Philip Byers - Artist & Illustratorさんのイラストまとめ

@kafisart I really like my latest piece!

Only nine more days to pick up the Timed Edition print of Dark Emissary! After September 15, no more copies will be sold. The limited palette, bold silhouette, and metallic patterning made this piece such a pleasure to work on. Check it out at: https://t.co/bZZedT4mO8

@DavidFrasheski Congrats on the milestone! Here are some of my recent favorites.

Dark Emissary, 2020. Sometimes the idea for a piece hits you like a thunderbolt. I happened to glance at my copy of The Children of Hurin, with cover art by Alan Lee, and I suddenly saw a stark, pitiless black spire against a gray sky, with a gate of white light cleaving it.

The Twilight Gate and The Waning Passage were imagined as companion pieces from the start. I wanted to contrast them both visually and conceptually: light against dark, solid against ephemeral, cosmic against terrestrial, among other dualities. What story do you imagine for them?

The Empyrean Path. I love flying over and through clouds. It's such a visceral experience, the palpable sense of space and distance. This piece was also a great opportunity to portray clouds as a landscape unto themselves. I have a similar idea for another piece...

Waters of Creation. A golden form emerges from the darkness of the primordial firmament, its light transforming all it touches, growing in power as it moves amidst the chaos. It is a beginning.

Some days I just want to fly up, up, and away into a world where magic is real, good wins, and beauty abounds at every turn. Actually, that's been a lot of days lately. I know many artists have been struggling to make work lately, but for me art has been a haven in a crazy world.

The clouds here, somewhere between cotton candy and a thunderstorm, walk that delicious line between fantasy and reality, more vivid than life without breaking away from it too completely. Part of me believes I could be content only painting clouds for the rest of my career.

They are boundless, colossal, quiet, meditative, majestic as cathedrals and intimate as a blanket. In painting, they are endless possibility, a vessel for countless emotions, longings, and dreams. They are pure joy to paint.