Fantastic Art: An Interview with Vincent Chong

I first became aware of the work of British fantasy artist Vincent Chong a few years ago, during the time when I was running the website and looking after the marketing side of things for PS Publishing and I've been a huge fan ever since.

The first piece of his work I encountered was the absolutely gorgeous wrap-around covers for Joe Hill's long sold-out and much sought-after debut collection Twentieth Century Ghosts (see below for front panel artwork) and ever since then, PS head honcho Pete Crowther has asked Vincent to supply a steady stream of cover images for his titles.

He's not the only publisher to have taken note, either, as Vincent's work now graces an ever-growing range of book covers from various UK and US independents, including Subterranean Press, Pendragon Press and Screaming Dreams.

For the past two years Vincent has won the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist - in the process ending a five-year run of wins by one of my other very favourite artists, Les Edwards - a clear indication of his growing stature and popularity among the UK's genre fiction fans.

The aspect of Vincent's work that has always most impressed me is his incredible use of texture and tone to create a disquieting, almost menacing mood in his pieces. As a result his work tends to be imbued with a genuinely haunting, unsettling, atmosphere that always suits the books he works with perfectly.

Take a look at these examples of his art and design work and then visit the galleries at www.vincentchong-art.co.uk for many more examples:

20th Century Ghosts (c) Vincent Chong, cover art for the Joe Hill collection, published by PS Publishing.

20th Century Ghosts, variant #1

20th Century Ghosts, variant #2

Fool Moon

The Boys

The Steel Remains

I dropped Vincent a line and put a few questions to him about his work and this is what he told me:

DT: You've developed a wonderful signature style full of muted, swirling colours, shadow and darkness, that clearly draws inspiration from a wide range of sources. Who, or what, are your major influences? Who are your favourite artists, authors, film directors?

Vincent Chong: When I was younger I was really into the Amercian superhero style of comic art and Fantasy artists such as Boris Vallejo and Luis Royo, which I've now moved away from a bit. These days I'm more inspired by comic artists like Ashley Wood and Ben Templesmith, and recently I've been drawn to Mike Mignola's more graphic style. I also really loved HR Giger's nightmarish imagery and the surreal compositions of Salvador Dali. A major influence is the work of Dave McKean, whose mixed-media approach played a big part in inspiring my own style.

Aside from various artists I also draw inspiration from photography, album packaging design, music videos, movie posters, and movies themselves. The photography and music videos of Floria Sigismondi (who did some early Marilyn Manson videos) were an influence early on. My favourite film director is Jean Pierre Jeunet, the French director of Amelie and Delicatessen and I also love the work of Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro. All three have a very strong visual style and create fantastical worlds in their films that suck you in.

DT: What sort of production techniques do you employ? Do you have a preference for digital or analog methods? Or do you find that a blend of the two produces the most effective results?

Vincent Chong: I put together all my final artwork digitally, but typically, in the process of creating a piece of art, I employ various other methods of working as well. I use a lot of photography , but also combine it with drawn and painted elements and scanned-in found objects and created textures. Sometimes I also make sculptural elements that I then photograph and incorporate into an image.

So it's not so much having a preference for either digital or analog methods, but using a mixture of both to achieve the result I want. For me, the advantages of putting together the final image digitally, is that it gives me greater scope to experiment, as a lot of the time it's easier and quicker to change things around digitally.

DT: You've already illustrated book covers for some of the biggest names in genre fiction. But are there any authors whose work you haven't been asked to interpret yet that you'd particularly like to illustrate in the future?

Vincent Chong: I've been very fortunate that I've had the chance to illustrate the works of some great authors. I was a big fan of Stephen King's books when I was growing up and never thought that one day I'd actually be illustrating his work. But now, I think I'm more keen to have the opportunity to one day illustrate something that I've written myself. I've enjoyed interpreting the work of various authors, but I would like to be able to illustrate something entirely of my own creation. I've had the beginnings of ideas in the past, but haven't ever written anything properly, so I don't even know if this is something I could do, but I'd like to give it a try one day...

DT: You're best known as a cover artist and that's clearly keeping you very busy. But are there any other avenues that you're keen to explore? Any other media that you'd be interested in working in down the line?

Vincent Chong: I'd love to do more artwork and design for album packaging and maybe do some work for the film industry – either with movie posters or concept art. I've done a few projects creating artwork for websites - for online games and book trailers and such - which were quite interesting to do, as the artwork had to be animated which provided different challenges from doing the usual print stuff, so I wouldn't mind exploring the multimedia avenue more. I'd also like to explore photography further. I use a lot of photography in my illustration work now anyway, but I'd like to try doing some more straight-forward photography without as much digital manipulation.

I always thought it'd be cool to do get the chance to be a film-maker, but I think it's one of those ideas that sounds great in my head, but in practice I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy it, and it's not an area that I have much knowledge in at the moment, so it's not something I'm particularly focusing on right now, but in the future, who knows?

DT: How has winning the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist for the last two years affected your profile? Have any commissions come about as a direct result?

