John Howe - John Howes Ultimate Fantasy Art Academy: Inspiration, approaches and techniques for drawing and painting the fantasy realm

JOHN HOWES

ULTIMATE

FANTASY ART
ACADEMY

BY TERRY GILLIAM

OK lets be totally honest.

This book has depressed me really depressed me.

Let me explain.

I thought I could draw, I thought I could paint, and I believed I had a vivid imagination but, having studied this book, I realize I have been fooling myself. Ive been living in a fantasy world. Here is the real thing a man who draws beautifully, paints like a Leonardo, and is able to imagine worlds that I gave up dreaming about long ago. Not that I wanted to give up dreaming about them but, unable to render them as I saw them in my minds eye, I shut them out. So you can understand my depression at being reminded of my failings.

Nevertheless, John Howe is the kind of artist the world needs. An ancient pagan returned to live among us. A wizard from the North West. He looks deep into flowers. He knows their inner lives. He understands moss. He knows that stones harbour spirits. He can taste the flavour of a wind. He has felt how deep water can cut. He has seen the sky fall. Yet, with a wave of his brush, he defies gravity and tames the elements. He makes all of this so real that I want to dive in and never return. Im a child again, willing to adventure into these worlds. He makes me believe once again, that there are still heroes and great deeds to perform.

With this book he inducts us into the secrets of how he breathes life into his imaginings. He encourages us to develop the skills that will allow us to render our dreams on paper. Hes articulate and open about how he develops his ideas, inviting us into his studio to share his techniques. Nothing is withheld. Or so he wishes us to believe. But these are clever diversions. The secret never revealed.

Unfortunately for him, he has unwittingly left a clue to the truth of his magic. Look closely at him drawing. Do you see the giveaway clue. No? Look again. Note the way he holds his pencil. Is it between the thumb and forefinger? Like a normal person? No! Do you know why? Ill tell you. Its clear as day that John Howe has made a pact with the devil! Shocking? Yes but true! How else could a human being create such sublime art?

Dont let him blind you with moist pages for watery skies or toothbrushes for spattering sea foam. The secret is in the way he holds the brush. I have been trying for some hours now and am slowly getting the hang of it. Ive also turned off the lights, burned sulphur and chanted incantations to the demonic forces. I think its beginning to work.

So, look out John Howe. Im on your tail. Im giving up directing movies and am going to show the world that I too can paint wondrous worlds of imagination and dreams. And Im going to beat you, John Howe! You should have cropped those photos more carefully.

Green Face

Green Faces or Green Men are one of the most fascinating, inscrutable and enduring motifs in medieval art, from Celtic forest spirit to high Gothic flamboyance.

HE ENCOURAGES US TO DEVELOP THE SKILLS THAT WILL ALLOW US TO RENDER OUR DREAMS ON PAPER

When a book long out of print is republished, the most compelling urge is to rewrite it all, to amend and correct, to bring to it new experiences and thoughts that fill the interim since that initial publication. On the other hand, one should not invalidate the existing work, nor create a sort of hybrid volume which is neither old or new.

T his book, which combines Fantasy Art Workshop and Fantasy Drawing Workshop, is both old and new. The original books compose the major part of it, with new amendments, and a new portfolio section with more recent work and thoughts. The result is a book about drawing and painting, and how to take the right steps to achieve whatever goals you might have set for yourself. There are exercises and examples, vehicles for your imagination and your capacity to visualize, but the most important role is played by you.

If you know how to draw already and you are quite satisfied with the results, then this book is not really for you. If you feel that figurative and narrative imagery is not your cup of tea, this book is not for you. If you feel that mythology and fantasy have little to say to our modern world, then this book is most definitely not for you. If you are searching for off-the-shelf methods and sure-fire technical tricks of the trade, then this book is most definitely not for you. However

if your mind is full of images that keep escaping from your fingertips, this book may be of help. If you are unsure of the direction your art wishes to take, but know you should be heading somewhere, this book may be a signpost of a kind for your journey. If you find pleasure in telling stories in pictures, then this book may help you clarify your thoughts. If life has obliged you to leave pages of yourself unturned, and youd feel better with a little company for a chapter or two, then this book is definitely for you.

Nightmare Crow

This illustration for A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin is the stuff of bad dreams: a three-eyed raven that pecks at a dreamers face.

The Forged Horse

Back cover illustration for The Golden Fool , Book II of The Tawny Man by Robin Hobb. This castle is one I know very well and have visited frequently. The ability to go and walk around places like this is perhaps the main thing that keeps me in Europe.

THIS BOOK IS THE PRODUCT OF FOUR DECADES IN ART, AND MANY YEARS TEACHING

I will say from the start that I dislike How To books, unless purely technical and about carpentry, hot-water pipes or pruning. I dislike the temptation to reduce an intuitive, personal process to a system applied to any circumstances. I am dubious of rectangles and circles that magically turn into animals. I dislike seeing archetypes transformed into stereotypes. I sigh in dismay when I see famous paintings divided into arbitrary shapes and golden means. These leave little place for serendipity, imagination and instinct, your most precious allies and tools.

Pencil drawing is giving yourself up to an exercise in the incidental. It is a form of communion with your subject, whether the subject is in front of you or inside your head. Expertise and skill, intuition and imagination, information and experience go hand in hand with your desire to express feelings, to tell stories, to create and share worlds. This mix of the universal and the personal is unique to you. I have tried to say in words how I feel about all of that. (With each picture being worth a thousand of them, that makes quite a few.) Im grateful to the editors for allowing my thoughts such unruly growth, pruning only when necessary.

This book is personal, too. I speak for myself, not for the art of drawing and painting. It is the product of four decades in art, and many years teaching. While much of this time has been spent locked up in the studio, these studios have been in many countries, on varying projects. Events have allowed me to meet people the world over. This has all enriched and enchanted me, part of the experience I wish to share.