Russ Nicholson: an appreciation

Some years ago I made an off-hand remark that the fantasy world I would create would be a "slipstream version of Middle-Earth and the world of Firetop Mountain, illustrated by Russ Nicholson".

The mention of Russ Nicholson, who died this month, was not casual. Nicholson was one of the most important, distinctive, and influential of modern fantasy and gaming illustrators. Where writers and game designers described imaginary worlds, Nicholson visualized them, and in the process made them vivid, distinct, and memorable.

As an illustrator, Nicholson's line-work was extraordinary—dense and kinetic. He was incapable of creating a boring or static scene. As you flick through a now-tattered copy of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, you see swirls of smoke, lantern light, debris, decoration, rags, and finery. There was an element of Celtic craft and Medieval illuminated manuscripts in his work, in the whorls of dragon-smoke and the patterning and stitching of leather armor, that suggested depth and richness and danger. The fantasy underworld was an ancient world, trapped in darkness and flickering lamplight, but also filled with treasure, craft, and strangeness.

Consider these ORCS at their grog:

They're ragged, down-trodden in their patched armour and cloaks, Bored soldiers assigned to an unwelcome duty on the threshold of the labyrinth. But they're also sly (one of them is pouring from his more drunken mate's tankard), scarred-looking, and dangerous even in their stupor. They’re neither muscular savages nor hulking brutes. These are creatures of the underworld, characters, guards briefly caught off-guard.

Or who could forget this GHOUL:

The rags and decaying flesh, the sunken, desperate eyes, the hand reaching out of the dark. The detail, the sense of sudden motion, exaggerated the horror.

There’s much more of course, from the density of the city-scapes and crowd scenes in Blacksand to the preternatural beauty of the “houri” character class for White Dwarf magazine. And yet always, as in Beowulf Beastslayer, his fluid and intricate line reflected the craftsmanship of these magical worlds.

If you want to make a full fictional world work, you need to describe it. And for me, that means to see it first, and deep down Russ Nicholson remains one of the artists who let us see things, in line and motion and texture, for the first time.