Vincent Chong: It's hard to know if any commissions have come about directly as a result of the awards wins, but I think it's definitely helped to raise my profile around the world and bring attention to my work to those who had never heard of me before. I've noticed a steady increase in the traffic to my website over the last couple of years, and I've been getting more enquiries and commissions, so it seems that there's been a growing awareness of my work, and I think the awards wins helps to establish my reputation a bit more.

DT: What do you think are going to be the major challenges facing fantasy artists in the next 5 or 10 years? And what do you think are the major opportunities?

Vincent Chong: With the current economic situation around the world, I think there's always going to be some worry about whether artists will be able to find work, especially as I think it's quite easy for publishers to turn more to cheaper alternatives, such as creating artwork in-house or using stock photography.

However, with the web and new technologies I think there are more and more opportunities for artists to exploit these days. It's getting easier for artists to get their work out there and seen by a large worldwide audience with faster internet speeds and the increasing ways to showcase work online – through blogs, online gallery and community art sites, as well as the various social networking sites. And with ever improving print-on-demand services as well, it opens up the opportunity for artists to self-publish as another avenue to get their work out there.

I also think new artists are adapting to the new technology and software available to them and it's no longer the case that, for example, an illustrator would just be creating material for print, but they may also cross over into other areas as well, such as providing content for websites or other media.

Many thanks indeed to Vincent for taking the time away from his creative work to answer those questions and for his permission to borrow some of the images from his gallery, all of which remain copyright (c) Vincent Chong, of course.

Do be sure to visit www.vincentchong-art.co.uk and check out Vincent's portfolio.

March 27, 2009 | Filed Under Fantastic Art | 1 Comment

Anatomy of a Todd Lockwood book cover

Via Suvudu, a link to a highly interesting couple of posts by multi award-winning fantasy artist Todd Lockwood that explains the creative process behind of the cover for the latest R. A. Salvatore Drizzt Do'Urden novel, The Pirate King.

From this:

All the way through to this:

The series includes a third post which focuses on the detail of the main character, with a short video demonstrating how the layers of detail were built up. Fascinating stuff if, like me, you have a keen interest in fantasy art but very little in the way of artistic talent and know-how.

Both images obviously copyright (c) Todd Lockwood. Click on them for the relevant blog posts explaining the earlier and later stages of the process.

December 17, 2008 | Filed Under Fantastic Art | 2 Comments

Art History: The Croglin Vampire

This is one of my all-time favourite fantasy art images:

The Croglin Vampire, copyright © Les Edwards

The title of the picture is 'The Croglin Vampire', the artist is Les Edwards (whose website I've become intimately re-acquainted with over the past few weeks), and I first saw this picture in a copy of White Dwarf magazine, years and years ago, when I was but a scrawny, spotty, wargaming teenage geek.

It was part of a double-page spread of assorted fantasy art, and it stood out from the rest of the artwork on display by a mile. Atmospherically I think it's a rather excellent piece; the vampire positively oozes menace, and the portrayal is a far cry from the traditional starched-collar and evening dress of the classic-but-tired Bela Lugosi look. Incidentally, on Les' website he explains that the image isn't meant as a tribute to Nosferatu, but is based on a 'true story'... chilling.

The first time I met Les in person was at one of the first Fantasycons I attended, I think it was in Birmingham about ten or twelve years ago. I think I recognised him from a panel he'd been on the day before, and determined to say hello, I screwed up my fan-boy courage, and crossed over to the table where he was sitting.

"Um, hi." I said. "I'm a big fan of your work."

"Oh. Thanks." said Les.

Okay... different tack, perhaps?

"I, er, I particularly like The Croglin Vampire. Saw it in White Dwarf years ago..." I stammered.

"Oh. Thanks." said Les.

And that was pretty much that.

Of course, that was just my first stab at conversation, and once I'd started running Les's website (and that of his artistic alter-ego, Edward Miller) I quickly discovered that both Les and his lovely wife Val are both incredibly warm and friendly people. That slightly subdued public exterior hides a sharp and biting wit - as you can probably tell from some of Les's images, particularly his Xmas cards - and sitting next to the two of them at the Fantasycon banquet is definitely to be recommended for entertainment value, if you can somehow wangle an invite to the appropriate PS Publishing table...

Did I mention that Les and Val are rather wonderfully generous as well? When Jo and I announced (prematurely, foolishly) that we'd almost finished the house extension (this was back in January; how we laughed at our naivité when we started in on the decorating in February...) Val and Les told us to pick out a set of art prints to brighten up our bare walls. Of course, one of the ones I insisted on picking was The Croglin Vampire. It's going to hang on the wall on my office / study, and will serve as a constant reminder of the wisdom of occasionally saying 'hello' to strangers at conventions. Even if it does make you sound like a fan-boy...

Anyway, that whole long-winded preamble is my way of announcing that I've finished the re-vamps of both www.lesedwards.com and www.edwardmiller.co.uk. Design-work by Les himself - so naturally it looks fantastic - programming and html by me. Well, except for some of the trickier bits of PHP, which I had to sub-contract to my mate Andy, who's been doing this sort of thing in his sleep for years. Unlike me. I started learning the lingo in November...

The official go-live date is tomorrow, but both sites are actually live now, so you can get yourself a sneaky preview if, like me, you're actually online at 9.30 p.m. on New Year's Eve.

(What? You are? Bugger off an have a beer, you fool!)