Boris Vallejo: Fantasy Art Techniques
(1985 - Prentice Hall Press)

(text by the artist) Actually a very good monograph, 127 pages, of which 63 are full-page presentations of his work, but even more startling, 29 of those are beautiful full-bleeds. There are a few more multi-image art pages, but the rest of the book is given over to the instructional text and many photographs & sketches used to help illustrate that material. There's a bit of everything here - works collected from movie posters, record sleeves, book & magazine covers, and even an ad for an amusement park. There are some science-fiction subjects, Doc Savage and futuristic cities, but most are from his barbarian & savages mode, with Conan, dragons & dinosaurs, as well as his less commercial sensual paintings. There are some male nudes, but many more females are to be found here. Before getting this book, The List recommends all of the ones presenting Boris' work along with that of his wife, Julie Bell, as well as this artist's monographs DREAMS, FANTASTIC ART OF BORIS VALLEJO and MIRAGE. If you already have all those, you will still find here 32 new pieces, and another 5 that haven't been 'well-presented' in those other books (as well as a couple smaller ones that get a better (larger) showing here) - That means better than half of the good stuff here stands as "yet uncollected" material.