Customer Reviews

Kingsgate: The Art of Keith Parkinson

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
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With this second collection of Keith's paintings, we finally have a book worthy of the art it contains. This all new material is a wonderful collection of paintings and renderings of fearsome dragons, hideous creatures, captivating women, and sword-wielding men of valor. Also included are cover paintings for bestselling books by Terry Goodkind and David Eddings, as well as computer game art for EverQuest and Diablo, never-before-seen sketches, colorful commentary by the artist, and a whole lot more. One of the "Fab Four" from the TSR glory years, his work never fails to kindle the imagination and whisk one away to the worlds he creates.

"Magnificent modern fantasy at its finest--sensual, richly colored, imaginative, powerful. He's on our 'A' list of contemporary fantasy painters; his previous book was a bestseller for us." - from the Bud Plant catalog

With the sad news of Keith's recent passing, this will likely be the last collection of new material, but what we have here, we can treasure forever. Rest In Peace Keith, and thank you for sharing your wonderful gift with us.

Length:: 0:21 Mins

Keith Parkinson is a fantasy genre illustrator using traditional medium. He has created countless illustrations for fantasy books, games and other commissions.

His costume design for characters looks natural and most importantly always believable for required fantasy setting. After looking at the costume language, I probably can't imagine the characters wearing anything else. It just feels right.

Majority of the paintings are on human characters, and the very few monsters illustrations look great too. There's a good physical form to all the characters he drawn.

For book covers printed on small novels, the amount of detail put into the paintings is amazing. I guess it's the level of detail that gives his illustrations that level of realism.

It is also interesting to observe the type of composition used in book covers. The characters and action are always stage inside the frame. Rarely are any characters cropped. It does feel strange if not told that most of them are covers.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Along with Clyde Caldwell, Larry Elmore, and Jeff Easley, Keith Parkingson completes the "Fab Four" of fantasy artists. To think that all four were on staff at TSR at one time is mind boggling. One can only imagine the creative competition that took place between these four supremely talented artists. Kingsgate from SQP features 128 pages of Parkinson's paintings in full, lush color and printed on heavy stock paper. Bestselling fantasy writer Terry Goodkind provides an introduction to the book. Goodkind is an unabashed fan of Parkinson's who has done the covers to several of his books. Goodkind provides commentary on each cover and offers his unique insight on how the covers were devised. I think my favorite cover that Keith did for the Sword of Truth series was for Naked Empire showing the statue of a powerful warrior, long forgotten in the remote wilderness.

Parksinon's book covers are often enough to sell a book and he's done numerous book, RPG, and computer game covers over the years including one of Polgara, the David Edding's sorceress with her dark hair and trademark white steak, holding an owl in the forest. His fantasy calendars are always in a league of their own. There's a certain magic and myth to his work that's often missing in many artist's work. They seem to tell a story all on their own. Parkinson relates how Blizzard wanted him to do the cover for Diablo II but he was already tied up with other projects. So enamored of his work were they that they basically told him to give them anything as soon as he could and Keith would deliver a stunning painting that would be uses in promotional posters for the game.

Dungeons & Dragons fans will be sure to recognize many paintings from some of their favorite game accessories over the years including his group of skeletal kings in "Gods of Lanhkmar" and the "Temple of Elemental Evil" One of my favorites was always one of the Ravenloft Death Knight, Lord Soth. It's simply a gorgeous book that comes with an index to the paintings. A fitting collection by one of the genre's best artists.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

SPECIFICS:
Page Count: 128
Number of images: 65
Small images: 5
Half page images: 2
Full page images: 50
2-page spreads: 8
BW images: 0

TEXT:
3 page introduction
Title, real size, medium used and a small paragraph for each of the 58 plates displayed

ART:
27 images: 5 stars
23 images: 4 stars
11 images: 3 stars
4 images: 2 stars
0 images: 1 star

Overall: 4 stars


Sketches and other small versions of the final paintings were excluded from the rating

This book is truly a fitting tribute to Keith's absolutely stunning works of art. As a lover of the 'Sword of Truth' series, to be able to see the covers that Keith painted in their entirety is a godsend--and much easier to view than trying to look at them in 'sections' around a book!

The images of the paintings in this book are extremely well reproduced--and the narration paired with each one gives them that extra spark of life. Reading Keith's own words about his work--as well as the words of others that are with some of the paintings--gives each of them their own story, making them something to be treasured.

`I have always admired the work of late Keith Parkinson, and was severely devastated by his untimely passing in 2005. As is the case with his book "Knightsbridge", this volume holds some of his best illustrations and sketches so purchasing it is a must for all connoisseurs of great fantasy art.
The artists' comments (filled with his unique sense of humor) placed with all pictures are alone worth the buy!

I bought this as a gift and my wife was very pleased. She is a player of Everquest and loves Keith's art!