hen you think of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell, several mesmerizing images come to mind—larger-than-life sword-wielding warriors, beautiful women in exotic fantasy settings, magical beings and mystical creatures galore. Together, the husband-and-wife artists create fantastic universes scintillating with energy and vision.
Vallejo was born in Lima, Peru, where he attended the National School of Fine Arts before immigrating to the United States in 1964. He has since worked for nearly every major publishing house with a science fiction/fantasy line. Vallejo has also illustrated album covers, video boxes and motion-picture advertising. He has been one of the world's leading fantasy artists for over three decades, with a mastery of the human form comparable to classic artists such as Leonardo da Vinci.
A former competitive bodybuilder, Bell was born in Beaumont, Texas, where she studied art and drawing, especially of the human figure. In the last decade, Julie Bell's work has awed the science-fiction and fantasy communities. She is an accomplished and bold painter, capable of sculpting the human body with breathtaking depth and power, as evident with her several covers and art books.
How do you achieve such perfection for your mystical beasts? Do you use reference material or are they purely from your imagination?
Bell: First of all, I want to talk about the reference material. Yes, we do use reference material—but, of course, we don't use reference for the entire beast, because they don't exist in real life. We use reference material to get the feeling of an actual living being so that it's believable. It has to have the same kind of structure that animals and humans do. So when they look at the beast they recognize certain parts of it and that will make it feel like something that really exists.
Vallejo: Most creatures that you can think of are going to have arms, legs, some kind of a spine, a rib cage, some kind of basic structure. In addition to that, I am pretty fascinated with insects and spiders. I love to go around in the summer and just shooting [with a camera] different kinds of spiders. That also gives me a good basis for creating creatures.
Bell: It adds more reality to something that isn't real.
Vallejo: Animals, of course, vertebrate have a different structure than the invertebrate. We can combine things, and the rest is up to our imaginations.
Bell: As far as perfection, that is purely a figment of your imagination, because it doesn't exist [laughs].
I hope this isn't too personal, but did how the two of you meet?
Vallejo: No, that isn't too personal. Julie was a competitive body builder and she came to model for me. Through the modeling sessions we became acquainted to each other and we realized that we were highly compatible. The rest is history.
Do you two share a studio or do you work separately?
Bell: We share a studio.
Vallejo: We work side by side. We work approximately four feet from each other. We're mostly together 24 hours a day. We enjoy doing it, and it works best for us.
How many book, magazine and CD covers has your work graced?
Vallejo: To tell the truth, by the time it reached about 500, I stopped counting [laughs]. I can't tell you how many we've done. Quite a few, probably in the thousands.
Bell: I have no idea.
Vallejo: We're really not mathematically inclined [laughs].
Do you do a series of studies before beginning a project? And if so, what mediums do you use? And how long does it take before you're satisfied with the results?
Bell: First of all, it depends what kind of project it is. It has something to be commissioned for a cover. We will need to produce a sketch to be approved so we can start working. First in pencil, sometimes it goes into an ink sketch.
If it is something just for ourselves, sometimes we don't do any kind of preparation. It just happens, we'll be inspired by a photograph or an idea. We'll put it down on the board and
start painting it.
It depends what is necessary, if there is a client involved. If not, it depends on what we feel like.
Occasionally I've done a quick oil sketch—just to get a feeling of how I want the colors arranged—but that's pretty unusual to do that.
Vallejo: There are times that we're just reckless, that we just jump in the water. We get inspired by the pose of a model. We take pictures of the model, put it on the board and build around
it. It all comes down to experience, we've done this for so many years and we do it all the time.
The way Julie does her sketches, she starts out with a very concise and tiny thing that nobody else is able to read.
Bell: You know those stick-it pads that are two by two square? It's sitting at the table, it is always there. Sometimes it turns into a list of things that I have to do. When I'm thinking of a
painting, I'll do a rough little thumbnail sketch. It gives me a feeling of composition, I can see a lot of squiggly lines before it turns into the beginnings of an idea.
Vallejo: I get a little more elaborate when I do a sketch. Mostly because I really do enjoy doing sketches. I like to sit down, with no reference, and I want to get it out of my head and let it happen.
