traditional oil painting.

The demonstration goes from initial sketches to reference photography through the step by step creation of the finished painting. The two disc DVD is $60 and runs 5 hours, but there is a 6 minute+ trailer on YouTube, that is instructive in it’s own right, in addition to giving a good taste of the quality of the DVD.

Giancola presents his thoughts with clarity, explaining his process in some detail, while the director alternates between time-lapse segments, in which some of the more extended periods of painting are condensed, and real-time segments in which the most salient parts of Giancola’s painting process are demonstrated.

Jon Foster, who I wrote about previously here and here, has a new web site.

It is simultaneously wonderful and frustrating. It’s wonderful, of course, because it features even more of Foster’s elegant, painterly, and superbly accomplished illustrations, old and new; and now includes a terrific section of sketches.

It’s frustrating because it simply doesn’t do justice to how good his paintings are. Size and resolution, as they often are in web galleries, are the limitation here. You can certainly get a taste by browsing through the site, but I have to emphasize that it’s worth seeking out his work in print, as I pointed out before.

Unfortunately, both collections of his work are out of print and commanding high prices used, but if you have copies of the Spectrum collections of fantastic art, you may find some Foster treasures in them (I don’t have a list of the particular volumes).

There is a gallery on the Tor.com site that is much more limited than Foster’s site, but has slightly larger images. There is an audio interview with Foster on Sidebar, part 1 and part 2.

[Via The Art Department]

Randy “RK” Post is an illustrator who has a fascination with monsters and a penchant for the gruesome and grotesque, an inclination that serves him well in his role creating fantasy and gaming illustrations for clients like TSR, Wizards of the Coast, LucasFilm, 20th Century Fox, Sega, and others. He also counts comics companies like Marvel, DC and Dark Horse among his clients.

Post’s richly detailed and vividly imagined monsters are joined by warriors, priestesses, wizards, and demonic figures of all shapes and sizes. His intricate renderings of characters and their accoutrements, along with his wildly bizarre monsters, are often set against spare, but highly textured backgrounds, giving a nice counterbalance while still serving up lots of fantasy eye candy.

Post also plays with his color palette, contrasting deep, color filled darks with intense color areas, and arraying them across detailed costume and creature designs.

There is a book of Post’s work called Postmortem: The Art of RK Post.

Myke Amend is an illustrator who focuses on steampunk and gothic horror themes, stemming largely from traditions grounded in the literary work of Jules Verne and H.P. Lovecraft.

These two traditions dovetail in Amend’s series of paintings “Airships and Tentacles” which feature detailed, highly textured images of, well… just that. Amend works these images in a nicely retro manner, with a subdued palette and atmospheric lighting.

Amend works primarily in acrylic, with occasional paintings in oil and a variety of drawing media, including a series of engravings. Some of his other subject matter is handled in a breezier, almost cartoonlike style.

His galleries are in the Gallery & eCards section of his site, though the largest images are in the Desktop Wallpapers section. There are also pieces scattered around the rest of the site.

The home page of his site acts as a blog, though he seems to maintain a second blog on LiveJournal. You can also find his work on deviantART and MySpace.

[Via Dark Roasted Blend]

Jody A. Lee is a New York based artist and illustrator, best known for her work in the field of fantasy illustration.

Originally from San Francisco, Lee studied at the Academy of Art College there, majoring in Illustration.

Her work, done in oil on canvas or acrylic or oil on illustration board, often includes decorative motifs incorporated with the representational images, sometimes done with metallic gold or silver paints.

Her images are frequently rendered with a high level of detail and attention to visual texture, which can make an effective contrast against the more graphic decorative elements.

Her web site includes a Portfolio of illustration and a Gallery of paintings, drawings and sketches.

I found the pop-out thumbnail navigation awkward and not conducive to browsing. Fortunately, when in the Portfolio section at least, there is an option under the main images for “Quickreference” which gives access to an easier to browse thumbnail page. Be sure to click on the main images for the larger versions.

There is also a section of Portraits and a page describing her media and methods.

UK artist John Harris began painting at the age of 14 and entered Luton College of Art at 16. His interest in space, and the portrayal of the scale of large objects and distances, led him to illustration work in the science fiction and fantasy field.

He was influenced in his early paintings by the English Victorian painter John Martin, who painted large scale canvasses of large scale scenes, often dramatic depictions of Biblical disasters.

Over time, Harris moved away from the tightly painted Victorian style into the looser, more painterly and texture rich style he now employs.

He also moved away from his early experiments with techniques involving gouache and shellac inks, which, though they produced interesting effects, proved to be impermanent and fragile.

In addition to his work in publishing and advertising, his paintings are in the collections of NASA and the Smithsonian as well as numerous private collections.

Harris has a skill for using texture and color to suggest, where others might paint detail. His atmospheric otherworldly landscapes and space scenes are created from fields of multi colored and richly textured areas that in small sections might seem abstract in intent, but resolve in the eye into the feeling of more detail than is actually present (somewhat akin to the approach of John Berkey).

Harris revels in the feeling of monumental scale and often offsets his structures with suggestions of small figures.

Harris also paints traditional landscapes, though perhaps a bit non-traditional in that his personal vision often lends itself to slightly other-worldly choices of color and atmospherics.

There is a collection of his work titled Mass: The Art Of John Harris.

As I mentioned in my article last month about the MicroVisions 4 auction in support of the Society of Illustrators Scholarship Fund, the auction of several small original pieces by top science fiction and fantasy illustrators is now in progress.

You can find additional details in Irene Gallo’s MicroVisions auction article on Tor.com.

The small size of the works (5×7″, 12×17cm) allows for an entry point for acquiring works by these artists that is lower than their larger work, which usually goes for amounts beyond the reach of a casual collector.

The MicroVisions auction itself is through eBay. As of this writing the auction has 4 days, 5 hours and a few odd minutes to run.

(Images above, left to right: Michael Whelan, Francis Vallejo, Greg Ruth, Luis Royo)