Patrick Woodroffe

Patrick James Woodroffe (27 October 1940 – 10 May 2014) was an English artist, etcher and drawer, who specialised in fantasy science-fiction artwork, with images that bordered on the surreal.

[2][3] In 1964 he graduated in French and German at the University of Leeds, before going on to exhibit his first showing of pen and ink drawings, Conflict, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

However he did not become a full-time artist until 1972, the year in which he gave an exhibit of his paintings, etchings and related works at the Covent Garden Gallery in London.

[2] His career took off when he was asked to produce approximately 90 book cover paintings between 1973 and 1976 for Corgi, including Peter Valentine Timlett's The Seedbearers (1975) and Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber (1974).

[2] The 1980s also saw another Patrick Woodroffe exhibition, Catching the Myth, at Folkestone's Metropole Arts Centre (1986), which featured 122 pieces selected from twenty years of work.

Through the 1990s and 2000s he continued to work on numerous other projects including a sculpture at Gruyères Castle in Switzerland, based on his earlier picture The Vicious Circle (1979).

[7] Woodroffe has developed a variety of resourceful techniques to produce natural-media artwork over the years, including a method for colouring etchings and Indian ink drawings using oil paint.