Barlowe's Inferno

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Salamandrine Man– (unpublished – Painter IX) – I discovered a reference to the Salamandrine Men or Men of Wrath in an old book and was immediately intrigued. I decided to transform them into the indigenous peoples of Hell, there long before the demons Fell and the Inferno was populated by the damned. I see them as fierce fighters, tribal and semi-nomadic, hunting Abyssals and waging a constant battle against not only the extreme elements of the Wastes but, also, the demons and souls. Aware that their era is coming to a close, their heightened bitterness compels them to acts of wanton aggression against any intruders who stray into their territories. Some paintings are about working out the details. This is one. The devil is in the details and it took quite some time to work out all of the motifs from a design standpoint. And then there was the time it took to actually render this piece – one of the longest rendering periods since the Wargate – about six months. But to be fair, I was doing film design work at the time and put this aside many times.

We're sitting in the Milton room by the way," Wayne Barlowe confides, with a twinkle in his eye. We've just been talking about Paradise Lost, the English writer's 17th-century epic poem, and the defining literary influence on Barlowe's artistic life. Wayne Barlowe https://www.illustrationhistory.org/illustrations/lucifuge-rofocale Additional ResourcesThe Examination– (from Barlowe’s Inferno– acrylic on ragboard) – While souls are treated as a resource by demons in an unthinkable number of ways in Hell, a true understanding of them as once-living organisms on a physical level is absent. The fact that Lucifer went to war in large part because of them has created a curiosity that many demons find irresistible. As the first painting truly devoted to the Hell project this piece is a touchstone. The visual idiom that I created in this piece, from the colors to the archi-organic forms to the look of the demons, has found its way into nearly every subsequent Hell painting I’ve done. Wayne would continue to do covers both in and outside of SFF for the next fifteen years. In 1990, he published Expedition, an illustrated SF tale that he also wrote the text for. In the early Nineties, Wayne began doing a lot of dinosaur-related projects, culminating with 1995's An Alphabet of Dinosaurs, a young readers book written by paleontologist, Peter Dodson, and lavishly illustrated by Barlowe. I first saw Barlowe's Guide To Extra-Terrestrials when I was a kid," says Jonathan Knight, the project lead on the Dante's Inferno game. Realising what he's just implied, he turns to his colleague and adds: "You were practically a kid drawing them; I don't want to age you too much!" (Barlowe was 21 when the book was published in 1979. He's now 51.)

Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy (1996): A similar book to Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials covering races and individuals from fantasy books and legends. Wayne Douglas Barlowe is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, painter, and concept artist. Barlowe's work focuses on esoteric landscapes and creatures such as citizens of hell and alien worlds. [1] He has painted over 300 book and magazine covers and illustrations for many major book publishers, as well as Life magazine, Time magazine, and Newsweek. [2] His 1979 book Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials was nominated in 1980 for the Hugo Award for Best Related Non-Fiction Book, the first year that award category was awarded. [3] It also won the 1980 Locus Award for Best Art or Illustrated Book. His 1991 speculative evolution book Expedition was nominated for the 1991 Chesley Award for Artistic Achievement. [4] Sargatanas before the Behemoths– (from BRUSHFIRE: Illuminations from the Inferno, acrylic on ragboard) – Created primarily as siege weapons, the Behemoths can prove to be potent weapons upon the battlefield as well. Equipped with two massive bone-hammers and a heavy chin-blade these greatly enlarged souls are the once-cruel rulers of Asian empires transformed by the Demon Major Yen Wang to suit his needs. Donated to the Rebellion, they proved to be an invaluable military asset to Sargatanas.

Barlowe's inferno

Bottom line: if you like jarring images for your jaded visual palate or as Robert Williams put it, are a "retinal fiend", then buy this and buy it now! But beware, it is not the usual eye candy. You have to like your candy made of habanero peppers, gravel and meat by-products. Barlowe’s Inferno – (from Barlowe’s Inferno – acrylic on panel) – The unpredictable chaos of Hell is present even in the most advanced of its cities. Dis, like all of its sister cities, suffers from wrenching, deafening upheavals that tear through the city breaking away and sending archi-organic buildings high into the air. These float about, sometimes leaving the city’s wards entirely, making their way into the darkness of the Wastes where they are never seen again. Do they eventually land only to be in habited by Salamandrine Men or Abyssals? Few have ever found out and fewer still have survived to tell of it. It was impossible for me to resist putting myself in the Hell that I created. Of course, I could not appear inappropriately whole and so, much like the demons themselves, I took up hook and tong and made myself suitable for place. When in Rome… A vision of Hell that in originality, ingenuity and inspiration rivals the classics. This particular inferno is the work of Wayne Barlowe, who’s created many unforgettable art and prose books but with this one, an oversized hardcover, undoubtedly hit some kind of pinnacle. Also peaking was the publisher Morpheus International, an outfit best known for publishing glossy H.R. Giger monographs (such as H.R. GIGER’S NECRONOMICON); with BARLOWE’S INFERNO Morpheus surpassed its already high standards. This digital paint-sketch was created after I spent some serious time with the Painter program on Paradise Lost. It represents another small step towards understanding that brilliant program but is, by no means, more than an exercise. Dante I read in college; that had a completely different feel to it, and I loved it for what it was, but something about Milton's anti-heroics and all of that was very appealing," he reveals. The filename for this is "tameable beast", so here's hoping.

Years later, thinking about this game, we came upon Barlowe's Inferno - a series of paintings, really his own unique take on hell. The visual style of them is just so amazing, bold. Exactly what we were looking for. I kept going home every night to my wife saying, 'I can't get any drawings that are as good as this guy Wayne Barlowe'. She said, 'Why don't you just call him and have him do the game for you?'."

Barlowe is a life-long student of paleontology, anthropology and ancient history. He also started reading SFF at an early age. Artistically, beside the early influence of his parents, Wayne grew up loving Howard Pyle and the mystic grandeur of William Blake. When asked a few years ago as to what art/artists impressed him currently, he had this to say: The artwork, while visually stunning, has its oddities also. It owes nothing to Dore, Bruegel or Bosch and in this Barlowe succeeds in the almost impossible task of creating something "completely new" in his re-fitting of Hell. His handling, always meticulous, has become a vituoso display of textures and gone, generally and thankfully, are the sharp linear highlights and brushwork of his earlier works. Expedition — Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV (1990): An alien life field journal in a setting thought up by the author himself. Sargatanas – (from Barlowe’ Inferno, acrylic on ragboard) – A former seraph and now a Brigadier General and Demon Major of enormous power, Sargatanas was a hero in Lucifer’s War with Heaven. Since his Fall, he has established himself as one of the few demons capable of rivaling the Prince for control of Hell. God’s Demon is his story. There’s a lot of improvisation in this piece. I wanted to leave some of the organically flowing elements, especially around his metamorphic head, to chance, to let my paintbrush do the thinking, as it were. And I also wanted to let the paint, itself, flow a little more freely to enhance the sense of dynamism this character has always had in my mind. Some have criticized my decision to go in a more “painterly’ direction with the Hell pieces. To me it is not only a natural evolution for a painter to become freer and more expressive, but, in this case, the milieu does afford one the perfect opportunity to be a bit more evocative. It’s a case of adapting oneself to the subject matter. God's Demon: A sequel to Barlowe's Inferno, telling the story of a demon who seeks God's forgiveness. Inspired by John Milton's Paradise Lost.