American Illustrator and Surrealist Artist: Howard David Johnson

~ a Brief Biography of the artist:

A portrait of the artist as a young man (1982 photo)

    Howard David Johnson was born on Bitburg Air Force Base in Munch, Germany in the mid-fifties. The son of an American Career Air Force officer and College Professor, he grew up traveling and living on military bases around the world. He was most influenced by the art and culture in the Mediterranean & Central Europe. Drawing and painting every available moment of his childhood while experiencing the old world, he worked with any and all art mediums he could get his hands on. 

     He devoted his life to art  at the age of six in spite of stubborn opposition from his parents, who insisted that earning a living as an artist was absolutely impossible. David responded by working even harder, hoping to earn their respect and approval. His mother worried that practicing with such passion and driving motivation ( 4 - 12 hours most days ) was sure to hurt him in the long run.

     His Mother, a talented artist herself, never missed an opportunity to take him along to a site or a museum to acquaint him with his Old World Traditional spiritual and cultural heritage along the way. Although he loved the travel, he is a seventh generation Texan, and was thrilled to finally come back home to Texas for good at the age of 14.

    Inspired by African American author Alex Haley, Johnson has gone after the roots of his Celtic Heritage ( Scots - Irish and Germanic ) and found, that, although much neglected, it is a rich heritage indeed- and more importantly - that there are a world of other cultural and spiritual heritages to share, explore, and help preserve through the visual arts.

    He is a of direct line ancestor of Mary, Queen of Scots, of  Robert the Bruce & the elder William Brewster ( the preacher on the Mayflower ). His mother, an author & genealogist has documented his lineage for the Sons of the American Revolution, The Sons of the Republic of Texas, The Sons of the Confederate Veterans and other American religious and  patriotic organizations. 

    His passions include his family and philosophy, art and education. He is also an avid outdoorsman and committed to good citizenship. He passed this on by working twelve years with inner city lower income youth as a Boy Scout Master and Commissioner. His hobbies include reading classic literature, art, and history books, as well as collecting films and music. He earns his living selling licenses to publish his works and taking on select commissions in various kinds of media.

As a boy exploring Roman ruins in North Africa (1965 photo)

     David & his beloved wife Virginia ( also descended from Mary, Queen of Scots ) have been married 24 years. She was honored again this year by "Who's who among America's teachers" & is also a talented visual artist. He lives a reclusive lifestyle in Austin, Texas & has two wonderful & talented sons, Christian & Erich. Currently he is rendering several of his mixed media pieces in colored pencil & oil on canvas and is writing a book on World Myth & Legend.

A portrait of the artist as he is today (2006 photo by son Erich)

The artist's favorite model, Grace ("Sleeping Beauty" 2005)

So who is the Artist and Photographer Howard David Johnson?

  Howard David Johnson is a contemporary visual artist and photographer with a background in the natural sciences and history. He works in a wide variety of mixed media ranging from oil on canvas to digital media. After a lifetime of drawing and painting, His Traditional Media Art was exhibited in the British Museum in London in 1996, ( 3 years before he got his first computer ) as well as numerous American ones since, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His illustrations have made appearances in every major bookstore and game shop chain in America as well as magazines and educational texts around the world. Some of his more prestigious clients have included the University of Texas, the University of Cambridge in England, Paramount Studios, PBS TV, Enslow Educational Publishers, Adobe Photoshop, Auto FX, Tree-Free Greeting Cards, Sound Choice, Verizon wireless, IPOD, Doubleday, the Book of the Month Club, (Bookspan), and J Walter Thompson Advertising, just to name a few. Working in a variety of media he offers his customers a variety of options and more than three decades of experience. As an illustrator David has not only used the computer but has been involved in the development and marketing of software for Adobe Photoshop. Digital art, Colored pencils, Pastels, Mixed media, and also Oil Paintings can also be commissioned for select projects. He delivers the rights to these custom made copyright free illustrations and old fashioned customer service when he does work-for-hire. To publish his existing works licenses start at only $100.00. 

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     The various galleries linked to by the thumbnail icons in his web show many examples of HDJ's Realistic Art, and are grouped by theme rather than media. There are also sample illustrations from his  upcoming books on Celtic Myth and Legend and World Myth & Legend. Since boyhood he has passionately copied the old masters. "The Annunciation" (right) and "Madonna and Child"( below) are examples of his early (1970's)  work. To create his work, he has always started with a thematic concept  followed by a rough realistic pencil sketch, then followed by his photography, often traveling to find suitable scenes and locations and then working in his Photography studio with live models from his sketches. He then assembles a variety of elements which are realistic and original. As a boy he dedicated his life to art in 1960. From 1965- 1999 he used xeroxes and tracings to make his preliminary photo montages. This is patterned after  the manner used by Maxfield Parrish and other 19th century notables. Beginning with a tracing, he then draws or paints from these complex original Computer Photo Montages. Many of these are on display on this web and slated for future completion in a variety of traditional realistic art media. As this happens, the finished work is substituted in the exhibit.

