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I have always loved most fantasy art for the reason that it’s so intriguing to analyze. The way it is overly ornate with spikes, flames, and scantily clad women added to almost every work. Blood or gore (which would be expected of the type of people we attribute to this category: I would propose also lovers of video games and the “low” genres of film including b-horror films) is virtually non-existent. Though these are some observations that I believe generally describe fantasy art, it also has it’s own categories.

I would suggest there are three different “schools”: dragons, elves, or fairies. Everything fits into these three categories. For example, mushrooms, butterflies, rainbows, and unicorns all fit into the fairies category.

Fantasy art, like art in general, reinvents itself every couple years with some new trend. While I was in Jr. High school, the fairy school seemed to reign supreme over other types of fantasy art, especially in the blacklight poster market. Up until the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released, there was a large anime inspired elf trend, where many depictions of elves and other fantasy creatures had an asian feel to them. There are some still holding on to this, but it’s for the most part dead, to the pleasure of fantasy art purists. The most recent trend has been a refocus on tolkien fantasy: hobbits, ents, dwarfs, wood elves, high magic elves, mysterious rangers and some demon beasts. I don’t intend this post to be a history lesson and so I am skipping other trends including roman mythology, narnia, manbeasts, and weaponry for the sake of readibility. I may or may not discuss these at a later time.

I post all of this to intro what I believe is the greatest and most entertaining trend in fantasy art, what I call the celebrity “he would look bad@## as a warrior or “she would be hot as an elf” trend. Below I give a few examples:

Tim Allen, Knight of Round Table

Joe Peschi, The Nordic Conquerer

Steven Spielbierg, The Hobbit

And last, but not least:
Kurt Russell, The Greek God

These images and more can be found at http://www.chez.com/actusf/Celebrites.htm, but i warn some of the celebrity art at this site follows my description of scantily clad women. I only link to it to give credit to the artist, not that you actually visit, though there are a few notables: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Paul Newman, and Robin Williams as Siegfried will give a laugh.