[Frost]

Was perusing through their website, looking at their images, and couldn't help but notice how awfully wrong most of their stuff is. Surely they are talented artits, I won't take that away from them, but I'll be damned if they know how to do correct lighting. You can easily spot many incoherent lights in all their paintings... Julie being the worse. You can also spot the very few paintings Boris did without using reference... bad proportions, anatomy, etc. -- it just makes me feel very dissapointed in their work, as I've been deeply admiring their works in the previous years.

Of course, they make lots of money and they have a HUGE fan base across the world, and even though I find they're sort of complete fakes, they are still better than I am in some way. Very dissapointing to see such 'stuff' being so generally accepted, loved and bringing in such amounts of money.

Anyone else think likewise or think otherwise?

[Snake Grunger]

I'm this 20 year old dude, with no experience in the art related work-zone (except I produced a Gameboy Color game..), and I can look at a Boris or Julie painting and find so many errors in a few seconds. It also seems as though most of their models are dipped in vaseline or something.

Oh well, Boris did inspire me when I first started getting into art more seriously, but now I never browse his directory anymore.

[J Bradford]

I am not really understanding you here. Boris is an incredible artist, and despite the fact that you spotted out some lighting flaws and he uses models for reference does not make him bad. Most fantasy artists (Parkison, Elmore) hire models and take photographs of them to use in their paintings.

I don't have much interest in Julie the body builder, because it's all about Boris. And that fan base that you pointed out deserves whatever size it has because Boris has been painting really good stuff for an incredibly long time.

[Lunatique]

At age 14, I worshipped Boris. As I got older(and the quality of his work deteriorated), I stopped caring about his work. Even though he was a Frazetta clone(with more polished technique), he still had something special to say in his early work. The late 70's stuff(the book MIRAGE comes to mind.) was Boris at his peak. After that, he became a parody of himself, doing one cliche after another, never growing as an "artist." He became what I call a "highly talented hack."

Julie is just a diluted version of Boris.

Dorian Vallejo(his son), on the other hand, is a fine illustrator with his own personal style--one that is far more interesting than his father's.

[v1510nAry]

Boy this woman and man sounds worse than me,
can somebody put up a link to his webby?

[Frost]

Don't get me wrong; I respect Boris' talent as he has a very nice sense of color and contrast, thus creating interesting imagery. The fact that he's consistantly used ref thoughout his career and seldomly done anything without it, plus seeing the marginal difference in quality when he doesn't is just a let down, and somewhat proves that copying figures all your life doesn't teach you anything, either about form or lighting. (I can provide online examples if you like.=)

(Sorry, practising my bitchcraft... and this is random musings, don't take this TOO seriously, although... =)

[burn0ut]

I just dont injoy his work, because his figures have like no... motion.. there just stiff posed flexing figures.. like theyve been frozen in time.
And his technique is just super tight, it leaves nothing for me.
heres there website vision
http://www.borisjulie.com

[nova]

My friend (Pink Pyro) and I went to the mall today and looked at some of Julie's stuff in her book. Wow, that lady is messed up. I'd looked at her stuff before but looking at it again.. whoo boy, yeah. I don't know what goes through her head when she paints those.

I guess we all are a little crazy though.. ehe

[Freddio]

I see what you are saying..

but even if he does use models... you still have to paint i. and they both doa great job at that.

[ceenda]

Frost: I was talking about something similar with a friend of mine about Roger Dean's and Rodney Matthew's pics.

The imagery is great, but in alot of their pics the perspective is way off.

[ May 21, 2001: Message edited by: ceenda ]

[Blakk]

Boris was very impressive to me when I was young. I think he should have gave up a long time ago because everything he does all looks the same and is fomulated. As far as Julie she is just biting off someting that is already boring and making it worse.

The funny thing is that I could never get tired of Frezetta. He is the King!

[pixualize]

I had always been a big fan of Boris in the pre-Mirage days because the only other stuff out at the time had been Frazetta, so it was fresh and polished.

Looking at their stuff now just seems stiff and posed. At least Rockwell captured his figures in a moment, there was always fluidity and action even using photo reference. The Boris/Julie stuff looks posed, kinda like hair and nail models trying to do a tough action flick - just doesn't work.

Mentioning Elmore and Parkinson, and maybe even Caldwell, Easly, Brom, Fields and Lockwood always have a dynamic to their work that is an interpretation of the reference material and build upon what the camera did not capture. I just don't feel the same dynamic of the figures in the Boris/Julie pics. They look posed and stiff.

But the painting is always superb. Smooth technique and great color selctions that always highlight the subject, the human figure.

