Conan Art

I approached Conan art gallery contributor Benito Gallego a few weeks ago about potentially doing a header for Border Kingdom, and he was happy to oblige the request. I had had the former “work in progress” banner up there far too long, and the old size of the blog just wasn’t accommodating to some of the features I want to add on the site in the future. A few days ago, I received Benito’s final product, and I think it looks great!

Benito touts the painting as “Buscema-inspired”, and I think it’s easy to see many great elements of Buscema’s work within all of Benito’s art, including this painting, and particularly in his gallery contributions. This is particularly pleasing to me, given I’m a huge fan of the old Savage Sword of Conan days, and Buscema is certainly one of my favorite artists that worked on that title.

Thanks to Benito for putting the extra effort into making the piece really standout.

You can view the original image in his comic art fans gallery page located here.

And you can view his entire comic art fan gallery here.

One hundred and three years ago today, Robert E. Howard was born. Over the course of the next 30 years, Howard would punch out some of the most compelling, action-packed, and unquestionably inspirational stories ever written. While most people are largely familiar with his fantasy works detailing the adventures of Conan (either directly, or indirectly), Howard of course also dabbled in Westerns, boxing stories, comedies, poetry, and more.

I’m not here to give you a biography of the man though… far from it. There are  much more accomplished writers better suited to that task, such as Mark Finn, who wrote an exceptional Robert E. Howard biography, which any fan of fantasy should certainly read.

No, I’m just here to say thanks to Howard, who created characters and settings that have provided inspiration to me and a place for my mind to wonder for over two-and-a-half decades.

I am reminded today of a great line from Beyond the Black River:

“He was a man,” said Conan. “I drink to his shade…”

Raise a glass to Howard then, and drink with me to honor the man that gives us all a gift every time we take the opportunity to crack open a book and read one of his yarns.

Happy birthday Bob.

I stumbled across this super sexy Red Sonja over at Kevin West’s gallery last week. Sexy and deadly, as we often see her every time she’s drawn, but with the added touch of “WOW”. This piece is probably in my top two Red Sonja pieces of all time. A little touch of blood on that axe might have been a nice addition – as if we were catching the sexy Sonja right after introducing some poor fool to his death. Of course, after seeing this piece, I couldn’t have it any other way than to have Kevin do a piece for our own Hyborian galley, and he was nice enough to accept.

Kevin has this Sonja piece for sale. Contact him through his gallery if you’re interested in it.

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!