Bell: He does it like magic. It's amazing.
Vallejo: I can sit there with a pad of tracing paper and go over things and changing things around and so on. Until I get it the way I want to.
That is about 50 percent of the time. The other 50 percent is just do it on the board.
Boris, you take photographs for some of your drawings and paintings. Does that add realism to the art work?
Vallejo: Absolutely. I don't think it could be realism without using life models or photographs to do the things that we do. All the old masters and anybody who wants to do realistic work has to work with models. By using either the life reference or photographic reference there is no question in my mind that is the way to do it.
What are some of the inspirations for your art?
Vallejo: Movies, exhibitions, art museums, students—it doesn't matter what. Anything is an inspiration. It comes from all over the place. We mostly inspire each other.
How many art works have you collaborated on together?
Vallejo: At the most, a half a dozen or so.
Bell: We always do one together every year for the calendar.
You use layers of paints and colorful combinations. Is there a name for this technique?
Vallejo: You're thinking of glazing. We don't do much glazing. Although people always mention that about our work.
We work very fast, for one thing. We put the painting on the board with brown acrylic. Then we put one layer, one wash of acrylic to give more to the surface. Then we start rendering at it. That's really it.
We don't layer any more than that. We don't glaze anymore than that. Unless it is absolutely necessary, which is very, very seldom. After the painting is finished, we say, "We should make this darker or lighter or whatever." That seldom happens.
We work the painting as we go along. Once it is finished, that's it. There is almost nothing related to layering or glazing.
Let's talk about some of your paintings. "Dark Whispers."
Bell: It's with a girl standing and holding her hand down and there is a dragon drinking water out of her hand.
Vallejo: I like the image of the massive and threatening beast and the gentle-looking, innocent-looking female. There is obvious trust between the one and another. The small little woman is really trusting this gigantic beast to come and drink from her hand. The enormous creature really trusts the woman to be there. I like that image. That is basically the concept of the painting. From time to
time I like to paint dragons. That is one dragon I actually pulled from out of my head. I also like putting the scene in this canyon-like setting.
"Wings of the Night."
Vallejo: This is a model I have been working with for many years. She has a dark complexion and I thought she was ideal for this painting.
I wanted Night just folding her wings and going to sleep.
I like the idea of the bat wings, because I think the leathery quality of the wings are really cool. I wanted to make the connection with bats, because bats are creatures of the night. All those elements create the feeling of night.
"Return of the Goddess Fate."
Bell: That was one of those paintings inspired by what happened during the photo session. I had these two girls modeling for me. I worked with them a lot and they were really great working together. They were doing these dancelike moves during the shoot.
They got into this one pose where they were sitting back to back, and I had them opening their hands as part of the design. I kept the photograph for a couple of years. I liked the shape they made—it's just a silhouette of their two bodies with their hands held like that.
I wanted to do something with that photograph because I loved it so much. It seemed like the girls conjured up some kind of witchy spell that involved dancing. It is as if they were creating energy
with the dance—and the energy created some kind of goddess.
I put them into a background, which is a beach at night. You can't see the ocean or anything, but in my mind it's at the beach and there are bonfires. As a kid, we had bonfires at night, and I loved watching the flames blowing in the wind.
"A Time So Brief."
Bell: I really do love wolves a lot. This year, I have been doing more wolves than ever. We went to a wolf preserve and shot a bunch of pictures of them, I think they are so gorgeous and
magical-looking.
I wanted to do something with a wolf. I like the idea that the woman and the wolf are competing, measuring themselves against each other—in a good way. They are competing to push themselves,
they use the energy of the other person to push themselves to be better.
Boris and I work that way with each other. We use competition in a really good way with each other, which makes us both work harder.
Do you have any exhibits scheduled for 2003?
Bell: The best collection if people want to see it is our Web site borisjulie.com. That's the most complete collection of what is going on. We're trying to be a little more diligent with putting newer pieces in. We have a page of newer pieces that are available for people to see.
Vallejo: The Franklin Mint is going to have a show of our work in February. It is going to be in their gallery in eastern Pennsylvania. We'll have that announced on our Web site.
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