Mythica: In The Shadow Of The Gods: The Dark Art Of Steve Stone (book review).
The fourth book, ‘Mythica: In The Shadow Of The Gods’, is slightly different to the previous three as he gives some space to some of the 1500 commissions, many book covers, he’s done. This time, I did recognise a few but more for appearing in artbook compilations than actually on covers. I did appreciate his problem of not doing art for its own sake than commissions because you can lose karma by doing so many. Even so, Stone really ought to consider doing a book of his cover art as I’m sure artbook collectors like to see the art without the titles.
The favourite jaw-dropper is on page 6, ‘Lilith In Eden’. Towards the end of the book, there are a few paintings with normal skin tones, a reminder that he can paint traditionally.
Stone goes into a bit more detail about his education and stopping drawing and painting for a couple years getting his degree in fine art but directing film. As he later went on to direct four SF films, I’ll be giving a look at the only two on DVD during the year.
He also describes his love of digital art but had to wait for PhotoShop to do levels in its second version in the mid-1990s before running it in a custom Mac, which looks like was mostly in the size of the RAM/memory. Today, each of his digital paintings takes 2gB, so if you want better paintings up your resolution setting and have plenty of RAM as I doubt if 8gB will cut it. Think of a minimum of 16gB, 32gb would probably be better depending on how many other programs you’re running at the same time.
If you can only go for one book, then I suspect this will be the one, mostly because of the cover art, even if its only for about a quarter of the book and a couple pages are like a scattershot on a double-spread. If there is a problem, especially with this book, is that it doesn’t open flat and I suspect this will upset some of you. This is a problem for a lot of softcovers. I suspect you would have to have string binding to get around this but it would add to the cost of the book.
GF Willmetts
April 2025
(pub: Stone Nexus Dark Arts, 2024. 96 page illustrated large softcover. Price: £19.99 (UK). If you buy his 4 book set together, £59.99 (UK))
check out website: https://stonenexusdarkart.com/products/the-art-book-mythica
