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page 78 MASTERS of SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASY ART
COMBINED TRADITIONAL and DIGITAL TOOLS page 79
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BRUCE JENSEN
“Digitalized art has gotten kind of familiar. Now people get
a software update or new lter from Photoshop and it might
be neat, but if everybody gets it, it’s almost like a style virus
infecting the eld. Anything that’s overdone loses its impact.”
When you look at a work by Bruce Jensen, don’t be
surprised if the painting stares right back at you. Jensen
is known for confrontational compositions, often dealing
with cyberpunk themes. His acrylic paintings are charac-
terized by strong geometrics, trompe l’oeil realism, and
a collagelike quality that is often heightened by digitalized
manipulation of the imagery. His use of color is bold
and his portraiture is edgy and unsettling.
Two of his notable covers have been for The Diamond Age
by Neal Stephenson (Bantam/Spectra, 1996) and the
reissue of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K.
Dick (Ballantine, 1996). “I only do science ction art,”
Jensen says. “And there’s a natural tendency in science
ction art to paint something realistically. It’s sort of a
conservative art mode wherein you’re realizing fantastic
things in realistic ways. But I like to push that, to take a less
literal approach. I want to evoke the books’ themes without
painting a specic scene or situation.”
“Commercial art is basically about problem-solving
issues,” the artist says. “I bought myself a lot of freedom
when I realized that there wasn’t just one way to interpret.”
Forever War. Digital.
Maelstrom. Digital. The artist used Photoshop to bring out graphic elements,
textures, and paint. In this image there are scans of air bubbles trapped
under cellophane tape, flaking paint on cement, thread, and paint drips.
The artist also did some filtering to swirl some of the paint and textures
as well as the typographic bits. The portrait is painted in Photoshop.
New York, New York, USA
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