Conan Art

Independent comic book publisher Cosmic Times is set to revive the tale of Arthur in a new King Arthur comic book series, but with a new twist. Taken from the publishers web site, they offer this description:
 

“Arthur: The Legend Continues” brings the legend of King Arthur to a post-apocalyptic future. Issue 1 takes the legendary king from his “death” on an ancient battlefield to a village on the brink of destruction hundreds of years in our future.

The interior art is provided by Cristhian “Crizam” Zamora and the cover art is provided by none other than Atula Siriwardane, who of course is making multiple contributions to BorderKingdom, including Kushite Warrior, which is already posted in the gallery.

Congratulations to Comic Times on their new series, and to Atula on a fine cover!

Having hit up a number of comic book groups over the last few months for contributions to the Hyborian Age Art Gallery, I thought I’d take a different approach and start “googling” a few art/Conan/Hyborian related terms to see if I could find some other possible candidates for art contributions that I might miss if I stuck exclusively to the comic groups.  I found a lot of awesome illustrators out there, several of which I thought were prime candidates for the project, including Miguel Serrano of creativeviking.blogspot.com.
 
 
Miguel, Conan and Howard fan, has some excellent illustrations of grim and gritty Hyborian Age stuff; just the way I like it.  Of course, after taking a look at some of his illustrations, I hastily contacted him about doing a full illustration for the gallery… he accepted!
I’m now anxiously awaiting to see what Migue comes up with for the gallery.

Here’s another recent illustration that Migue posted over at his blog Creative Viking. Take a minute and visit his blog and click his thumbnails to see the larger versions… it’s certainly worth it!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
**UPDATE** So I was taking my own advice and going and checking out Miguel’s blog. I’ve clicked on all his images before, but I guess I never noticed what was at the BOTTOM of one of his pictures. The “ghostly” (for lack of better descriptive words) picture is awesome by itself, but it’s the bottom of the picture, and then the connection of WHO the ghosts are that make this image SOOO much cooler! An awesome picture in my opinion. Well done Miguel!

My favorite portion from the movie adaptation of Novalyne Price’s exceptional Howard memoir One Who Walked Alone is when Vincent D’Onofrio is describing his character Conan to Novalyne. I found this particular scene from The Whole Wide World on YouTube. Here it is in all its glory:

I loveto watch that part. That description is so real that it nearly has me tasting blood in my own mouth after I watch it. There is another part in the movie as well, where Novalyne and Bob are discussing the topics in which they like to write about, and Bob mentions that he wants to write about “another age, another way of life” , and “man struggling to survive”, and that that kind of writing is ‘his formula’. That’s exactly how I like my Hyborian age; grim, brutal, survival of the fittest, and so in-your-face it’s nearly tangible.

Oftentimes when I’m soliciting artwork for my hyborian art gallery, I try to scare up some reference photos to complement the descriptions I give the artists. That way, the artist has a general idea of what I’m thinking about the project beforehand; whether they choose to follow that vision or not is entirely up to them.

The image I most often send to artists though, is one I always hope the artist will consider in the atmosphere of the commission. I send it for nearly every piece commissioned, regardless of what it is I’m requesting to have drawn. That piece of art is an illustration of Conan by the late Darren Goodacre. Here it is:

Without a doubt, Darren’s illustration here is one of my all time favorite Conan inks, and every time I see the movie the Whole Wide World, and hear Vincent’s description of Conan, I am reminded of this piece, which I think encapsulates that description perfectly. Likewise, every time I see this image (and I look at it daily pretty much), I am reminded of that passage in the movie. Listen to the audio clip above while you’re looking at the Darren’s illustration, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

I have a whole slew of art ready to put into the Images of the Hyborian Age gallery, and a lot of new artists currently putting pencil to paper for new commissions as well. I don’t want to name names, but you can expect to see a series of commissions coming up by an awesome pinup artist from the old Savage Sword comic during the 80s, and at least one commission coming up by an artist from the current Dark Horse series as well, among several others.

I’ve been working on several writeups for the existing art I have, and I haven’t completed them yet. As such, the addition to the gallery that I had hoped would be up this week, probably won’t be up until next week. That’s ok though, because I have something that should tickle your fancy. After viewing Edbon Sevilleno’s fantasy art gallery, I contacted him about doing a few commissions for the Hyborian Age Gallery. He agreed, and his enthusiasm for the project was certainly noticeable just from the quantity of concept art he kept sending me. With Edbon’s permission, I’ve decided to share it with you. It’s certainly interesting to see all the individual elements Edbon drew before ultimately combining them into one finished picture.
 
Here are some of the other elements:

 

 
Ultimately, all these individual elements were combined into one final piece,representing a Turanian/Iranistani souk. Here’s the concept art for that:

Still, we needed a central figure to pull together and round out the drawing. Edbon came up with this nice illustration of a Turanian Bedouin. I thought his concept art was perfect:

And that’s it! The finished product, which I’ll be posting directly to the gallery later, combines all of these elements into a finely detailed illustration of a Turanai/Iranistani Souk. Ultimately we discussed a few commissions, so I’ll end this post with some concept art from the additional ones he was working on:

Not to be confused with the infinitely more prestigious Cimmerian Awards given out by the fine folks at The Cimmerian (where you actually win something), I am going to start awarding my own “Barbarian Award” for those demonstrating conduct barbaric in nature.

Congratulations to Michael Phelps, for overcoming the odds and achieving what many thought was impossible! Eight gold medals in a single Olympics!
 
 
I have to admit though… after I saw this picture that at first glance appeared to be Phelps wearing a fancy dress, I just about passed him over for the award. Thankfully it’s just Phelps wearing all the loot he plundered at the expense of the French. Kudos to you Michael Phelps, you’re one of life’s winners.
 
 
 
 
Runner Up
Runner up for this edition of the Barbarian Award is Senator John Edwards, for displaying the truly barbaric behavior of pillaging his interns while raiding. When the cat’s away (or terminally ill), the mice will play, eh John?