Somehow I missed that fantasy artist Chris Achilleos passed away about a month ago. He was an artist that helped shape my image of fantasy worlds via the many properties that he created art for in the 1980s.
He painted the cover art for many Fighting Fantasy books, to the extent his style became ubiquitous with the world in my mind. Ever since I first saw it, I’ve been a big fan of the piece he did for the Titan book:
He was also a prolific artist for fantasy novel covers, including many ‘sword and sorcery’ examples that I devoured in my youth (and still do today in fact):
And while I don’t think I actually knew it at the time, he was also the cover artist for a lot of Target Doctor Who novelizations. This range of work would bring him renown in later years, and I was happy and surprised when we stumbled upon an exhibit of his original Doctor Who paintings when we visited Wales years ago.
Achilleos was the man who painted the iconic Heavy Metal poster (and the designer of the character Taarna):
And who did the cover art for the first edition of the popular Talisman game:
When I was a youth, I had an Achilleos poster on my wall, taken from either an old White Dwarf magazine or an issue of Warlock magazine. I also attempted to copy his art myself in my juvenile scribblings, and even used to sign it using his trademark A in C.
And still today I have two prints of his work framed and hanging on the wall of my home office. When I bought these from a dealer at NYCC many years ago he told me a few nice anecdotes about the man himself, and how (at that time, when Achilleos was in his late 60s) he was eternally delighted that work he had done in the 1980s was still appreciated. There are many great fantasy artists, but Achilleos has always been one of my very favourites. He’ll never know how important his work has been to me, but I thank him for it nonetheless.