The illustrator Luis Royo is better known for his sensuous feminine pictures, but he's a very versatile painter, who already did all kinds of works in his trade, from fantasy book covers to Star Trek illustrations.

Powerful But Dangerous Women

Luis Royo was born in Olalla, Spain, in 1954, and after studying painting, decoration and interior design in the Industrial Mastery School and the Applied Arts School in Zaragoza, he started to work on interior design studies between 1970 and 79. Meanwhile he also took part in collective painting exhibitions in Spain.

In 1981, his involvement with comics began, and several of his stories and illustrations were published on the magazines Comix International, Rambla, El Víbora and the famous Heavy Metal.

In 1983, Luis Royo started to make illustrations for book covers. This work took him to the US, UK, Sweden and other countries, where he worked for Tor Books, Avon, Bantam Books, etc. He also created illustrations for magazine covers and that was when his work for Heavy Metal magazine increased and started to popularize his name.

While he worked throughout Europe and North America as an illustrator, he published two short comic stories in his homeland, one in 1985 by the Colección Rambla and the other the following year by the Ikusager Ediciones.

In the 90s, he became famous as an influential illustrator, and his illustrations of sexy but powerful women, in the style of Boris Vallejo, consolidated his international career.

In 1992, "Women", his first book of illustrations was published by Norma Editorial in Spain, which was a collection of his best works of the previous eight years. Soon this book was published also in France by Soleil Productions and in Germany by Comic Forum.

Then came the trading card collections, which would be several throughout the years. The first of them was called "From Fantasy To Reality", released in 1993, and had some illustrations by Royo, but two years later, "The Best Of Royo", was the first collection that had, as the name says, only his works.

1995 was the year when his works started to appear almost everywhere. He still did illustrations for book covers, and that was when he diversified his style, making pictures for several of the most famous sci-fi/fantasy publishers of the US like Ballantine Books, Daw and Harper Paperbacks and to stories as varied as the Star Trek series and Marvel's Fleer Ultra X-Men.

Royo's illustrations where also printed on all kinds of merchandise, from calendars and posters, to mouse pads and t-shirts.

In 1996, one of his illustrations appeared on the covers of the American and the German Penthouse magazines, which also had articles about him.

That was the year when he won the Silver Award Spectrum III for best in Contemporary Fantastic Art and published another art book, "Secrets", only for the English-speaking countries.

When the Heavy Metal magazine celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1997, Luis Royo, one of its most famous illustrators, had a Gallery dedicated to him and was invited to make the cover illustration of the anniversary edition.

Other great art books were published in the last years, as "III Millenium" in 1997, "Dreams" in 1999, and "Prohibited Book" I & II, which are the most erotic of his books, but also his finest collections of works. The focus of these books' illustrations isn't the conventional kind of eroticism based on the physical, but the deeper and more complex mental one.

His newest art books are "Evolution", published in 2000 and "Conceptions" published in 2001, which shows his work process, from the drafts to the final results.

For more information:

Luisroyo.com

Luis Royo Gallery

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