Artist of the Month. Luis Royo.

Happy Year of the Dragon fellow dragons, and other little animals of the Shengxiao (also known as the Chinese zodiac). Dragon's year is considered to be the luckiest year of all the 12 years of Shengxiao. Year 2012 should be very propective and successful to us dragons.
I read an article from Times that this year more babies will be born in China, because the Chinese believe that having 'a dragon' child brings good fortune to the child and to his family. In my family we have two dragons, me and my father ^_^

For the main entry I've prepared something artistic once again. To get my artistic stuff really going I have decided that I'm going to start posting entries on my favourite artists. I'm going to introduce a new artist once a month (two artists if I have time) and review their work. I'm not completely hung up on contemporary art so you'll see some of the old masters here too.

Do you ever get the feeling that most people couldn't give a horse shit about art, seriously. Ask yourself, how much do you really care or even like art? 

                                                                                                                                                                   

Betcha didn't see this kind of art coming Got you!!  
Luis Royo happens to be one of my favourite illustrator/artist of all time. He is Spanish born and says that drawing was always very important to him. In 1970's Royo was studying decoration and interior designing and decided to include painting to his activities. But it wasn't until late 70's that he discovered adult comics and decided to dedicate his career to comics. He's commissionned by MARTINEZ in the early 80's which set him towards his professional career. By 1990's major amount of his own work was bought or commissioned by different medias and clients. In 1992 he publishes his very first compilation work called "WOMEN", which gather all his best works up to now. This album clearly identified that Royo was a great illustrator and this was when his preference to draw women began to emerge. After that he has been working hard to earn his reputation and fame he today has. Royo has published more then 34 art books including portfolios and he continues his "partnership" with Heavy Metal, among other publishers.(*chuckle* my 2012 Royo wall calendar is published by Heavy Metal).

I was introduced to Royo's work via Quizilla. It is this 'quiz' site where teenagers post quizzes, but most often they post stories. I remember when in the mid 2000's vampire stories were so popular on Quizilla. Eheeh even I was writing a story on Quizilla, based on an anime where the characters play 'children's card games' (Thank you LittleKuriboh). Eh but before that I was taking quizzes like 'Are you a witch, a mermaid, a princess, a heroine or a fairy?' (not a real quiz) and for a short period of time, Royo's paintings were one of the most popular image sources for these type of quizzes. You'd get your result describing your character and this beautiful image You can just imagine how awesome it was for a young teenage girl to receive a beautiful pic like the one above that depicted her as a witch ( I was never a witch BTW. Spoilsport me!). What drove me to seek out this artist was first of all my interest in art and second of all, I was utterly in love with the beautiful images and ultra sexy characters. It took me a little while to find out the name of the artist, and ever since discovering Royo I've been keeping an eye on his practice.

Royo is so amazingly talented that I almost can't stand it. Before I discovered by own style I was trying to paint like Royo. He has such an amazing eye for detail and tones that his work looks so realistic. When I look at his work it's like I'm looking into this paraller reality that's filled with sexual escapades and disrupted fantasies. It's a reality where beautiful people co-exists with androids and monsters. The Women are tough, extremely beautiful warriors who defeat monsters and devils. But  what they can't seem to defeat is their endless lust for sex. Human men are just a mild distraction on the background, plain figures compared to their darker counterparts, the devils, monsters and robots. To me it is so hot that these monsters can gain the females attention and affection. Basically in every piece that portrays sex, the woman (or women in some case) is having sex with a monster. It is so sexy to see Royo depicting men as hideous monsters who still can catch the female's eye. Or perhaps the monsters don't represent men at all...perhaps they are just monsters, sharing the same reality with the warrior women. See, I like sexy things ~_^

*chuckle* But is Royo's work really art? To real artists his work would seem cheap and pretentious and doesn't strike as nothing but pornographic  soft porn. Funny story, my art history/visual culture tutor once asked me didn't I find Royo's work extremely sexist and oppressing towards women? "Not at all! How do you make that one out?". That's not how I view Royo's work. When I look at his paintings I see beautiful people who have been painted so well, that they might as well be real. When I look at art work, the first thing I do is check out how good the painting looks like. Does it look realistic or surreal. I prefer realistic work so that's why I'm so in love with Royo's work. I get my tutor's point though, Royo's work, in the end, is just a bunch of doll faced, plastic looking women showing off their lady parts, killing and having sex with monsters. But I can't believe how talented he is that he can paint realistic looking people. Skin ,especially, is hard to paint realistically, but he nails it. The sex doesn't bother me at all. I actually love his hard core sex paintings (See his Prohibited series) They are so raw and sexual and not many artist have the guts to paint explicit sex scenes where a woman is having sex with a really fat and tall monster. Heh not only is he really talented painter, but he's also very brave. I know that many people don't like his work because of its themes and because it doesn't seem like real art (it's too commercial), but every one of his paintings and drawings are hand made. Most of his paintings are really really large, so when you take a look at one of these images, just imagine how much time and effort he spend on those paintings. For ex. the image of the Batgirl looks so amazing. There is certain lightness in the colour and in the technique he uses, but it's 

 broken down with the dark blues and black. I'm really interested in his painting technique. He keeps creating those very smooth almost fog like textures in his work, as we saw in the unicorn & dragon painting. It almost reminds me of old Japanese ink drawings. I like to think that he's kinda like a multi-talented artist. He can make really fabulous ink sketches like  this vampire on the left. He can create very ethereal and crepuscular paintings as well as heavy and detailed ones. Royo has made quite a few of those ethereal paintings depicting his beautiful warrior women,  just women in their armour. However I especially love the detailed ones (like the Batgirl), where the surroundings and the people look so real that he makes me wish that I could live in that bizzare world and be one of those warrior women.


I know that Royo uses live models. For ex. he has used Natalie Portman's and Steven & Liv Tyler's images to create couple of pieces. And he has this one model who has modeled for him many times (I can't recall her name). I would sooooooo looove to pose for him! *_* I have done modeling before and it would be just so cooool to have Royo paint me (well he'd most likely alter it, but still I'd be the base of that woman). That's the narcissistic part of me talking, but I'd love to have one of Royo's paintings or posters on my wall in which implementation I contributed to. I have one of Royo's posters ^_^ the boys in college liked that I had this half naked 'amazon' woman on my wall. She is a fine looking girl. 

Anyways even though it may look like I'm just another 'fantasy art' liking sci-fi fan girl who can't tell fantasy art from real art, that's not me. As much as I like art art (my old tutor Sarah R Key makes some quite artistic pieces) I can also appericate art like Royo's. He uses the medium that once was considered the only true art medium, he most certainly can paint and I can see stories in his work. After all, to me, it's not so much as how it's made, but what it's depicting. I love his beautiful, detailed paintings with the erotic twist, but I especially love the stories they tell.

Hope you enjoyed my little entry on Luis Royo. Next time I'll try and get my entry on fur farming and animal testing done. It's such a sad and awful subject that I have been postponing it on purpose. It may take a while though because I'm applying to do my MA in art PGDE.

Until next time! HM