I thought that might actually coincide with me moving into the countryside, which it did. “I worked in London for about 5 years and I got tired of the "tricks" I suppose of doing all these different art styles and I was longing to discover exactly what I wanted to do. So I answered with the fact that Alan Lee and myself live in the same place and we both respond to the landscape that we live in and that shows up in our art. I was a bit taken aback and had to think about it and wondered "oh dear, did I steal anything from it?" and then realized, wait a minute, no we were ahead of those movies. After a recent showing of the original Dark Crystal movie, somebody asked a question "why does Dark Crystal look like The Lord of the Rings movies?". When we were at art school, that was the big book we were all reading. I mean, for us it was The Lord of the Rings. “Oddly enough, while I didn't pursue it, Alan Lee did. That I was some kind of rediscovered artist from the turn of the century and were really shocked to discover that I was a young man.
#THE DARK CRYSTAL CREATURES SERIES#
Indeed, when I did a book called The Land of Froud, which was a series of my paintings, people just assumed I was dead. So when I started to do my own work it tended towards that type of look. There was something I guess for me that was attractive that was it had this nostalgic quality, a look back to a bygone age. In particular, I loved the detail that was going into this work. I really loved the richness of the illustration. The ones that did all these deluxe books around 1910 and that sort of period. “After discovering Rackham, it was all the artists surrounding him that interested me as well. Alan was there and he tended to work late at night and I worked during the day, so it was usually when I was going home I would drop by and say hello as he was gearing up to do his work. So we were all working in Soho in London. Eventually, I moved into a studio space at the agent's, which other artists did as well. I finished art school around 1970 and then I had an agent, drawing and painting all sorts of illustrations.
Something that would go on to influence other artists many years later. Working closely with Alan Lee, Froud brought the classical world of fairies to life in a new and fresh way. One of Froud’s most influential works is the artbook Faeries that was published back in 1978. I sort of taught myself illustration at art school, which they indeed acknowledged when I left as they set up an illustration course after me because of my enthusiasm for it.” I spent all my spare time developing that. Due to Rackham, I started to get involved with the idea of illustrating fairy tales whilst I was at art school. It was the shock of recognizing that's how I felt as a child, in amongst the woods that I felt that nature had personality and soul. Seeing his pictures and seeing, in particular, his drawings of trees that had faces. I quickly found that was really boring and by then I discovered Arthur Rackham, a turn of the century artist that painted fairy tales. I gave up the painting and went into graphic design, thinking that was a more direct and more honest way of using images.
I thought this was patently not true and I was intrigued by the fact that art and a picture should tell a story, or convey some deep emotion. I started as a painter but I really didn't like the fact you could paint rubbish pictures but if you could give them some erudite meaning and you made that up, that people would think that was good art. “Really, I think the reason I got into doing what I did at art school is that it was a reaction against painting. I suppose about using your imagination to take you into another place. I thought that was hysterically funny and that really intrigued me about the whole fantasy aspect. “While my art teacher at grammar school encouraged me to go out and paint nature but he showed me some of his drawings and he used to do these really funny drawings of people he knew and how he imagined what they would look like in the bath. Froud has a genuine fascination with nature and the character of trees.
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