Fantasy Visuals: John Blanche - Part IV (the '10s)

Continues from Part III. 

John Blanche's art in the 2010s is not very much unlike that in the 2000s, except that the trends emerged in that period seem to take momentum and impact even more than before. In a nutshell: Blanche, having set up a studio that is able to work by itself, takes more and more distance from the Warhammer products, providing occasional pieces (mostly for the 6th edition of 40K) and a lot of concepts that, although not meant for publication, still make heir way into the Codexes and Army Books. There is, still, a passion that looks back at the '80 in a number of artworks, as if John was remembering old stuff and reworking it into his later art, a quality that is higher than anything in the past ten or fifteen years. 

Necrons (2011)

Nightmare (2011)

Vampire Counts (2011)

Zombie Dragon (2011)

Beast of Nurgle (2012)

Death World (2012)

Exterminatus (2012)

Hour of Darkness (2012)

Imperium (2012)

Keeper of Secrets (2012)

Plague Drones (2012)

Sanguinius (2012)

The Changeling (2012)

The Enemy Within (2012)

The feeling is that creativity is back along with experimentation.  There's less mandatory product sketches from marketing and more stuff that comes from the artist's own imagination. There is an old attention to detail that was almost forgotten after the mid 1990s, this time benefitting from the experience of a navigated artist. The result is amazing.

When Warhammer Fantasy is killed and Age of Sigmar takes its place, John Blanche is only involved in the concept: he will not officially work on it, as his semi-retirements starts.

Kairic Acolyte (2014) 

Nurglings (2016)

Kharadron Overlord (2017)

There is little to no published material of his in the 7th edition of 40K and none at all in the 8th. At this point John mostly draws for himself, for friends and for games he plays. Look at the art below and consider how much it looks like a direct update of the earlier art from the '80s.

 

"Let us dance" 2019

Tarot card (2019)

Innocentius (2019)

Unkown Title (2020)

These days he publishes his sketches through a Facebook page, and he gets involved in many fan projects along with other gamers. Blanche can be occasionally met at gaming conventions around Nottingham, where is often a guest of honour, one of them being BOYL in Newark.

Overall John Blanche is one of the most influential artists in British fantasy art, and certainly the most influential in the history of GW. Even if his art is polarizing and not for everyone, no one can deny that even today all of GW's art exists in his shadow. He is also the only artist that is going to get four posts in Fantasy Visuals on this blog - that was a long ride started a year and a half ago and it took me a long time to go through all his published works. But it was fun, and I learned to appreciate him even more than I did before. I hope you do too!

Leave a comment, if you like, and tell us about your favourite piece from John Blanche. Soon I'll post on a new artist from the '80s.

Fantasy Visuals: John Blanche - Part II (the '90s)

Continues from Part I.

In 1991 Bryan Ansell sold his shares in Games Workshop and left the company, and Tom Kirby took over the top management. More interested in the business side than in art and games, Kirby delegated the supervision of these activities to other managers. John Blanche was already Art Director but he was mostly involved in the Warhammer 40K setting, launched in 1987 and quickly gathering fans; but for Warhammer Fantasy, at that time the core business of the company, work had been directed by Ansell with the assistance of many designers and artists. With Ansell missing, Blanche was able to give a stronger personal touch to Fantasy art.

Unfortunately, in the following years many of the earlier artists that had helped define Warhammer left the company: first Paul Bonner and Adrian Smith started to work on other projects, including comics magazine Toxic! managed by Pat Mills; Russ Nicholson and Ian Miller didn't like the way things were managed and soon left as well, and Tony Ackland also reduced his contributions. eventually John Blanche, Dave Gallagher and Wayne England were the only artists left from the '80s team, and England left not long after. The only new addition to the team was Mark Gibbons.

At this time, Games Workshop was starting to become massively popular, and instead of adapting its products to existing settings - like the world of Tolkien, Moorcock, Lovecraft and Judge Dredd - the company found itself as the plagiarized one. In order to defend its business, GW embarked on a policy that changed its history forever: drop all references from other settings and develop their own lore and style, setting it apart from everyone else to better defend it from copycats. It was the birth of the Warhammer IP.

