We’re getting very close to production starting on the books (end of next week we should have everything collated), so it’s time for our 3rd artist spotlight. This man needs no introduction, it’s the insurmountable Peter Andrew Jones.
Peter Andrew Jones (PAJ to his friends and fans) has been a stalwart of the SFF art world for nearly 50 years and has more published book/game covers than most artists have rough sketches. His style is iconic of an age and era and stands up today as some of the most inventive and striking imagery found within the genre.
You would be hard pressed to find a more prominent SFF artist in the UK, and millions of books have been sold with his iconic style of art adorning it.
I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Peter in his homage to Black Tiger, and he’s added a sci-fi element to this version which is in fitting with Ready Player One but still utterly recognisable from his original piece.
I have put an excerpt from his biography below, as a full bio would take up several thousand words… and for good reason – the man is a legend.
“Peter Andrew Jones is a contemporary British artist and illustrator born into the relative poverty of post-war Britain in Islington, North London in 1951, son of the late Reginald and Catherine Jones. His father was a skilled engineer, and Peter himself has always had a fascination with engineering, a fact which undoubtedly had an influence on the hundreds of imaginative paintings for which he became internationally famous, particularly in the genres of aviation, science fiction and fantasy.
Peter showed interest in the visual arts from a very early age: he described the post-war London of his boyhood as “grey” with little for children to do, and he took to drawing cartoon characters, such as Fred Flintstone, and painting snow scenes to “colour his world”. During holidays in the late 1950s at Leven in Scotland (his mother’s home town) the seeds of a life-long love of aviation and space technology were sown as he watched sleek, shiny, silver fighter aircraft flying over the Firth of Forth from RAF Leuchars. This love deepened in the early 1960s when he discovered artist Roy Cross’s illustrations on commercial Airfix plastic construction kits.
At school he continued to pursue his interest in art, mainly to cope with a dislike of more formal studies such as mathematics, and won school prizes for his work. Sunday visits with his parents to London’s National and Tate Galleries provided further inspiration for his ever-growing awareness of the world of art, and the lives of artists.
In his late teens he shunned school careers advice to “join the Parachute Regiment because of his outgoing personality”, or to “become a North Sea Trawlerman”. With the encouragement of his art teacher, Robert Spearman, a hugely talented artist in his own right, Peter applied for, and subsequently attended, St. Martin’s School of Art (now Central St. Martins) in London in 1970. He graduated in 1974 with an honours degree. Robert Spearman had taught Peter at adult evening institute life drawing classes as a condition of pre-art school tuition, and he also taught Peter the basics of classical painting and drawing.”
Peter’s full biography and website can be found here – and i strongly recommend you all check it out just to see to length and breadth of Peter’s career.
He continues his own work, and rare commissions for art collectors all over the world and his skills haven’t waned a bit.
