Knights Bridges: The Art of Keith Parkinson

_Knightsbridge_ by Keith Parkinson is a book of his fantasy art. It contains 51 plates of his paintings. Of those, most were used as fantasy novel covers or game covers. There are also some smaller miscellaneous plates of paintings & sketches, and a couple of paintings that were done just for fun. I have a number of fantasy art books, and if I could keep only one, it would be this one. Parkinson's art is very detailed & realistic. His facial expressions & body language are quite good. As evidenced both by the paintings themselves and his commentary, he goes out of his way to get good visual references. Technically, he is very adept and uses value control, rhythm, diagonal lines, forced perspective, and a number of other visual tricks to make sure the viewer's eye is directed where it needs to be. His commentary about how he goes about his paintings is worth the price of the book alone. The section at the beginning about compositional thumbnails was very intriguing and thought-provoking. For book covers, he almost always reads the manuscripts before beginning his drawing. This results in a very good match between his cover art and the book itself, both in subject & tone. He was the cover artist for the Elenium trilogy by David Eddings, and his comment about the themes on the cover of the middle book ("There are three things pictured here that have returned after once being banished.") demonstrates how thoroughly he understood the book itself. Parkinson also states that he likes drawing and painting dragons, armor, architecture, and wooded scenes (among other things). In all these cases, his enjoyment shows and the subject matter is done both beautifully and realistically. If you like fantasy art, get this book. You won't be disappointed.

This book is incredible. Keith Parkinson is a master with capturing both action scenes and poses. The flow of movement and expressive faces in his art are some of the best. His images are very creative and inspiring. Anyone who loves art and fantasy should definately own one of these books.

Keith Parkinson is perhaps one of the handful of fantasy artists on par with the legendary Jeff Easley, and his art is easily the most realistic and visually enthralling of all that have been recently created by other artists. Knightsbridge does complete justice to the incredible abilities demonstrated by K. Parkinson, including his mastery with fantasy creatures that appear completely cliche in the work of others: dragons, werebeasts, elves, etc.

Any artist interested in the Fantasy genre needs to have this book in their resource library. Keith's solutions to common problems are amazing.