Cover for WH40K 2nd edition (1993)

While in the '80s Warhammer had thrived on the variety of styles on many artists, now the management wanted to have a single, clear style, which John Blanche was tasked to develop. He had to define, in his words, "the visual language of Warhammer". And the grammar of that language was made of skulls, scrolls, giant banners, bulky armours, fancy helms, oversized weapons, mohawks, masks, tattooed latin mottoes, grotesque shapes, mixing of organic and mechanical, leather, bolts and spikes. 
 

Empire Army (1992)

High Elf Hero (1993)

High Elves (1993)

Undead Army (1994)

Bretonnia (1996)

Night Goblins (1996)

Chaos Thugs (1998)

In Warhammer Fantasy, Blanche's touch was, in a way, more limited but also created a more marked break with the past. The realistic and somehow creepy or melancholic touch of previous authors was lost in favour of pure fury and rage: most of Blanche's art on this setting consists of massive battle scenes, where heroic characters fight in messy melees. It emphasizes combat over subtlety, and epicness over horror. Honestly I don't know if this was intentional or simply a reflection of Blanche's more superficial interest in Fantasy: but the departure from the 80s was significant, and it influenced the whole studio.

Skaven Shaman (1992)

Orc (1995)

To be fair, Blanche also worked on some single character studies, but again they were mostly focused on combat, with monsters wielding weapons and keeping aggressive stances. The new mood was set, and Warhammer Fantasy art would never again be the same.

In Warhammer 40K, Blanche's passion was more evident: he produced marvellous concept art that defined the setting forever. Its sheer breadth and variety is unbelievable, and possibly Blanche reached the zenith of his creativity in this period. Compared to the 80s, his style developed into more sketchy and focusing on surrealistic elements, that distort proportions and convey a feeling of grotesqueness and madeness that eventually became a trademark of 40K.

And they shall know no fear (1993(

Golden Throne (1993)

Squats (1993)

Cupids from Necromunda (1995)

 

Ratskin Ganger from Necromunda (1995)

Adepta Sororitas (1997)

Ecclesiarchy (1997)

Cover for WH40K 3rd edition (1998)

Battlefleet Gothic (1999)

By the end of the '90s, both Warhammer Fantasy and 40K bore the mark of John Blanche. One, in my opinion, more successfully than the other. The following decades would see each develop according to the groudnwork done in the '90s.

And for what concerns John Blanche, everything is detailed in Part III.

Fantasy Visuals: John Blanche - Part I (the '70s and '80s)

Mona and the Moonman, 1980s

John Blanche is undeniably one of the most influential artist of Warhammer. No other artist had a comparable impact on the visual language of every Warhammer setting, from Fantasy to 40K to Mordheim to Age of Sigmar.

There isn't a lot of information on John Blanche's biography on the internet: he doesn't keep, like many artists do, a personal blog, or even a shop where third parties sell his current works. The following is all I could collect from a handful of interviews on magazines and prefaces on books - feel free to correct or update information if you know more.
 
Blanche was born somewhere in England on 26th October, 1948 from a a working class family. While displaying an early interest for artistic things, he grew up in an environment that was not supportive, and had only his spare time to dedicate to art, often doodling on scrap pieces of paper whenever he could. Eventually he managed to attend an Art College and it was only during these years, in the '60s, that he was exposed to fine arts and a positive attitude towards pure imagination, embracing the new culture of the time. Yet he recalls his teachers ranged between the two opposites of a stubbornly practical attitude, more focused on business opportunities than art for art's sake, and intellectuals, more interested in the ideas behind paintings than the paintings themselves.

During this time Blanche discovered the Lord of the Rings and the Fantasy genre, and quickly decided that, as a grown up, he would rather draw monsters and mythological creatures rather than do advertisements for commercial products or be, as he called it in an interview, an "existentialist".

The first job he landed after college was hardly exciting, and yet at the same time perfectly fitting to the character, as Blanche was hired as an assistant to a taxidermist working in a Georgian manor house. Not long afterwards, feeling more confident in his skills, Blanche moved to London and here he got in touch with Roger Dean, already an established artist, who helped him with counsels and contacts.

