Principles and Practice of Illustration. Artist Research: Roger Dean

The rocks in this image remind me of a dragon because of the scale like detail within the rocks, the shape and composition of the image. Roger Dean's composition and space in the illustrations are something he uses a lot to create a narrative for each illustration, for example, the piece above he has given the rocks/dragon the central focus point with lots of light in the background but for some of his more landscape based work he has used different tones and textures for the foreground to help create the sense of a much big world he is within the illustrations themselves.

All the different textures within the buildings and trees give the image a lifelike feel within a fantasy futuristic world. James Cameron (The director of Avatar 2009 science fiction film) openly admitted to being inspired and influenced by at least fourteen of Roger Deans illustrations becuase they are heavily futuristic landscape scenes.

Roger Dean has fused landscape, architecture, music and even video games into his own psychedelic style which is consistent throughout all of his work including illustrations for the cover art of Tetris Worlds for lots of different gaming platforms including the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo game systems from late 2001 till late 2002. 
One of the really prominent elements in Dean's work is the strong colour themes, he has really thought about the different colours and tones he will use for each illustration to create depth, atmosphere and meaning. This is something I want to reflect on my own work to help create a link between my artist research and my own visual thinking.