Melvyn Grant
Melvyn Grant (born in London, England, also signs his work Melvyn and Mel Grant), is a universal artist and illustrator. Trained traditionally he originally worked with oil paints, but now has switched to creating most of his work digitally. Although he now paints digitally, his work is still produced by hand, brush stroke by brush stroke, and still takes time and looks identical to his oil painting. Currently, Mel lives and works on the coast in the Southeast of England, although the bulk of his work is commissioned internationally. He is well known for his Fantasy work, mostly for books, with a versatility ranging from cute children's artwork to dark and realistic adult images. He is also known for being one of the artists associated with Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie. He designed the album covers for Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark, Virtual XI, Death on the Road, and their latest album The Final Frontier, as well as the covers for the single "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg", making him the only artist other than Derek Riggs to have been used to draw Eddie on more than one Iron Maiden album.
In addition to his work on album covers, Melvyn Grant has produced illustrations for many books, including the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks FF 3: Deathtrap Dungeon, FF9: Shamutanti Hills, FF 11: Khare Cityport of Traps, and FF13: The Seven Serpents, Terry Pratchett's Where's My Cow?, The Demonata series by Darren Shan and The Bartimaeus Trilogy (USA) by Jonathan Stroud.
References
- "Fighting Fantasy Artist Biography Melvyn Grant", Fighting Fantasy official site. Also on Grant's official site. Retrieved Apr 2, 2010.
- "Illustrating Children's Books", interview for Computer Arts Magazine, Grant's official site. Retrieved Apr 2, 2010.
- MELVYN GRANT INTERVIEW FOR THE IRON MAIDEN ITALIAN FRANZINE 'EDDIE'S'. Grant's official site. Retrieved Apr 2, 2010.
- "Biography of Melvyn Grant", official site.