The Ash, the Elder, and the Hen Elm

The great former Games Workshop art director has passed. He's been an immense inspiration to me since I first got into warhammer aged around 7 - and I still remember how excited I was to find his (very different, earlier, less chaotic) art in my father's battered old copy of David Day's Tolkein Bestiary.   I tried to imitate his styles in my GCSE art projects, with the merciful support of my teachers; I think as a dyspraxic child who loved drawing but couldn't really be neat, seeing the wild exubrance of his penwork and watercolours might have been one of the main things inspiring me to keep trying.  Strategically cropping some of the more embarrassing bits It'd be some years until I realized just how much control and skill, developed in his fine art schooling, really did go into that work - but by then he'd retired from Games Workshop, producing the Voodoo artbooks as he (if interviews are to be believed) struggled with declining co-ordination, and the relatab...