Howe, John
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Artist, Author.
(1957- ) Canadian artist, now a resident of Switzerland. After formal training in France, he moved to Switzerland to work on an animated film and decided to remain there. He took on a variety of projects, but an invitation to join other artists in contributing to the 1987 and 1988 J R R Tolkien calendars changed his life. Admiring his approach to Tolkien, publishers then assigned Howe to illustrate books by Tolkien, as well as four additional Tolkien calendars (in 1991, 1995, 1997, and 2001). In 1997, when Peter Jackson began working on his three-part film version of The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955 3vols), Howe was hired to serve as the films' conceptual designer, also working as a carpenter on the films; he is now performing similar duties for Jackson's upcoming film trilogy based on The Hobbit (1937; rev 1951; rev 1966). His Tolkien artwork is not unlike that of his most famous predecessor, the Brothers Hildebrandt, though he is noted for his obsessive attention to detail in rendering medieval weaponry, contributing to the generally darker and more mature ambience of his paintings.
Outside of his Tolkien-related work, Howe has done other book covers, almost exclusively for works of Fantasy, including books by Robin Hobb, Guy Gavriel Kay, and David A Gemmell. However, he did paint impressive covers for two paperback volumes of Robert Silverberg's collected stories, Pluto in the Morning Light (coll 1992) and The Secret Sharer (coll 1993), interestingly juxtaposing imagery from sf and fantasy and suggesting that he might have enjoyed equal success had he specialized in sf. [GW]
John Howe
born Vancouver, British Columbia: 21 August 1957
works
- The 1991 J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990) [graph: illustrated calendar: pb/John Howe]
- The 1995 J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar (New York: HarperPrism, 1994) [graph: illustrated calendar: pb/John Howe]
- The Map of Middle-Earth text by Brian Sibley (London: HarperCollins, 1994) [graph: pb/John Howe]
- There and Back Again: The Map of the Hobbit text by Brian Sibley (London: HarperCollins, 1995) [graph: pb/John Howe]
- Knights: A Three-Dimensional Exploration (London: Tango Books, 1995) [chap: pop-up book for children: hb/John Howe]
- The Knight with the Lion: The Story of Yvain (Boston, Massachusetts: Little Brown, 1996) [chap: for children: "retold and illustrated by John Howe": illus/hb/John Howe]
- The 1997 J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar (New York: HarperPrism, 1996) [graph: illustrated calendar: pb/John Howe]
- Jack and the Beanstalk (Boston, Massachusetts: Little Brown, 1998) [chap: for children: "retold and illustrated by John Howe": illus/hb/John Howe]
- The Map of Tolkien's Beleriand and the Lands to the North text by Brian Sibley (London: HarperCollins, 1999) [portfolio: fold-out poster-map: na/John Howe]
- Myth and Magic: The Art of John Howe (London: HarperCollins, 2000) [graph: hb/John Howe]
- Images of Middle Earth (London: HarperCollins, 2000) [portfolio: six large paintings suitable for use as posters: na/John Howe]
- The 2001 J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar (New York: HarperPrism, 2000) [graph: illustrated calendar: pb/John Howe]
- The Maps of Tolkien's Middle-Earth text by Brian Sibley (London: HarperCollins, 2003) [graph: two volumes: combination and exp of previous Howe/Sibley collaborations: hb/John Howe]
- The King of Winter's Daughter (Boston, Massachusetts: Little Brown, 2005) [chap: for children: "retold and illustrated by John Howe": illus/hb/John Howe]
- John Howe Fantasy Art Workshop (Cincinnati, Ohio: Impact/F & W Publications, 2007) [graph: foreword by Terry Gilliam: pb/John Howe]
- Forging Dragons (Cincinnati, Ohio: Impact/F & W Publications, 2008) [graph: pb/John Howe]
- John Howe Fantasy Drawing Workshop (Cincinnati, Ohio: Impact/F & W Publications, 2009) [graph: foreword by Alan Lee: evidently different from 2007 item: pb/John Howe]
- Lost Worlds (London and New York: Kingfisher, 2009) [chap: graph: hb/John Howe]
- A Middle Earth Traveler: Sketches from Bag End to Mordor (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) [graph: hb/John Howe]
- John Howe's Ultimate Fantasy Art Academy (Newton Abbot, Devon: David and Charles, 2021) [graph: introduction by Terry Gilliam: pb/John Howe]
links
- John Howe (Personal Page)
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Internet Movie Database
- Picture Gallery
previous versions of this entry