Paper Tiger's Ciruelo books
   Ciruelo
   The Book Of The Dragon
                                                                  (Paper Tiger)

Ciruelo (1990) This is the best Ciruelo book on the list, so far. If you are a fan of his work, you are going to additionally want the other two, LUZ and THE BOOK OF THE DRAGON. In this 128-page volume, 111 pages are devoted to the art, with almost every one of them being a nearly full-page reproduction of their single pieces, all pulled into chapters called: Fantasy, Women, Concepts, Other Dimensions, and Twentieth-Century Dreams. Almost all of the double-page spreads continue to work in a satisfying manner. The remaining pages of text cover his autobiographical elements and his thoughts about his methods, material & muses. Styles different from his bulk of illustrative realism, including abstract and surrealism get displayed too. All the work is captioned with the title & creation year, and, in most cases, an anecdote about its content or how it came about. In an overview of his career-to-date, including the advertising & design work with the book covers & illustration, you'll find sleek automobiles, gangsters, spacemen, aliens, castles, knights, dwarves, demons, dragons and other fantastical creatures, as well as a number of female nudes. I also have to mention that while a hardy paper stock was employed in the book, the pages are atypically flat, not glossy, which, perhaps only in its novelty, makes for compelling presentation of the art. I'd like to see more like this, to gauge if this strategy might be superior to glossy, glossy, glossy.

The Book Of The Dragon (1992) This book came first from Spain and then Paper Tiger translated the text into English for their release. Let me alert you that the later Sterling edition is far superior to the rest in art presentation, as well adding a large handful more Ciruelo full-bleed paintings to the mix (look for the green cover). This volume was clearly not meant to be simply an artbook, but rather a melding of Ciruelo's art about his favorite subjects and an educational treatise regarding same. Given that, I'd allow that a fine balance was struck - 144 pages and 100 of them could be described as giving more space, or focus, to the art, though the narrative tries to hold its own on many of those. There are 19 instances where his illustration creeps over the book's gutter, but because of good layout, only four seem really damaged by it. Nothing is captioned, but the artworks clearly concern themselves with, even if only abstractly, the speculation, facts or legends being dispensed nearby.