Enchanted Conversation: ARCHIVE ONLY : APRIL ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

This month's Artist Spotlight shines on artist/illustrator, Brian Malachy Quinn.

Brian's art has been featured on the covers of Electric Spec Magazine, Space and Time Magazine, Helios Quarterly, and NewMyths, among others.

He uses a variety of mediums such as watercolor, pen and ink, block prints and etchings to bring forth his unique and beautiful art.

Find out more about Brian in his interview below, and share your thoughts about his art in the Comments section.
Hi Brian. What inspired you to become an artist?
Reading has always been important in my family so there have always been many books in my house and the artwork in illustrated ones enraptured me before I was even able to read them. Illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, Arthur Rackham and Beatrix Potter were amongst my favorites as a young child and I would spend my days trying to reproduce them. As I gained knowledge of composition, color palette and perspective and improved my skills with the various media, I achieved better and better results with time and effort and started doing original pieces.

Do you have a favorite genre to illustrate for and why?

I originally went into illustrating to do art for children’s literature, so it is always enjoyable doing watercolors of bears or rabbits with human characteristics but I have come to love doing work for speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy and horror) publications. Sometimes the more bizarre the image I create the more satisfying it is to me.

Who has influenced you as an artist and why?

Definitely, the three illustrators mentioned above but also my mother who is very creative. We were always doing arts and crafts and seemed to have a never-ending supply of art materials. I also gained my passion for trying new media and techniques from this period, which she encouraged. All my illustrations that I have sold in the last year for speculative fiction magazines and anthologies use a mixed media technique where I start with a watercolor/pen and ink for each figure, foreground and background then scan into computer and combine and process digitally in Photoshop. A couple years ago, I also started doing etchings and block prints and dream of one day having my own press.

What else would you like to add for our readers:

I have a Master’s Degree in Physics and MBA in Finance and I have sold four short stories to date, author of a supplemental book for college astronomy courses and ghostwriter of a book on wealth management. I am currently finishing an illustrated book on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity for middle grade students (looking for an agent!) and have started writing a novel, a psychological thriller about a small college in a once sleepy Midwest town (I have been a college lecturer for eight years and spent far too many years in grad school!).

Check out some of Brian's enchanting art below: