John Blanche
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John Blanche (born 1948) is a British fantasy and
science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
illustrator and modeller who worked on
Games Workshop Games Workshop Group (often abbreviated as GW) is a British manufacturer of miniature wargames, based in Nottingham, England. Its best-known products are ''Warhammer (game), Warhammer'' and ''Warhammer 40,000''. Founded in 1975 by John Peake ...
's ''White Dwarf'' magazine, ''
Warhammer Fantasy Battle ''Warhammer'' (formerly ''Warhammer Fantasy Battle'' or just ''Warhammer Fantasy'') is a tabletop miniature wargame with a medieval fantasy theme. The game was created by Bryan Ansell, Richard Halliwell, and Rick Priestley, and first publ ...
'', ''
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay ''Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay'' or ''Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play'' (abbreviated to ''WFRP'' or ''WHFRP'') is a role-playing game set in the ''Warhammer Fantasy (setting), Warhammer Fantasy'' setting, published by Games Workshop or its licensee ...
'', ''
Warhammer 40,000 ''Warhammer 40,000'' is a miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop. It is the most popular miniature wargame in the world, and is particularly popular in the United Kingdom. The first edition of the rulebook was published in September 1987 ...
'' and ''
Warhammer Age of Sigmar ''Warhammer Age of Sigmar'' is a miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop that simulates battles between armies by using miniature figurines. Games are typically played on a relatively flat surface such as a dining table, bespoke gaming ta ...
'' games and was the art director for the company and illustrated various game books and
Fighting Fantasy ''Fighting Fantasy'' is a series of single-player role-playing gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volume in the series was published in paperback by Puffin in 1982. The series distinguished itself by mixing Choo ...
publications.


Early life

Blanche was born into a working-class family in post-war
England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
, and grew up on a Council estate during the 1950s, a period he describes as 'grey and flat' and lacking in the visual richness available to modern youth. Instead he took early inspiration from cinema, his collections of toy soldiers, and producing drawings of historic warriors on the backs of old rolls of wallpaper. During the 1960s Blanche was exposed to art and art movements, eventually attending art college, where he entered a course on the strength of his drawings and paintings of battle scenes and prehistoric conflicts, and where he recounts that he was told he "had a romantic spirit, but it would never earn me a living, so there was no point in doing it". After leaving college, Blanche spent time working as an assistant to a taxidermist in a Georgian manor-house, and worked on model building, drawing wildlife and painting fantastic scenes in his spare time.


Career

After discovering published examples of fantasy art prevalent at the time, Blanche began preparing work for publication, eventually relocating to
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
and approaching artist and publisher Roger Dean. Dean provided him with the opportunity for freelance illustration work, and Blanche subsequently spent the late 70s and early 80s producing book covers and interior illustrations, including five illustrations for David Day's compendium, ''A Tolkien Bestiary''. Also at around this time, during the late 1970s, Blanche became an avid collector of metal miniatures, and eventually of fantasy miniatures as these became available. In later years he would go on to contribute numerous articles to ''White Dwarf'' on the hobby, as well as contributing to and overseeing designs for miniatures. Several of his pieces were featured in the 1986 book '' Heroes for Wargames'' and he received the Master Painter award for one of his own miniature pieces at the UK Games Day convention in 1987. In 1977 Blanche became associated with Games Workshop, supplying the cover art for issue 4 of their gaming publication ''White Dwarf'' and producing the cover art for the first British edition of ''
Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) originally created and designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by TSR (company)#Tactical ...
'', for which the company possessed the UK licence, and in 1978 the magazine's first full-colour cover with issue 7. After 1979 he continued to produce work for the company, including further illustrations for the magazine and the box art for the first edition of Games Workshop's own Warhammer Fantasy Battle game in 1983. After the company's move to Nottingham in 1986, Blanche was eventually made art director of Games Workshop through his acquaintance with new manager
Bryan Ansell Bryan Charles Ansell (11 October 1955 – 30 December 2023) was a British role-playing and wargame designer. In 1985, he became managing director of Games Workshop, and eventually bought the company from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.
, directing the in-house art department, commissioning work from outside illustrators, and producing designs for
Citadel Miniatures Citadel Miniatures Limited is a company which produces metal, resin and plastic miniature figure (gaming), miniature figures for tabletop wargames such as ''Warhammer Fantasy Battle'' and ''Warhammer 40,000''. In the past, Citadel Miniatures w ...
and artwork. He oversaw and contributed to regular art and miniature painting columns in ''White Dwarf'' for many years, as well as providing numerous illustrations for Games Workshop games, and, with other artists like Ian Miller and
Adrian Smith Adrian Smith may refer to: * Adrian Smith (basketball) (born 1936), American basketball player *Adrian Smith (architect) (born 1944), American architect *Sir Adrian Smith (statistician) (born 1946), English statistician and academic *Adrian Smith (m ...
, providing a formative contribution to the look of the company's core products. In 1988 Blanche provided the cover for Nottingham thrash metal band Sabbat's album '' History of a Time to Come'', which featured his piece ''Horned is the Hunter'', with ''White Dwarf'' issue 95 including the band's Warhammer-inspired single ''Blood for the Blood God'' as a flexi-disc. He is also known for his illustrations for fantasy gamebooks, including the Fighting Fantasy series, for which he produced cover and interior illustrations for Jackson's '' Sorcery!'' quartet and accompanying spellbook. Blanche has had a number of books dedicated to his work published, including ''The Prince and the Woodcutter'', and ''Ratspike'' with fellow illustrator Ian Miller. In recent years, following a period of poor health, he has focused more on working on sketchbooks relating to ''Warhammer'' and ''Warhammer 40,000'', describing himself as "living in the worlds he has helped to create". Blanche officially retired from work at Games Workshop on 31 May 2023.