[Shadowman]

I love the early Boris stuff! I've been a fan of Boris's work before I even knew who he was.

Even when I was in art school everyone loved boris he had all of those card sets and lots of books to buy. I used to go to then comic store after school and buy all of those Savage Sword and other stuff that Boris did the cover art for.

I think that as time goes on Julie has taken his spark away. He kind of took a back seat and let her step in. It's very sad that his work looks so stiff and boring. But you can't blame her Boris did it to himself. I think he just got bord or something.

On another note I realy used to like the work of Dorian Boris's son. He did some realy cool stuff when He fisrt came out. But I haven't seen much since.

I wander does anyone know what happend to Dorian?

[Lunatique]

Yeah, I love Dorian too. I've searched for his stuff for YEARS, and only found what he submitted to Spectrum, stuff featured in Infinite Worlds, and that's about it. Nothing substantial on him internet-wise. I'm surprised Boris and Julie's sites don't mention him. Do they not get along???

[quaternius]

Others have maybe said it better... but Boris is a great technician, not high on my creative scale - by comparison with other artists I would consider equal or better.

I once asked a well-known artist I was taking a class from whether she subscribed to the old saying -"after you paint 1000 paintings you can call yourself an artist". She didn't think that was correct. After 40 years of painting she said "after you paint 1000 paintings you can call yourself a good technician - you still might not be an artist". I guess that's how I tend to feel about Boris and Julie.


From one of Boris' books you can see that he usually starts with a static pose, then gets the model(s) to pose; then copies the photographed models exactly - without adjustment, and sort of builds the background and picture around the static poses. Whether the lighting matches from model to model and with the rest of the picture is obviously not his highest priority. Thus you get these incredibly rendered but often lifeless pictures.

A great teacher like Loomis would say this is backasswards. Start with a design - spooge the paint/crayons/pencils/markers/whatever around until you see some kind of design emerging. Let your imagination figure out what is going on - maybe a greek hero battling a minotaur, maybe a spacestation hangar, maybe an alien bar scene from Star Wars. Once you've got a strong design working - something that could tell part of a story, creates mystery, has movement or tension --THEN bring in the models for the poses to help with the correct lighting, proportion, etc. The models should always be servant to the pictorial design.

With Boris and Julie I have the feeling the models ARE what they want to paint - the picture, storytelling and context has become secondary. Beautifully rendered dead pictures.

My 4 cents.

[Freddio]

quote:

---

Originally posted by quaternius:


I once asked a well-known artist I was taking a class from whether she subscribed to the old saying -"after you paint 1000 paintings you can call yourself an artist". She didn't think that was correct. After 40 years of painting she said "after you paint 1000 paintings you can call yourself a good technician - you still might not be an artist".

---

Very Wise words.

quote:

---

then gets the model(s) to pose; then copies the photographed models exactly - without adjustment

---

Not exactly true. He does change things, like he readjusts the pose a little here and there. Then he has to paint the clothes, skin tone, any swords knives and face. Thats all orginal.

But I read his book on fantasy art. And he says that hes uses photgraph because it saves him time and it doesnt mean he can't draw..

but wouldnt it be quicker (if he is such a great artist}) to just create a pose from scratch and paint that up..



anyway.. yea

[ May 23, 2001: Message edited by: Freddio ]

[Shadowman]

Lunatique- I don't know why boris puts his new wife before his own son.
Maybe there is friction over the divorce from his mother still or maybe Dorian just want's to do it by himself without help.

[quaternius]

Freddio -
I stand corrected...
for those others of us that are also Dorian fans here's a teaser pic...
http://www.tfaoi.com/mn/mic/mic107.jpg

[Lunatique]

Well, the strange thing is, most illustrators who are related, that fact is usually mentioned or advertised. Like the Hilderbrandt brothers, Wyeth family, and even James Warhola, who added the "a" to his last name, is known as nephew of Andy warhol. The Vallejo family seems ot be the exception. even Richard schmid put a link to his daughter's work.

Another mystery is, why aren't there anything on the net about Dorian?? Even Robh Ruppel eventually had fan sites up.

[ May 24, 2001: Message edited by: Lunatique ]

[micke]

I always found his (their) work boring and dull. Boris started the trend, now hundreds (or thousands) of artists are doing the same thing(just worse). bla bla...

[BooMSticK]

What Micke said... Though Boris did some rather good paintings in his prime (70's early 80's) I mostly look for colorcombinations in his work. Most of Boris' work is great to get colorinspiration from since it's just far out colorchoices for the most part. It gets your mind going so to speak.
,Boom