  His favorite medium for traditional realistic art is colored pencil because of the high speed and low expense, and people began expressing difficulty in telling his colored pencil drawing from photographs in the early 1980's.  In the last 35 plus years he has also mastered Oils, Pastels, Acrylics, Watercolors, Inks, Scratchboard, Gouache, Photography, and most recently, the highly controversial digital media. As a commercial illustrator Johnson has not only used the computer to create art but has been involved in the development and marketing of computer imaging software for Adobe Photoshop. Working in a realistic style inspired by classic illustrators HDJ is deeply rooted and grounded in the Greco-Roman artistic tradition, Feeling that especially with realistic art - that  the human form is the ultimate arena for artistic expression. His lifelong dream came true when his Traditional Realistic Art was exhibited in the British Museum in London England in 1996. His mixed media has also been displayed in numerous other ones since such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 Having achieved international acclaim as a traditional visual artist he discovered digital media in 1999. Because of his passion for realistic art and photography he elected to embrace it and joyfully be a part of this historic era in the visual arts as a 21st century realistic artist. Computers have not diminished his love of working in traditional media. He loves to draw portraits from his own photographs as well as using them to create illustrations in various media. Since 1972 when he began his career as a scientific illustrator for the University of Texas he has earned his living illustrating all kinds of books, magazines, CD covers, and all sorts of games, greeting cards, calendars, portraits, murals and the like with his contemporary realistic art... HDJ's Realistic Art has appeared in every major bookstore chain and fantasy gaming shop in The United States and has been used in educational texts and magazines all over the world. This site features realistic paintings & pictures for the twenty-first Century including some oil paintings, as well as lots of other exciting realistic art media such as colored pencil drawings, pastel paintings, acrylic paintings, gouache paintings, water color paintings, and pencil drawings, and also featuring studio,  field, & aerial photography, digital painting and photo-montage and all these media mixed in an assortment of experimental combinations...Working in a wide variety of media to create his realistic art he offers his customers a host of payment and product options. He delivers the rights to these custom made copyright free realistic illustrations and old fashioned customer service when he does work-for-hire. Below are samples of his contemporary works along with two of his essays...

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Essay One; On Realistic Art:

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME...

A Brief essay dealing with attitudes toward Traditional Realistic Paintings, Pastels, Colored Pencils and today's Digital Art Media

         Did you know the Greek word "Photography" means "Painting with Light"? Today with the advent of computers it truly lives up to it's name. Due to developments in Art and Technology, combined with a general lack of public education, I contend that a broader definition of painting is needed than that which is found in common usage.

        In addition to his mastery of traditional realistic art media, Howard David Johnson now combines drawing, painting, photography, and digital media with more than thirty years of experience in these fields to create his Realistic Art Numérique in 21st century paintings and pictures. Announcing Art Numérique -an exciting merger of traditional visual art and cutting edge technology... a new art form for the twenty- first century... Art Numérique is not limited to realistic art but also offers limitless horizons for everything from cartoons to abstractions. It is the most dramatic development in the visual arts since the Renaissance. In the words of Al Jolson in the movie world's first talking picture" You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

       Snobbism in the arts is nothing new. Some people will tell you that oils are the only valid medium for realistic paintings. That Colored Pencil, Digital, and other Realistic Painting and Drawing Media are not valid  for "real" art. Young artists, Don't let them bother you. Their forerunners used to condemn Pastels before they gained acceptance and called them "crayons" when Johann Alexander Thiele (1685-1752) invented them.  Mercilessly disrespectful  art critics of the time could not stop the Experimentalists no matter how viciously they attacked and derided them. "Crayon-painting" as it was called in England was practiced early on by persecuted pioneers in Switzerland and many other nations. What a debt we owe to these master artists who refused to knuckle under to the pressure of those short-sighted critics during those historic and experimental times. It took until 1870 with the founding of the "Societe` Des Pastellistes" in France that respect came  at last to these heroic & immortal visual artists.

    In England the liberation of the Pastellists from slight regard and undeserved disrespect came with the first exhibition of "The Pastel Society" at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880. Pastel Painters like Mary Cassat and others from America and other nations forever silenced  the snobs with their masterworks and gained recognition at long last for Thiele's invention as a valid art medium. I am persuaded that history will repeat itself.  Like Pastels, I believe these wonderful new colored pencils and even Digital Realistic Art Media will one day receive the recognition they deserve as powerful mediums of artistic expression just as pastel paintings did. What is your definition of art? Have you thought about it?

