Paper Tiger's Boris Vallejo/Julie Bell books
   Twin Visions - The Magical Art Of Boris Vallejo And Julie Bell
   Titans / Superheroes - The Heroic Visions Of Boris Vallejo And Julie Bell
   The Sketchbook
   Fantasy Workshop - A Practical Guide   [-BELOW THE LINE-]
                                                                  (Paper Tiger)

Twin Visions - The Magical Art Of Boris Vallejo And Julie Bell (2002)(also Thunder's Mouth Press) This book is the best one on The List, so far, in presenting the artwork of both Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell. It's 128 pages, with 117 of those presenting a single, large art piece. Among those are eight double-page spreads and I have to say that none of them are disappointing, because the layout and the book-binding have both been used well to achieve that. A third of the book is devoted to Bell's work and the rest, her husband's, as well as one work developed by both in tandem. The work is divided up between five chapters entitled, Beauty And The Beast, Magical Mystery, Time Twisting, Twin Visions, Back To The Future. The works by the two artists separately (and a couple created by both together) feature depictions of Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, cavemen, barbarians, wizards, cowboys, samurai, aliens, dragons, unicorns, robots, mermaids and monsters romping through spaceships, castles, swampland and wood. Very few characters are fully dressed, and some of the female fantastical creatures could be considered nudes.

Titans / Superheroes - The Heroic Visions Of Boris Vallejo And Julie Bell (2000)(also Thunder's Mouth Press) The two artists were commissioned to produce paintings that make up specialized trading-card sets for Marvel Comics. I understand that this book "collects them all", in addition to some different trading cards, comic covers and other images they provided for other companies. It is 160 pages long with 147 of them being art pages and 120 of those being dedicated to one 'well-presented' piece each. Ten of the works expand over the book's gutter and, impressively, only three of them fail to be acceptable doing so. TITANS was the title of the first hardcover of this work released and then when the same material appeared in a softcover edition, the title had changed to SUPERHEROES. The book is broken up into chapters named Spiderman, Marvellous Universes, Marvel Knights And DC Days, Avengers, X-Men, X-Women and X-Marauders. Unfortunately, that encourages grouping together, say, three or four paintings of a single character, in their distinctive costume, making the book seem more repetitive than it would if they had been given more of a 'shuffle'. I will say that this strategy does frequently put Boris' version of a character side-by-side with Julie's, allowing for fun comparisons. Anyway, the inclusion of the other comic-related work gives the book more much-desired variety. All the art is captioned with a title, date, artist and original use, along with trademark & copyright provisos. Many of the captions are accompanied with introductory commentary about the character displayed. The book is very nearly half-and-half between the two artists, with Julie Bell having the slightest of a lead. On a presentation basis, I've recommended purchasing before this one other books this husband & wife team have produced, TWIN VISIONS, IMAGINISTIX and DREAMLAND and his solo book DREAMS, and it should be noted that this book repeats only two pieces from all the images in those other four collections.

The Sketchbook (2001)(also Thunder's Mouth Press) This volume contains 160 pages, 134 of which are well-presented drawings. 23 are in color - showing a number of watercolors paintings by Julie along with some of Boris' color roughs of recognizable paintings, which are still very appealing in their more abstract 'style'. Many of the other images are featured against attractive pastel panels rather than just white. While there are a handful of very rough sketches, most of the displayed are closer to the finished end of the spectrum, though the rougher action-figure-studies, and even the life-drawings, still have a special energy about them that makes their viewing worthwhile. Centaurs, mermaids, unicorns, dragons & sea-serpents are among the subjects depicted here, as well a section of fantastical motorcycles (with scantily-clad women draped across them, of course). There are many nudes, as life-sketching has a large section devoted to it. In fact, the drawings are pulled into chapters called, Rough Concepts, Preliminary Sketches, Color Compositions, Finished Pencil Drawings and Life Sketches. There is only a little bit of text introducing each section, but most pieces are accompanied by a short anecdote. The only other item captioned for each is the title, eschewing even identifying which of the pair created it (and it's not like they're all signed . . .). I'd have to say that the double-page spreads are the bane of this collection's existence. There are five of them that bridge over the book's gutter very nicely, but unfortunately there are three times as many that don't ! The List recommends getting THE ULTIMATE ILLUSTRATIONS before this one, but if you enjoy their line work you are going to want this book too, as almost half of it (64 images) is drawings not collected there. I've seen the book advertised as sub-titled THE OTHER ARTWORK OF BORIS VALLEJO & JULIE BELL, but my edition doesn't seem to contain that phrase anywhere.

Fantasy Workshop - A Practical Guide [-BELOW THE LINE-] (2003)(also Thunder's Mouth Press) Enough text and progressive step demonstrations pushed out 'just displaying the art', perhaps attesting to this book being more of a tutorial than many others that claim to be so. The chapter titles are: Preparation, Realizing Ideas, Backgrounds, Main Figures, Case Studies and Painting Metal. When all is said and done, this 128-page book couldn't make it up on The List, as it had only 34 pages displaying a finished art piece (or an excerpt of one) with only eight others with a couple-or-more images on them. With that said, there does seem to be 12 'well-presented' paintings that do not appear so in any of the collections up on The List.