Once upon an engraving...
Maybe when you saw most of my art you already figured out what I am going to tell you. My main inspiration for my style, mostly in my inking, is the old engravings. Now if you don't know what is an engraving, it's time for a little reading about it (Thanks Wikipedia!)
Everything started when I was in high school reading history books. Every chapters were full of engraving about persons, battles, scenes, etc. I found fascinating that they could achieve so much details, illustrating light and shadows and making them so realistic with only black ink.
There is something ''magical'' that happen when I see engravings. Maybe it reminds me of old lifes I had who knows. One thing for sure it is making me dream.
One G-Pen to rule them all
My favorite artist of all time is Gustave Doré. As an artist, he is my mentor. I want to achieve his level, maybe it is an impossible task but anyway...it motivates me like nothing else can.
The second artist that I have a great admiration and inspiration for is Francisco Goya. His engravings are amazing. My favorite series by him is Los caprichos. It is a set of 80 prints in aquatint and etching created in 1797 and 1798, and published as an album in 1799.
A coexistence with black metal
The esthetic of a lot of black metal albums is inspired or use engraving for their cover arts. The black and white of the illustrations, often the subject and the minimalism of some of them fit perfectly with this kind of music.
For one of their demos, the band Emperor used the artwork "Death on the Pale Horse (Revelation)" by Gustave Doré, created in 1865.
Most of the subjects in black metal is a rejection of Christianity and a praise to paganism or satanism (often used to despise the christian beliefs). So I think taking engravings or create art inspired by it is a good choice.
For their first album, the band Dimmu Borgir used the artwork taken from Gustave Doré's illustration of for the poetry book "Idylls of the King" by Alfred Tennyson.
Also, the used of heavy contrasted black & white pictures of the band members fits perfectly.
They look like coming from the same magic world so to speak.
For their first album, the band Ossuaire used a bunch of old medieval engravings by unknown artists of that era.
Evolving the style with less difficulty.
In the world we live today, creating engravings cost a lot of money and it is not easy to achieve. Also, this technique of art demands a lot of skills to create something really beautiful.
A few years ago, seeing videos of how to ink manga's pages introduced me to the use of nib pen. It is hard to mastering at first and scary the first time you use it but like anything in life, with determination and practice, I can say that I am not a rookie anymore with this medium.
Anytime I ink an illustration I try as most as I can to reproduce the feeling I get when I see engravings. I am on the way to achieve it I think. Maybe in the next months or the next years who knows. But I know deeply that one day I will acomplish my goal.
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