Mine is: "anything that makes you feel or think."

     Consider dancing... it can be a little skip in the step or rise to the level of the incomparable Russian Ballet. Did you know that just the materials alone for a single oil painting cost up to a thousand dollars these days? Even paying the artist less than minimum wage no one but the super rich can afford them anymore. Something's got to give. Realistic paintings in oil have been highly prized for centuries and the appeal and following of realistic art is undiminished to this day. Oil paintings featuring Abstract Art and Realistic Art are generally the most treasured form of all the visual art media and with good reason. But snobbish art critics  favoring abstract art have declared  that realistic paintings, or illustrations are not art for a century. With so many representationalist  paintings by so many immortal master artists hanging in the Louvre, the Hermitage, and the British Museum and others I think the disrespect for realistic illustrators that dominated the 20th century is academically ridiculous as well as vain and intolerant, insisting theirs is the only valid opinion. What is your definition of Art? I believe almost any form of human expression can be raised to the level of "high art" especially  visual art and Realistic illustration...

       By my own definition of art, which is: "anything that makes you feel or think" most abstract paintings are not "real art" to me personally, because abstract paintings usually neither make me feel or think,  usually focusing obsessively on technique and avoiding any coherent content. I usually draw a complete blank mentally and emotionally when I look at them. In 1979 the Houston Metropolitan Museum of Art displayed a triptych of 3 giant   paintings they paid fifty thousand dollars for-  three blank white canvasses entitled "untitled". Then there was "The incredible new artistic Genius" with an I.Q. of 62 ...Congo the chimpanzee with his gala New York art exhibition...an elaborate prank played on the Snobbish American Art critics about a generation ago by research scientists in the field of primatology. Imagine how upset they were when he created one of his "ingenious masterpieces" right before their eyes.

( My Source for this is the Time Life Science Library volume entitled "The Primates". )

Art education has been almost completely removed from American Schools as a result of generations of this kind of  fabulous nonsense contributing to America's cultural illiteracy crisis. Now, the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and other notables are being removed from school libraries.  After generations of this, most American college graduates today cannot name even one living visual artist, abstract or realistic.

There is no way that mandating more math, requiring more reading, or scheduling more science will replace what we have lost as a culture.    

What is your definition of Art?

~Howard David Johnson 2002

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Note: Abstract Paintings by Congo the Chimpanzee outsold Warhol and Renoir by over 25,000 dollars in June 2005 at a London art auction. Born in 1954, Congo created more than 400 drawings and paintings between the ages of two and four. He died in 1964 of tuberculosis. There is no precedent for this kind of sale

Art, Philosophy, and Art Philosophy: Essay 0002

HOWARD DAVID JOHNSON'S 2oo3 ESSAY ON THE REBIRTH OF REALISM

Personal Opinion Essays on  HISTORY,   MYTH,  MORALITY,  &  ART yesterday and today by the artist.

Essay Two

Realistic Art : The Rebirth of Realism in the 21st Century

More thoughts on realistic art yesterday and today by the artist

The realistic revolt was at hand.

     The rebirth of realism was fueled by the advent of the digital era. Now, for the first time in almost two centuries, an artist or illustrator could earn a decent living again with his realistic art. This is historic. Realistic art is not going to go away, especially now that photography has truly merged with traditional realistic visual art. Photography comes from the Greek words meaning "painting with light". Now with the advent of digital media the capability of realistic art has become almost limitless, truly, "painting with light". The merger of all the world's art forms to realize the potential of motion pictures has come now to still realistic art media. This website for example, combines music, prose, poetry, photography and traditional realistic art media to create an experience beyond merely looking at realistic paintings.

         The twenty- first century is already seeing a new renaissance in the arts because of the world wide web. There has never been anything like it. Abstract art, computer art, photographic art, and realistic art are continuing to be separate schools of art but are also blending to create exciting new horizons. Although Digital art does offer completely new horizons to the artist in the 21st century it does not mean the end of our time honored art traditions. Instead, it offers additional ways to keep these traditions and schools of thought  fresh and alive.

~ Howard David Johnson MMII

The Johnson Galleries

Click on the Icons to visit the Thematic Galleries of Realistic Art: Including Mythology of Greece, Rome, Asia, The Norsemen, and more...Fairy and Dragon legends, The King Arthur Legends, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Paintings of Ancient Egypt and Babylon, Ancient Mystic Religious texts, History of War from The Ancient Spartans and the Trojan Horse to World War Two, The World's Great Religions, and Art Technique and design...Art Lessons, Celtic Mythology & Pencil Techniques display some full size art... 

Greek Mythology

Asian Mythology

Symbolist Art

Art Numérique

Commercial Art

History of Dragons

More Fantasy Art