Aw, man — in the mid 1970s Boris was IT — the guy we all tried to be!
I guess it started with art class at school — we discovered the air-brush machine! After we inhaled weird gases and spoke funny for an entire afternoon, we actually tried it out and were amazed. We then did the Roger Dean thing, but when Boris appeared, we were pushed. Really pushed, man.
I got a poster of the cover of a pulp-fiction novel called “The High Couch of Silistra” in Woolworth’s, and hung it in my bedroom as a teenager! Lovely!
After Vallejo came Frazetta and others, but Boris will always have a special place in my heart for cheezy heavy metal/ science fiction/ comic book art that made me draw and paint so many gawgeous female shapes on a zillion biker leather jackets and H-D petrol tanks and Scooby-Doo vans! Oooo the kudos, what can I say!
Ah, the memories (I found the BV is still going strong — see the Buffy one?) Amazing!
3 June 2009 at 23:50
[...] entire portrait is long gone, it was more Vermeer than Vallejo, even I don’t know why, particularly as it was painted in the mid [...]
30 November 2011 at 21:48
[...] Punk used strong imagery too — ransom note styles and punk fashion thanks to Malcolm McLaren. Comic book covers were getting sophisticated with fantasy art images by the likes of Boris Vallejo. [...]