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Our
Guest Artists for 2015! |
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Ken
Kelly & Thomas Yeates |
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Ken Kelly |
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One
of the field’s foremost exponents is American artist, Ken Kelly. Beginning in
the 70s (after a stint in the Marines) Ken’s art covers styles as divergent as
rock legends, Kiss to Conan the Barbarian and Tarzan. Ken has created a legion
of mythical characters drawn from the pages of the world’s finest fantasy
writers, not to mention his own voracious imagination. You can also put Ken to
the test by offering your own ideas and then watch Ken employ his imagination
to create a one-of-kind work of art. A genuine workaholic, Ken often
simultaneously labors over a half dozen different paintings, projects and
ideas. Organized chaos would be an apt description for this artist, who
probably puts as many hours into his art now as he did thirty years ago. |
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Under the guidance of Frazetta, Ken
was able to fine-tune his skill even further. Frazetta stressed how
important it was to put feeling into creating a painting and to let the action
on the canvas come from the imagination. Ken took those words to
heart and has lived by them ever since.
Later that same year, Ken received his first professional
assignment. Before he turned the painting in, he took it to
Frazetta to get his approval. Well, Frazetta did not think that the
woman in the painting had a terrified enough expression on her face, so he
painted over her old face, with a new one of his own, which he felt worked
better. Now it was ready to be turned in. That painting
was done for Warren’s Vampirella Magazine and is titled, “The Lurking Terror”.
For the rest of that year, Ken worked for Warren and Skywald
magazine. Then in 1969, he entered the book cover field and has
since worked for just about every major publishing house. Ken has
done work for some of the best selling authors in the field, including an
outstanding series for Robert E. Howard, and the complete series of Robert
Adam’s famous Horseclan novels..
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Outside the bookcover field, Ken has worked for nearly all of the
large toy manufacturers. He has also done many album covers,
including two paintings for KISS, for which he was rewarded with gold albums.
Over the years, Ken’s artwork has continued to
have the unique ability to evoke the imagination to travel to faraway places
and primal battlefields. You will see that same imaginative ability
in both his pen and ink drawings and his full color paintings. His
work quite literally explodes with energy and throbs with life. His
paintings are done exclusively in oil and are relatively large in size.
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To learn more about Ken, visit:
For Commissions:
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Thomas
Yeates
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Early Years
As a Pro
Yeates first professional work was for DC comics in 1978, a story
featured in Sgt. Rock titled "Preacher". He worked for DC Comics on numerous
series, including Warlord, Mystery in Space and Swamp Thing. From 1984 to 1985,
Thomas Yeates was the artist for Timespirits from Marvel/Epic. He worked for
Eclipse Comics on titles such as Airboy, Scout, Lugar, the political
documentary Brought to Light, and Aztec Ace. For Pacific Comics, Yeates did
Alien Worlds and Vanguard, and for T.S.R., he illustrated the Dragonlance Saga
based on the Dungeons and Dragons game
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The Tarzan Years
In the early 1990s, Thomas
Yeates drew one of his childhood heroes, Tarzan of the Apes, for two and a half
years, co-authoring and drawing "Tarzan, The Beckoning" (for Semic/Malibu). Tom
recalls being one day on the phone with Danton Burroughs, who said to him:
“Tom, if you still want to draw Tarzan, send your work to these guys in Sweden.
They want to do a new comic, but their art is terrible. They make Tarzan look
to much like Conan. Tarzan’s more handsome. If they don’t get some acceptable
art, we’re going to turn them down”.
He went on to illustrate a total of 15 Tarzan comics, many for Dark Horse. ”The
Return of Tarzan" featured his adaptation into comics Edgar Rice Burroughs
second Tarzan novel.
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Zorro and Superheroes
During the same period, Yeates also illustrated "Dracula vs. Zorro"
for Topps comics. This cult favorite was his first teaming with writer Don
McGregor.
Thomas then returned to DC and illustrated a comic book authored by
Rachel Pollack titled "Tomahawk". Set at the beginning of the American
Revolution, it traces the awakening of the hero from his own bigotry after
being captured by a Native American tribe.
In the late 1990s McGregor and Yeates created a highly regarded Zorro
newspaper strip.
In 2001 Yeates illustrated two Universe X specials for Marvel in collaboration
with Alex Ross and John Totleben. They're titled ”Cap" featuring Captain
America, and ”Beasts featuring the X-Men. The Paradise X special ”Ragnarok",
released in 2003 re-tells the story of the fall of the Norse Gods, featuring
Thor, Odin, and Loki.
Next Yeates helped Cary Nord pencil issues 3 - 14 of Conan , and did an
Escapist story for Dark Horse.
In 2007 and 2008 he has illustrated seven graphic novels in the graphic myths
series for Lerner publishing including King Arthur, Odysseus, Atalanta, King
Arthur and Lancelot and Robin Hood. |
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2009 - The Burroughs Year
In 2009 Thomas was commissioned to
illustrate the "John Carter Of Mars" novel published by Fall River Press in the
Library Of Wonder Series. This hardcover book contains the classic tales "The
Princess of Mars", "The Gods of Mars" and "The Warlord Of Mars" by Edgar Rice
Burroughs. For Dark Horse Comics Tom adapted the first part of the "Outlaw Of
Torn"-story from Burroughs.
The Prince Valiant Page
From April, 1, 2012 Thomas Yeates took the art reins on the greatest
adventure strip of all time, “Prince Valiant”. Since then there's a new
adventure of the famous Prince every Sunday in Newspapers and Online at
comicskingdom.com (by subscribtion).
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Visit Tom's web-site
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