Been thinking a lot about the whole 'best mini painters' thing. As many of you will know I picked my top three sculptors a few months back and it was very tough to pick them. So much so that I wimped out of putting that top three in order. I've had suggestions that I should do a similar series for painters...
... that's a tough call.
There are many great sculptors out there and picking three was difficult but if there are many great sculptors there are huge numbers of great painters. Certainly by comparison. I'm not sure it's possible to nail it down to a top three that I wouldn't want to change every other day as my moods swung. So, I'm thinking a different approach. I'm calling it Painting Heroes. With Painting Heroes I will not make it about top threes or rankings I will simply, every now and then, post about a painter that I think is bleeding edge amazing. The painters whose works make me drool.
So, who will be first? Well, in the next few days I will post my first Painting Hero. Despite the difficulty of ranking painters there is one painter out there who I just adore the works of and was the first name to spring to my mind.
Not saying who that is today but would immediately like to open up the floor to you, the reader, to comment here and tell me who your choice for a painting hero would be. I'm curious as to how many of you might choose the person I'll be blogging about next...
Oh, and before anyone thinks about it I'm using Hero in a unisex form here. I just thought Heroes sounded good and I don't want to be messing about with writing hero or heroine every other line when talking about this in general.
Darren Latham, if I was one third as good as that man I would be thrilled.
ReplyDeleteHe is indeed an amazing painter and now he's sculpting figures so will be very interesting to see what he comes up with.
ReplyDeleteFraser Gray.
ReplyDeleteHis work apperared in late 80s/ early 90s WDs and was out off this world. Very clean miniatures blended to perfection yet with a sense of realism.
Anoher great painter from that time was Paul Benson whose color choices and free hand decorations are unique to this day.
Like John Blanche there influence on 28mm miniatures cannot be underestimated imho.
I remember both of their works and I entirely agree.
ReplyDeletePaul's work was almost luminous and his works had a look that made them look like tiny illustrations.
Fraser is one of the huge influences on me. He was doing the ultra clean blended look before it became fashionable and I loved his monsters. Remember his Chaos Dwarf Destructor. That thing was insane. Also loved the red Eldar Guardians he did...
The Destructor, the Eldar, his pre-slotta Night Goblins... Everything was great.
ReplyDeleteInspired by your post I threw this together:
http://realm-of-lead-addiction.blogspot.com/2011/06/fraser-gray-tribute.html
i've always loved joe hill's work, his models are great; the conversions and the paint jobs
ReplyDelete