Customer Reviews

Hard Curves: The Fantasy Art of Julie Bell

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Julie Bell's artwork impressed me very much. This book is some of the best works of fantasy art I've seen. Her imagination, along with her keen ability to draw the female form, makes this one of the best artbooks I own.

SPECIFICS:
Page Count: 128
Number of images: 120
Small images: 66
Half page images: 15
Full page images: 33
2-page spreads: 6
BW images: 2

TEXT:
1 page introduction
2 page foreword
Scattered biography throughout the book
Comments on the paintings

ART:
12 images: 5 stars
66 images: 4 stars
42 images: 3 stars
0 images: 2 stars
0 images: 1 star

Overall: 4 stars

Julie Bell: artist, mother, bodybuilder, wife, and wife of Boris Vallejo. It all comes together on this book.

Bell's art is about hot animal power, embodied in a human frame. Most of the subjects in this book are women, often Bell's sisters. She draws them with real love for a woman's figure, and with gut-deep understanding of how the female version of the human machine works. A few of the male figures are patterned after he husband, Boris Vallejo, and his schwartzeneggerian build. The only figures that don't project raw power are modeled after her sons - somewhere around ten in these pictures, and much too young for the rippling sinews.

If you like fantasy art, you are sure to like Bell's work. There are some science fiction and comic-book themes here, but I think the best work is in the sword and sorcery genre.

One final note: the female figures she draws are all young, beautiful, and powerful, like Bell herself. That is not the only way for a person to look good, though. Older figures have their own attractions, and Bell will have an older figure soon enough. I hope her artwork branches out when that happens - the possibilities are very exciting.

//wiredweird

This book showcases Julie's wonderful art, especially her famous reflective metal technique. The artwork is to her usual high standard and is breathtaking. Her mastery of this art form is unsurpassed in my opinion. This is an excellent book, enough said!

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