Luis Royo

Luis Royo [born in Olalla, Teruel, 1954] is a Spanish artist, known for his sensual and dark paintings, its apocalyptic imagery, his fantasy worlds and mechanical life forms. It has also recently started doing sculptures of some of his most charismatic images.

He was born in Olalla, a small town in Teruel, Spain. He has produced paintings for his own books and exhibitions, and has also produced art for many different media: video games, music CD and novels covers, tarot cards ...

He is famous for his work collected in books published worldwide, for his illustrations and its secure contributions of original work, always in constant value growth.

Shortly after his birth, Royo's family moved to Zaragoza, where he first started school, his first memories are accompanied with drawing which plays an important role in his life.

His practical standpoint, acquired from his economically humble family, led him to study Technical Drawing for construction. He soon discovered that geometric forms did not satisfy him fully.

Later, he began to study painting, decoration and interior design at the Industrial School and the School of Applied Arts, and combined with different jobs in interior design and decoration studios in 1970 and 1971.

During this time he also combined his work with paint. Influenced by the student revolts of May 1968, he painted large format tiles with social issues and made exhibitions from 1972 to 1977.

The discovery of adult comics with the work of artists such as Enki Bilal and Moebius captive him in 1978 and started drawing comics for different fanzines and comics exhibiting at the Angoulême Comic Fair in 1980.

In 1979 he left his job as a furnish designer, despite already having a child, to devote himself entirely to comics. In 1981 and 1982 began to publish in journals such as 1984, “Comix Rambla Internacional”, and sometimes, in “El Vibora” and “Heavy Metal”.

[source: wikipedia]

Boris Vallejo

Boris Vallejo [born January 8, 1941] is a Peruvian-born American painter. He emigrated to the United States in 1964, and he currently resides in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He frequently works with Julie Bell, his wife, painter, and model.

Vallejo works almost exclusively in the fantasy and erotica genres. His hyper-representational paintings have graced the covers of dozens of science fiction paperbacks and are featured in a series of best-selling glossy calendars. Subjects of his paintings are typically gods, monsters, and well-muscled male and female barbarians engaged in battle. Some of his male figures were modeled by Vallejo himself, and many of his later female characters were modeled by his wife. His latest works still retain heavy fantasy elements, but lean more towards the erotic rather than pure fantasy themes.

Vallejo has been named as the artist guest of honor at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention.

Vallejo commenced painting at the age of thirteen and had his first illustration job at the age of sixteen. After emigrating to the United States in 1964, he quickly garnered a fan following from his illustrations of Tarzan, Conan The Barbarian, Doc Savage and various other fantasy characters [often done for paperback fiction works featuring the characters]. This led to commissions for movie poster illustration, advertisement illustration, and artwork for various collectibles - including Franklin Mint paraphernalia, trading cards and sculpture. Along with Bell, Vallejo presents his artwork in an annual calendar and various books. Vallejo's work is often compared to the work of Frank Frazetta, not only because it is similar stylistically but also since Frazetta painted covers for paperbacks of some of the same characters.

Vallejo's preferred artistic medium is oil paint on board, and has previously used digital media to combine discrete images to form composite images. Preparatory works are pencil or ink sketches, which have been displayed in the book Sketchbook. He and Julie Bell have worked on collaborative artworks together, in which they sign the artwork "Boris and Julie" or "Julie and Boris".

Vallejo has created film posters for numerous fantasy and action productions, including Barbarella [1968], Knightriders [1981], Q [1982], and Barbarian Queen [1985]. He has also illustrated posters for comedies, notably National Lampoon's Vacation [1983], European Vacation [1985], and Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters [2007], co-created with Bell.

[source: wikipedia]

Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta [February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010] was an American fantasy and science fiction artist, noted for work in comic books, paperback book covers, paintings, posters, LP record album covers and other media. He was the subject of a 2003 documentary.

Early life and career

Born Frank Frazzetta in Brooklyn, New York City, he removed one "z" from his last name early in his career to make his name seem less "clumsy". The only boy among four children, he spent much time with his grandmother, who began encouraging him in art when he was two years old. He recalled in 2010, a month before his death,

When I drew something, she would be the one to say it was wonderful and would give me a penny to keep going. Sometimes I had nothing left to draw on but toilet paper. As I got older, I started drawing some pretty wild things for my age. I remember the teachers were always mesmerized by what I was doing, so it was hard to learn anything from them. So I went to art school when I was a little kid, and even there the teachers were flipping out.

At age eight, Frazetta attended the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts, a small art school run by instructor Michael Falanga. "He didn't teach me anything, really," Frazetta said in 1994. "He'd come and see where I was working, and he might say, 'Very nice, very nice. But perhaps if you did this or that.' But that's about it. We never had any great conversations. He spoke very broken English. He kind of left you on your own. I learned more from my friends there."

In 1944, at age 15, Frazetta, who had "always had this urge to be doing comic books", began working in comics artist Bernard Baily's studio doing pencil clean-ups. His first comic-book work was inking the eight-page story "Snowman", penciled by John Giunta, in the one-shot Tally-Ho Comics [Dec. 1944], published by Swappers Quarterly and Almanac / Baily Publishing Company. It was not standard practice in comic books during this period to provide complete credits, so a comprehensive listing of Frazetta's work is difficult to ascertain. His next confirmed comics work are two signed penciled-and-inked pieces in Prize Comics' Treasure Comics #7 [July 1946]: the four-page "To William Penn founder of Philadelphia..." and the single page "Ahoy! Enemy Ship!", featuring his character Capt. Kidd Jr.

Frazetta was soon drawing comic books in many genres, including Westerns, fantasy, mystery, and historical drama. Some of his earliest work was in funny animal comics, which he signed as "Fritz". In the early 1950s, he worked for EC Comics, National Comics, (including the superhero feature "Shining Knight"), Avon Comics, and several other comic book companies. Much of his work in comic books was done in collaboration with friend Al Williamson and mentor Roy Krenkel.

Noticed because of his work on the Buck Rogers covers for Famous Funnies, Frazetta started working with Al Capp on Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. Frazetta was also producing his own strip, Johnny Comet at this time, as well as assisting Dan Barry on the Flash Gordon daily strip. He married Massachusetts native Eleanor Kelly in New York City in November 1956. The two would have four children: Frank Jr., Billy, Holly and Heidi.

In 1961, after nine years with Capp, Frazetta returned to comic books. He also helped Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder on two or three stories of the bawdy parody strip Little Annie Fanny in Playboy magazine.

[source: wikipedia]