Tools, Supplies and Useful Stuff Remember, Superglue can close cuts!
General Miniature, Modeling and Gaming Sites Some you may have overlooked
Anatomy WooHOO!! Nekkid ladies, I betcha!
Horses Obsolete in battle, but it's hard to eat a Hummer
Assorted Critters Sorry, no recipes
Dinosaurs No, smartypants, my picture is not there
Armor, heraldic, and historical sites and no, I wasn't there at the time
Firearms- Antique to Modern
Interesting Miscellaneous Art Sites and Online Galleries From classical to fantasy
Assorted Literary Links Don't worry, there are pictures for you illiterate types
Recommended Books and Movies Email me with suggestions
Graphics Editing and Web Stuff And mostly free stuff!

Tools, Supplies and Useful Stuff

UPDATED!!! Model Railroad & Miniature Figure Life Size Scale Calculator- A handy calculator I swiped from here and adapted for determining scale size in millimeters for figures- if you want to download the html file to your computer, just save the page to whatever folder you want and it should work for you

The Compleat Sculptor -you supply the talent, they supply the rest

Grifhold.com- your complete online source for the best hobby knives, burnishers, blades, tools and more- the 24-E Stencil Blades are especially useful

Widget Supply has a huge inventory of hard to find, but reasonably priced hobby tools and equipment. Mini sculptors and modelers should check out the extensive dental tool section

Art Supply Warehouse- Good prices on art supplies, I found the lowest price I have seen for clay shapers, and I know from experience they have quick, reliable delivery

Utopia Tools has a nice selection of hobby and modelling tools and supplies

MisterArt.com is great place to shop for discount art and craft supplies- Check out their coupon specials for even more savings on hard to find items!

Micro-Mark is THE mail-order source for hard-to-find tools and supplies for hobby, professional and educational model building

ToolUSA.com has a wide variety of specialty tools and supplies with over 2,500 clearly pictured items in inventory

American Science and Surplus has lots of bizarre, fun, cheap stuff for sale, some of which may actually prove useful!

Kraftmark ProCreate Putty was designed by adhesive industry experts specifically for modelers and sculptors. It has a neutral grey color for superior visibility and excellent contrast for the smallest details. The putty holds a very sharp degree of detail with a slower cure allowing plenty of working time with minimal waste. The resin and hardener are sealed separately for freshness and ease of use. The putty smoothes easily with metal and flexible tools, and files and grinds well when cured, It vulcanizes well, has a uniformly smooth consistency, and maintains its volume with no shrinkage

PSI Kneadatite (greenstuff) is a very popular sculpting putty, and PSI also manufactures a variety of other putties that are quite useful for sculpting and crafts. QuikCopper and FastSteel are very fast setting, very strong, and useful for building up large armatures quickly. Anything Mechanical and JD Industrial Supply both have a pretty good selection and reasonable prices

American Pin- school, home, office and craft supplies since 1927. I've used Size 44 Bank Pins a lot for armatures and weapons, and pinning multipiece models. They are also sturdy enough to grind and shape into fine tip sculpting tools as well

Hobbit House exotic wood site is a non-commercial site focusing on color-correct pictures of exotic and domestic woods

Material Safety Data Sheet Online Info- Safety information for lots of chemicals we use in sculpting, painting and modelling

Free graph paper printer program (Windows OS) Need a hex map? Choose the grid size and color and print it out, along with dozens of other graph paper styles

Check out all the printable castles and other related RPG buildings at Free Paper Toys

General Miniature, Modeling and Gaming Sites

The Guild of Harmony is the homepage of Sebastian Archer, a very talented and versatile sculptor with a special affinity for the intricate Steampunk genre

Destroyer Minis features the amazing work of award winning Marike Reimer, the best mini painter ever

Toy Soldier Collector and companion site Collectors Gazette are great resources for articles, events, pictures and reviews for figure and toy enthusiasts

Grognardia is where James Maliszewski collects his memories and musings about roleplaying games and related nonsense, as well as articles about the history of the hobby from its earliest beginnings to the present day

FichtenFoo.com is the main site of modeler and web designer Michael Fichtenmayer, who also works through Industria Mechanika, with a primary goal of producing and promoting really cool original model designs

From our pal, Renaissance Man, Bon Vivant, and BMOC, the Legendary Steve Lortz, Esq.- Check out One Monk Miniatures, which started as a source for printable cardstock miniatures, but has grown to a great international forum with a lot of nice artistic styles you do not normally see on the US and UK sites

Tom Meier is an inspiration to everyone in the miniatures world- check out his blog and you'll see why

Chambers of Miniatures Nexus- Nearly every mini site and manufacturer

The Stuff of Legends- Tom Pope's slow descent into MINI MADNESS!

planetFigure - a large and talent-filled web community with great forums, galleries, and resources covering many aspects of creating and painting a wide variety of miniatures

Tabletop Gaming News is a website devoted to publishing news, review and articles about all facets of the tabletop gaming hobby.

Miniature Wargaming has a wide variety of news, photos, rules, forums, tutorials, tips and thousands of wargaming related links

Roebeast's Magical House of Sunshine- In addition to his usual insightful commentary, the Roebeast is providing downloadable PDF scans of the great Fantasy Modeling Magazine

Living Dice is pretty nice gaming forum

ICv2 provides news and information for pop culture retailers with daily trade news, in-depth analysis, and product and sales information

RPGNow.com is an electronic delivery system (EDS) for role-playing games: rule books, modules, fiction, paper miniatures, software, and more! What this simply means is that you can purchase products in their store and immediately download them for use on your home computer.

