Oldhammer 40K – John Blanche Made Me a Better Artist
It was a sad week last week as John Blanche, an amazing artist who influenced the game I love and a ton of other things passed away. Here’s what he meant to me.
John Blanche was a pretty fantastic artist and has influenced me a lot these past few years. It is such a wild thing to think about because initially I wasn’t a fan back when I started playing in 2nd Edition of 40K.
You’d think I would have loved the old edition of 40K that was built upon the inspiration created by John and all the other artists who built the 40K style back in the day but as a Comic book kid from the 90’s the whole scratchy and messy style of Blanche initially just didn’t sit with me. It didn’t match the great clean heroics of my Image comics and their bright shiny costumes. The initial beginnings of my love of Anime also clashed with John’s style and I thought – there is just too much brown and gross things on the model.
It felt like everything was being shown to me thru grimy goggles as I swam thru the cesspool of a Grimdark universe. It didn’t match the current aesthetic I wanted for my own narrative. I wanted those clean edges, the flat colors, and bright green bases.
Oh how times change as you work and build up your own armies.
Blanche’s Chaos Minotaur with Mona Lisa banner conversion, Winner: Master Painter award – Games Day 1987
I think the big shift for me was as I developed more of my own style in my miniature painting. I don’t draw like Blanche but I sure as hell enjoy painting like he did. His models were so evocative of this grim feeling of grim and death that I couldn’t help but love to look at them. I would pour over his writings about painting his models and building up his army. I would love the idea of underpainting and utilizing colors in a whole different format. It brought about some of the things I learned in Art school when doing my own oil work and really just opened up a new thought in how I do work.
I love it when people look at my painting and my art and see how things match up a bit. The messy nature of my lines, the blockiness of my paint choices, and my love of utilizing brown as my under layer. That paint style is how I enjoy creating and I think seeing John’s work and his enjoyment in the grim made me appreciate that more and more. I would look at his drawings and see how they were built up.
The lines are scratchy but they evoke this idea of a broken world trying to hold things together. Each part and piece just builds upon each other to create pieces that are not just cool dude in armor and instead shows a story of why that dude is in armor. It just pulls so many things together and looks so awesome I couldn’t help but start to love the work and the look.
I am sad John Blanche passed away but I am also happy there is so much work we can see. There are so many things to look at and get influenced by. His work will live on and I hope to continue to figure out and develop my own style like Blanchitsu.
He will be sorely, sorely missed.