In1977 Blanche started working as a freelance with Asgard miniatures, founded by Bryan Ansell, as an illustrator and miniature painter. He also designed a miniature, the Trunkhand Tuskoid, still sold today by Viking Forge.

Trunkhand Tuskoid, Asgard miniatures

In 1978 Bryan Ansell, who had moved to Games Workshop, hired Blanche as one of the freelance artists in the team: John started pianting several covers for D&D products and White Dwarf issues, for which he painted the very first colour cover in the Summer of 1978.

In that same period Blanche received a commission for five illustrations for David Day's "A Tolkien Bestiary", published in 1978.

In 1979 Blanche single-handedly illustrated "The Prince and the Woodcutter" by Henry Wolffe, with a series of beautiful tables.

In 1986 Games Workshop's HQ relocated from London to Nottingham. Blanche moved to the East Midlands, received the new position of Art Director and started working on what would become Warhammer 40K, first published as Rogue Trader in 1987. From this point he became less and less involved with Warhammer Fantasy, for which he still created some colour illustrations that, even if not really connected to the game, managed to become iconic and shaped the image of the setting.

Voodoo Forest / Pirates (1986)

"Terror of the Lichemaster", 1986

The Enemy Within (1986)

Knight Panther (1986)

Hrotyogg's Tower (1986)

Skeleton Horde (1986)

Khare (1980s)

Swamp Dragon (1980s)

Ignorant Armies (1989)

After 1986, Blanche dedicated most of his energies to the new futuristic setting of WH40K, defining its visual language and themes. At that same time, White Dwarf started the popular column Blanchitsu, where Blanche would give tips and advice on painting and converting miniatures.

The Emperor on the Golden Throne (1987)

"Adeptus Titanicus"

Coke Runner (1980s)

Genestealers (1980s)

These years are full of notable pieces of art from Blanche, both paintings and miniatures: one of the most famous is the Three-headed Minotaur with the Mona Lisa banner, which he entered in the competition at Games Day 1987 and won him the top prize. This is one of the few pieces that changed the way people looked at and painted miniatures.

Possibly from the late '80s is also the Undead Horde diorama, still on display at Warhammer World, a true masterpiece.

Image from Eldritch Epistles blog

In 1989 Blanche published a book collection his previous works for Games Workshop, together with fellow artist Ian Miller, under the title Ratspike. Now again this was a milestone in British Fantasy art.

John Blanche's style was absolutely unique: he drew inspiration from a myriads of sources but then combined them in something utterly new. Among his artistic influences he counted Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymous Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci, pre-Raphaelite Edward Burn Jones, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen, the Robinsons, K. Friedrich, Géricault, Gèrome, Jim Burns and Patrick Woodroffe. And these are probably only some of a longer list. 

Blanche's style has sometimes been defined "Gothic Punk", as it combines elements of romantic gothic horror with punk aesthetics from his time. "To me fantasy is much darker than American High Fantasy, certainly more violent, and more oppressive. But it's also very real," he said. "I didn't see fantasy being occupied by shiny characters, it was all very Dickensian. Fantasy denizens to me all look like Fagin. Everybody has an eye-patch and a wooden leg, dirty fingernails, and worn clothes. And thereby lies the strength of it. It is evocative, there is so much background there, the universes are so strong."

His early work relied heavily on technical drawing pens combined with washes of watercolour. Later in the '80s he switched to inks and acrylics, and although he tried to imitate traditional oil paintings, he rarely used oil colours at all. 

When painting something, he would often put together a set of visual references collected independently, by sketching them first and then transferring them on art board. After building shades with pencils or pens, he would then switch to a limited selection of inks and acrylics, often yellow, red and white (he would very rarely used blue). Following this, he would spend considerable time building glaze effects - these give a special light to his work, but are sadly lost for the most part when such works are printed. As a last touch he would occasionally add elements with an airbrush, especially as mist and haze in the background. Lastly, he would add random elements with quick, freely applied strokes of brush, airbrush or by just dripping pigments on the board.

Blanche has sometimes compared himself to medieval illuminators, the painters of miniatures, and indeed he is famous because his average work is very small - smaller than A4 in size. 

Continues on Part II.