Style and technique

Blanche is known for the dark, gothic, occasionally bizarre, punkish quality of his artwork, and this is something that has carried across onto the Games Workshop game worlds he has helped to shape. His images are, in the words of
Patrick Woodroffe Patrick James Woodroffe (27 October 1940 – 10 May 2014) was an England, English artist, etcher and drawer, who specialised in Fantasy art, fantasy science-fiction artwork, with images that bordered on the surreal. His achievements include s ...
, of a style which "has as yet no name, no easy access, no fixed criteria. ..Is it packaging? Is it comic-book art? Where does it fit? Roleplaying games, and all the paraphernalia that go with them, must still be unfamiliar to the average citizen of this land." Blanche himself views his work as drawing on an archetypal core of inherited imagery: Early in his career Blanche was influenced by turn-of-the-century illustrators such as
Arthur Rackham Arthur Rackham (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) was an English book illustrator. He is recognised as one of the leading figures during the Golden Age of British book illustration. His work is noted for its robust pen and ink drawings, ...
and
Kay Nielsen Kay Rasmus Nielsen (March 12, 1886 – June 21, 1957) was a Danish illustrator who was popular in the early 20th century, the Golden Age of Illustration which lasted from when Daniel Vierge and other pioneers developed printing technology to th ...
, and his exposure to the fantasy genre through writers like
J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson ...
. Favourite artists have included
Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...
, Bosch, Dürer, Grünewald,
Shishkin Shishkin () is a Russian masculine surname. Its feminine counterpart is Shishkina. The surname is derived from the sobriquet шишка/''shishka'' ('pinecone'), or from ('to swell'). Notable people with the surname include: *Aleksey Shishkin, Rus ...
, the
Pre-Raphaelites The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti ...
, Friedrich, Géricault and Gérôme, and the Victorian romanticists, as well as contemporary illustrators such as
Jim Burns Jim Burns (born 10 April 1948) is a Welsh artist born in Cardiff, Wales. He has been called one of the Grand Masters of the science fiction art world. In 1966 he joined the Royal Air Force, but soon thereafter he left and signed up at th ...
and
Patrick Woodroffe Patrick James Woodroffe (27 October 1940 – 10 May 2014) was an England, English artist, etcher and drawer, who specialised in Fantasy art, fantasy science-fiction artwork, with images that bordered on the surreal. His achievements include s ...
, and he also cites everything from other media like film and comics, to everyday people and the natural world as sources of inspiration. Blanche has often incorporated images from other artists into his own work, with the Mona Lisa featuring in several pieces, an act he describes as "no mere plagiarism, but a deliberate policy. . . to place what is probably the world's best known painted image into a new reality." Others of his works have included elements of paintings by David and Géricault. Interpretation, for Blanche, is literal, with an absence of intended messages or secret meanings; images are to be enjoyed for what they are, and he aims to draw the viewer to an appreciation of technique, colour, atmosphere, relationship of shapes, dynamics and characters, and the narrative quality of the image. One painting in particular, however, entitled ''Amazonia Gothique'', was something he cites as an effort to produce a deliberate comment: The painting was used as the cover for ''White Dwarf'' 79, and later as a poster, and even formed the basis for a metal miniature, and went on to be voted best cover of the year in a magazine poll. Blanche's early work tended to be executed using technical drawing pens combined with washes of water-colour, a technique that remained until the early 1980s, after which he began to utilise inks and acrylics instead, using what he describes as a 'modelled painting technique' designed to mimic the oil painting methods of classical and romantic art. He has also, albeit very rarely, utilised oils. This glaze-based technique allows for undertones to shine through the overlaid colours giving the finished image an inner light effect, although this is predominantly lost in the reproduction process. Most of Blanche's paintings, with a few exceptions, are smaller than A4 in size. In executing work, he uses a variety of visual references ranging from friends posing for paintings, books, and collections of images from printed colour supplements. Each element of an image is constructed separately in a sketch pad, and planned on lay-out pads before being transferred to art board. This is then shaded in with a pencil and coloured using a limited selection of inks. Highlights and texture are added with white acrylic, and coloured washes and glazes are overlaid on top of this. Airbrushes are also used to fill in large areas like skies and to provide a smooth background for the image, and occasionally to add mists or atmosphere. Random elements are sometimes incorporated, the result of freely applied strokes, dripped pigment, and the use of the airbrush.


References


External links


gothic punk
The largest online collection of Blanche's work (fan-created)

– A short description of Blanche

– An interview with John Blanche from The Black Library
John Blanche artwork
on a gaming and art blog

for sale on a book and art sales site
A short interview with Blanche
on a French Warhammer site
Information on Blanche's work on Warhammer 40k
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blanche, John English illustrators British science fiction artists British fantasy artists Fighting Fantasy Games Workshop artists Living people Role-playing game artists Tolkien artists 1948 births 20th-century English painters English art directors