Brian Froud

Brian Froud is another artist that I have loved from a very young age, I first found his creations when I was around 8 years old and I was given a Labyrinth video tape. I think I watched it at least once or twice a day for years! I fell in love right away with the characters and how they looked, at the end of the tape there was a 'Making of' part that showed the process of Brian Froud drawing stacks of sketchbooks filled with amazing characters and how they were made in to puppets and costumes for the film. 

When I started going to college a tutor let me borrow Brian Froud's 'Good Fairy, Bad Fairy' book and I then had a chance to research his work properly and see his astounding creatures. 

One creature that always stood out to me was The Boon (above), this is a pure of heart creature that brings good dreams and takes bad ones. As soon as I saw the page with this creature on I was sucked in by the glowing colours and cute angelic face and interesting figure. 

Brian Froud has a real talent of creating very organic creations, you can spot the references to the natural world and you create an idea of where you would find such creatures. Like above, the skin and patterns in these creatures resample closely to woods and look as thought they would fit perfectly and be camouflaged in the local forest. 

When I was in my early teens I found a book in my school library called Knife and I fell in love with it, it was about a cool fairy who was a bit of a rebel and starts speaking to a human boy. I always tried to draw the cover and would look at it for ages until I printed it out so I would have a copy of it myself. And back then I had no idea it was Brian Froud, in fact, I have only recently found out it was one of Brian's creations. 

I absolutely love looking at Brian's art work created for Labyrinth! I love that each creature is very different and has distinct features of their own giving each a sense of individuality and personality. I think this adds to the magic of the artwork, and it shows such effort and love that he pours in to his creations. The pieces demand further inspection from onlookers and the more you look the more creatures and amazing details you seem to find. This is what I see as satisfying art work, it'd art work that you can spend hours looking at just to not miss the little creatures hidden in corners or peeking out from behind the surrounding details. 

Another thing that I love about Brian's work it the diversity, he can create hideous, evil creatures that portray feelings of sinister atmospheres and mischief, yet he can also create the cutest and most innocent of creatures that glow with sincerity and beauty. This makes each creature as interesting and enveloping as the last. 

I love the more mischievous of characters, above we can see a piece from the 'Bad Fairys' side of the 'Good Fairy, Bad Fairy' book. I love the hands, and the way Brian chose to position it in the middle of the piece, I think the composition of the piece makes the eyes travel around in a flowing manner. And the jagged and harshly shaped creature above the hair of the bad fairy, I love how the features fit so well and it fills me with inspiration to get drawing my own littler creations, as I have been by his work since I was 8. I loved sitting and watching Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal as I would try and draw my own figures, well now I have another 12 years of practice under my belt I hope I can put the years of research and love for weird creatures to good use and create my own interesting book of weird and wonderful creatures.