John Blanche
Blanche was born into a working-class family in post-war England, and grew up on a Council estate during the 1950s,[1] a period he describes as 'grey and flat',[2] and lacking in the visual richness available to modern youth.
Instead he took early inspiration from cinema, his collections of toy soldiers, and producing drawings of historic warriors on the backs of old rolls of wallpaper.
[2][9] He has overseen and contributed to regular art and miniature painting columns in White Dwarf for many years, as well as providing numerous illustrations for Games Workshop games, and, with other artists like Ian Miller and Adrian Smith, providing a formative contribution to the look of the companies core products.
[11] Blanche has had a number of books dedicated to his work published, including The Prince and the Woodcutter, and Ratspike with fellow illustrator Ian Miller.
"[2] Blanche himself views his work as drawing on an archetypal core of inherited imagery: The first images of primeval man would concern themselves with hunting scenes, heroic action, mighty beasts, death masks, war paint, fetishes and trophies.
Today we see the same sorts of themes represented in punk haircuts, studded leather and even in the imagery employed in films like Bladerunner and Aliens.
[2]Early in his career Blanche was influenced by turn-of-the-century illustrators such as Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen, and his exposure to the fantasy genre through writers like J. R. R. Tolkien.
Favourite artists have included Rembrandt, Bosch, Dürer,[1] Grünewald, Shishkin, the Pre-Raphaelites, Friedrich, Géricault and Gérôme, and the Victorian romanticists, as well as contemporary illustrators such as Jim Burns and Patrick Woodroffe, and he also cites everything from other media like film and comics, to everyday people and the natural world as sources of inspiration.
[2] Blanche has often incorporated images from other artists into his own work, with the Mona Lisa featuring in several pieces, an act he describes as "no mere plagiarism, but a deliberate policy.
[2] Blanche's early work tended to be executed using technical drawing pens combined with washes of water-colour, a technique that remained until the early 1980s, after which he began to utilise inks and acrylics instead, using what he describes as a 'fully-modelled painting technique' designed to mimic the oil painting methods of classical and romantic art.
This glaze-based technique allows for undertones to shine through the overlaid colours giving the finished image an inner light effect, although this is predominantly lost in the reproduction process.
In executing work, he uses a variety of visual references ranging from friends posing for paintings, books, and collections of images from printed colour supplements.
Airbrushes are also used to fill in large areas like skies and to provide a smooth background for the image, and occasionally to add mists or atmosphere.
