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This book was great fun to do because of the variety of material. Personally I'm often as fond of sketches as finished paintings and drawings and this collection has a little bit of everything.

Judge for yourselves. The cover is one of my favourite paintings by Boris, showing a sea goddess unleashing monsters from the deep.

This is the second collection of Bob's work I've had the pleasure to write for, and the third book we've worked on together.

We've become good friends and it is always a treat to see his new paintings. Turner and Constable are his heroes and it shows in his vigorous brushwork. Often he just throws away the brush and paints with a palette knife.

Click on the cover for a sample of pictures.

For those few fantasy fans not in the know, Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell are married and share a studio as well as their lives. In fact they are very rarely apart, it's a happy symbiosis.

Boris himself can only be described as a phenomenon because he has made his own rules. And they work, type his name into your search engine and see how many entries come up.

When Julie first appeared on the scene many people assumed Boris was painting her pictures for her, but she's simply a very fast and passionate learner. She is, Boris says, the most determined person he's ever met and will achieve anything she sets her mind on.

This was the second collection of her work I was involved with, or third if you count her portfolio, and during all of them she totally disproved the idea that all artists are temperamental.

Rodney Matthews is the friend who introduced me to Paper Tiger back in the 80s when I used to ride a Triumph Bonneville and he used to drive a Lotus or two. Given the general drift of our other interests it used to puzzle people, but we all need some harmless vice to keep from getting too self-righteous.


For Rodney's first book I stayed with him for a week while his family left home. It's a habit we continued (though with later books the family were around but just kept out of the way).

This was the first book I wrote on a computer (having previously been an old-fashioned typewriter man) so it was poetic that it should be about computer art. Jurgen actually began as an abstract painter covering vast canvases with very 3 D, Kandinsky-ish swirls of colour, but sadly found he was the only one who really enjoyed them.


His computer art has proved much more popular and he has sold millions of posters through the major publishers. You're almost bound to know some of them, even if you're not familiar with his name.