Hard Curves: The Fantasy Art of Julie Bell [Paperback]

Nigel Suckling (Author), Julie Bell (Author), Rose Hank (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 1996

Coinciding with the much anticipated summer 2000 live action movie The X-Men, comes Titans, a collection of awe-inspiring original artwork created by husband and wife team Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell. Along with using a classic sense of style to create and master sensuous full color oil paintings, Boris Vallejo is best known as the visual creator of Conan the Barbarian. Combining strength with sensuality and infusing the human form with incredible power and motion, fantasy artist Julie Bell continues to use her "metal flesh" trademark to produce dramatic works of art. This collection overflows with superhuman characters captured in the act of saving the world, destroying evil protagonists and battling dark beasts. Featuring fantastic figures such as Spiderman, Captain America, and the X-Men, these paintings represent the best of Boris and Julie.

Editorial Reviews

Review

At the heart of Julie Bell's art is a celebration of the human form, developed to perfection and beyond in the exotic fantasy realms conjured by her imagination. Her paintings glitter with shining metal painted with stunning conviction. Power and sensuality are her themes, as are contrasts of both texture and mood; and these strands find expression in contemporary popular culture icons such as heroic barbarians and comic book superheroes. Hard Curves is divided in sections devoted to "Metallic Images", "Sensuality"; "Portraits"; "Superheroes"; "Bodybuilding", demonstrating that Bell's artwork is dynamic, often violent, always sexy. The informative text by Nigel Suckling gives much appreciated background information on Bell and her work. -- Midwest Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press; 1st Thunder's Mouth Press ed edition (July 22, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156025131X
• ISBN-13: 978-1560251316
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 8.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #914,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pleasant material for the eyes., December 16, 1999

By 

Derek Roche (Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hard Curves: The Fantasy Art of Julie Bell (Paperback)

This is a pleasant book with a mixture of chrome entities, body builders and superheroes. The chrome effects are realistic and some of the depictions drive the imagination. This book, I feel, focuses on the rendering of the human anatomy in various positions. It is delightful to see how the cold colours of machines mix with the warm colours of flesh, they just seem to work. The layout is wonderfully done. Each picture is in beautiful re-produced colour. Each picture has a title, the medium used, the size of the picture and the year the picture was born. Also, each picture has an explanation or piece of history to the ideas of the images. Right throughout the book as the images are displayed, the narrative continuously flows as the artist reveals techniques, ideas and her passion for art. The reason why I only gave the book 4 stars was because of some minor spelling mistakes. This book is very enjoyable and colourful and worth having in artbook collections or anything to do with the genre of Fantasy Art.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A trip into energy and sensuality, April 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hard Curves: The Fantasy Art of Julie Bell (Paperback)

Julie Bell's Fantasy Art is pure energy brought up to the eyes of the viewer, stressing muscular and powerful but still very feminine women, movement and action in each one of her strokes, with superb technique and unique imagination. It makes the viewer wonder where her mind is when she paints, and how she can bring such universes into her canvas with such passion.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of Her Portfolio., January 29, 2001

By 

Maui Resident (Hawaii) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hard Curves: The Fantasy Art of Julie Bell (Paperback)

This is by far the best of her various works and offers a very easy mixture of Fantasy, Nude, Comic Book, and other Artwork that she created.

What impressed me the most was the fact that her abilities can create a "metallic" look on characters that are somewhat metallic (Iron Man, Silver Surfer, etc.)

This is agood book to pick up for your collection. And, you don't have to fork over $$$$ for her stuff.