Regular readers of lines and colors know that I try to keep a nice mix of art and artists from across many genres of art. I find it particularly interesting when artists cross those boundaries themselves, and have a web presence that showcases more than one artistic path.
Bob Eggleton is a well known fantasy and science fiction illustrator and movie and TV concept artist. He has done concept art for projects like Jimmy Neutron and The Ant Bully, and his paintings of fantastic subjects have garnered him 9 Hugo Awards, 2 Locus Awards and 12 Chesley Awards (named for the brilliant space artist Chesley Bonestell).
Eggleton also enjoys painting from life and has recently started a blog called Bob’s ART du jour, and is exploring the “painting a day” style “paint, post and comment” type of personal painting journal.
Eggleton has done illustration for numerous books and periodicals in several veins of fantastic art, whether it’s the dark fantasies of H. P Lovecraft and Brian Lumley, illustrations for fantasy or “hard” science fiction, space art (often spectacular of views from the surface of other planets or moons without the science fiction trappings), or paintings that revel in his fascination with dinosaurs (and dragons, their fantasy art counterparts).
His main web site also includes a section of “Earthscapes”, images of dramatic geological events and uphevals, fun images of monsters from those wonderfully cheezy Japanese monster movies (the ones that usually had “vs” as part of the title) and a selection of covers and other paintings fitting into the categories of “Femmes Fatale” and “Dragon’s Domain”.
In addition the “Sketches” section includes preliminary sketches in pen and pencil, both for finished works and versions that were not finals. (I can’t give you direct links to the sections because the site is in frames.)
The site also includes a “For Sale” section, now supplemented with a new blog, Bob’s Art for Sale.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get a real feeling for the rich detail and brilliant colors of Eggleton’s illustrations from his web site. Although, there are plenty of images and you can get a general sense of the style and range of subject matter, the images are too small to get a real feeling for the paintings.
If you’re not familiar with his illustrations, check out one of the collections of his work. Greetings From Earth: The Art of Bob Eggleton, and Cartouche Primal Darkness Art of Bob Eggleton are both in print. Alien Horizons: The Fantastic Art of Bob Eggleton is out of print, but still available from online sources.
Or you could do a search for some of the many other books
Fortunately, the images are somewhat larger on his daily painting site, and the original paintings are smaller, more immediate and painterly, so you don’t lose as much when viewing his paintings from life as you do when trying to get a feeling for his larger illustration work.
The paintings from life are done in oil in contrast to his illustration work, for which he usually works in acrylic. His subjects include the small still life subjects common in painting a day circles, juxtaposed with landscapes from travel photos and from his local area in New England. Note in particular the rich brushstrokes and patterns of texture and color that often comprise the backgrounds of his small still life paintings.
