Happy Birthday to us !!!

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Yes, that’s right, Artists UK started trading on 2nd May 1994 and has now ceased to be a teenager.

It seems like some kind of ancient history lesson on the one hand and hard to believe it has been that long on the other hand and since I have three hands it also seems to have passed very quickly on that other third hand.  Maybe I’ll have a fourth hand by the time I’ve finished writing this.

Although our earliest trading place was at a craft market we were sending prints and posters all over the world very early on due to our various trade contacts etc all over the world.  It was a slow and kind of organic growth where our trade contacts knew artists and our artists put us in touch with trade contacts etc.  I even had a call from Terry Pratchett once putting me in touch with a company in Australia.  Unfortunately, I was in bed with flu on the redirected call so I doubt he thought I was the most ‘get up and go’ person he’d ever spoken to since at the time all my ‘get up and go’ had got up and gone.  Meeting great artists like Alan Lee and Brian froud led to publishing a number of fine-art limited editions that we are still very proud of and some of these are in the sale.

If you are quick enough you can grab some of the bargains going in our 20th Anniversary sale that is on until 5pm Thursday 8th May 2014.

We’ve included many popular artists like Alan Lee, Roger Dean, MC Escher, Bruce Pennington, Chris Achilleos, Brian Froud, Josh Kirby (Discworld), Michael Whelan and Peter Pracownik just to mention a few and the prices are up to 60% off the usual prices and given that many of these items are totally unavailable elsewhere that means a real bargain.

You can treat yourself or stock up early for someone’s special anniversary, birthday or even Christmas if you are organised enough to remember you’ve got it when the time comes.  Not sure I’d manage that but you’re probably cleverer than wot I am.  Just click on the banner button above and you’ll be whisked off to the cornucopia of Artists UK’s 20th Anniversary sale … as long as you do it soon enough that is.

Alan Lee signed prints finally back in stock

After a long time of waiting we have finally managed to slot into the very busy filming schedule of Oscar-winning Tolkien artist Alan Lee to get some more prints signed by him so there are now more signed Hobbit and Lord of the Rings prints available as long as they last.

Since some of the prints themselves are hard to come by we don’t have all of them in great quantity so if you want a particular one best be quick or it may well disappear quite quickly.

You’ll find them all on this link here.

Otherwise, you’ll find the latest new items in all categories on our Latest Updates Page here.

Or if you want to do a search for something on Artists UK then you can do that by clicking here.

Picture of the Month

Book of Merlin by Alan Lee
Book of Merlin by Alan Lee

The classic picture shown on the right here is towards the end of the story of King Arthur’s life by TH White and a wonderful depiction by Alan Lee of both King Arthur and Merlin.  This beautiful painting, well actually a combination of drawing and watercolour painting, was reproduced as a fine-art limited edition print that has always been popular.  The detail in the picture is incredible and really evokes the whole scene so well.  This was of course drawn and painted prior to Alan Lee’s rise to fame with the Lord of the Rings trilogy that earned him such high awards.  When you look at the quality of his drawing and painting it is not surprising.  Actually, it is more surprising that it took so long for the general public to become aware of such talent.  But then we always seem to rate our film and pop celebrities way above our artists.  That perhaps says something about our modern culture or a lack of it.  At any rate, it is quite certain that Alan Lee’s work will be enjoyed as long as there are people on the planet to enjoy it and will be an inspiration to many future artists.  Why not click the comments button and tell us what Alan Lee’s art means to you?

To see more art by Alan Lee click here.

John Howe at Comics Con

Tolkien artist extraordinaire John Howe who worked with Alan Lee on Peter Jackson’s epic Lord of the Rings film trilogy will be attending Comic Con in San Diego this summer, an event which he says he is quite  looking forward to.  More news on exactly what he’ll be doing there is not available.  Apparently it depends on what his editor tells him he’ll be doing there.  Let’s hope the editor knows …

Isn’t the computer spellcheck wonderful !

Some curious things happen to the names of many of the artists whose prints or original work are featured on Artists UK

For instance, Brian Froud hangs up his brush and becomes the relative of a famous psychologist as Bryan Freud whilst rather more appropriately Peter Pracownik becomes Peter Peacenik. Patrick Woodroffe only has to suffer his name being unintelligently mis-spelled by the spellcheck as Patrick Woodruff. Whilst Rodney Matthews becomes the grand master Rod Ney Maîtres. Stuart Dilley finds himself with a problem as Stuart Dilemme and Ed Org perhaps has rather more fun as Ed Orges!

This is of course of no interest whatsoever to John Howe, Alan Lee, Jim Burns, Robert Gould and Roger Dean whose names are entirely unaffected. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. All the best from Kish Savary :-)

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