RPG.net has the inside scoop on gaming

Plastic Soldier Review, for news and information on 1:72 scale plastic soldiers

ScaleModel.net- International List of Scale Model Related Web Sites

The Clubhouse- The Online Community for Model-Builders, Sculptors, and Collectors

FineScale Modeler Magazine Online- Loads of modeling info- requires free registration

The Train Collectors Association, headquartered in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, is one of the largest and most prestigious collecting societies in the world.

Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg is the largest model railway in the world. Check out their Miniatur Wunderland promotional video on YouTube

Fine Art Models builds museum-quality limited-edition scale models that many feel are the finest in the world today

The Strong Museum of Play, one of the best toy museums in the country

The Gallery of Monster Toys is dedicated to preserving vintage creepy fun- I always loved the old Aurora kits in the 60's wing

The Official Marx Toy Museum- preserving the toys, the history,and the memories of Louis Marx and Company

Check out Tom's Plastic Toy Soldiers blog. Lots of pictures of plastic toy soldiers (or a cowboy, or a spaceman...) a trip down memory lane for those of us old enough to remember when toys were actually meant to be played with

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Anatomy

Igor Amelkovich is a photographer specializing in land scapes and the unadorned female form. His free galleries have hundreds of excellent B&W photos of athletic models in exotic poses emphasizing the complete female musculature, not the standard pin up T&A

Girls with Muscle is an attempt to gather the best freely available images of muscular girls/women into a single place. No nekkidness, but there are lots of good photos of athletic female surface anatomy from slender gymnasts to bodybuilders, searchable by athlete, discipline or muscle group

At Babe Lab, we realize drawing women isn't an exact science...yet. It's our aim to distill and harness hotness for pinup artists everywhere. Findings are subject to change

Decorate your home or haunt today at the Skull Shoppe, which is fast becoming the best place for quality human skull replicas

Pose Maniacs has thousands of great flash posable anatomical renders

Muscle Atlas -An illustrated atlas of the muscles of the upper and lower extremities

Lots of good muscle reference photos with more mustache wax than steroids:
Eugen Sandow, the First Bodybuilder and Eugen Sandow and the Golden Age of Iron Men

Classic Bodybuilders has thousands of photos of your favorite bodybuilders and physique models from the golden era of bodybuilding, roughly 1900 through the early 1980s

Take a look at WetCanvas, the largest community for visual artists on the Internet

Da Vinci Anatomical Drawings

Rey Bustos- A very imaginative and informative site by an excellent art educator

Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body

Human Anatomy Pictures for Artists

Muscles Tutorial

Drawn mainly from the collections of the National Library of Medicine, Dream Anatomy shows off the anatomical imagination in some of its most astonishing incarnations, from 1500 to the present

Anatomy Atlases is an anatomy digital health sciences library

Posing is an Art 3-Many free poses

e-Skeletons Project View the bones of a human and other primates

Real photographs of the human skeletal system

Skulls Unlimited- The World's Leading Supplier of Osteological Specimens

Bone Clones Human and critter osteological reproductions

The Sedlec Ossuary- Where human bones become art

Society of Figurative Arts- Dedicated to providing high level instruction for the beginner, amateur or professional striving to expand their individual creative skills-excellent tutorials, links, and forums

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Horses

Horse Breeds- Oklahoma State's comprehensive horse database

The Equine Resin Directory allows you to search their well indexed model photo data base by horse breed, model name, manufacturer, sculpter and painter

Horsesculpture.net features the amazing bronze equine sculpture of Marrita Black, along with a nice video of the bronze casting process

The Best-Horse-Photos.com has, you guessed it, a great library of photos of all things equine

Horse'n Around, the Model Horse Store has a huge selection of Breyer models

The purpose of Horses Inside Out is to show the anatomy, biomechanics and physiology of the horse

Anatomy in Motion: The Visible Horse is a unique demonstration by Susan Harris, in which she paints the muscles and skeletal system on a living horse to show how the anatomy of the horse works in motion at all gaits.

Veryl Goodnight- Sculpting the American West

Stone Horses has a lot of nice resin models, check out the Design-a-Horse Models

The Model Horse Gallery has over 25,000 photos, 275 galleries and 2,500 pages

White Pine Equine Limited Edition Resin Model Horses from Original Sculptures

Elk Horn Stables Studios features the equine art of Angelica Nelson

The Horse Sculpture by Deborah McDermott- Realistic ceramic and resin model horse sculptures

Catwalk Studios features equine art by Laura Kosiorek

EquinArt Creations- Fine Original Finish Model Horses, unpainted resins and pewter minis

Nancy Weimer Belden, Equine sculpture

Heather Jansch Bronze and Driftwood Equine Sculpture

Shoestring Stable is a fun and informative site about enjoying the model horse hobby DIY-style

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Assorted Critters

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections has the definitive Veterinary Anatomical lllustrations of Hermann Dittrich usually published as An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists(just paste "Hermann Dittrich" into the search field, and it will pull up all 80 plates)

Mike of Extreme Instability is well known for his amazing storm chasing photos, but he also specializes in Birds in Flight, with some incredible shots of fighting and hunting eagles

Herb Houghton Wildlife Photography- specializing in bald eagles, peregrine falcons, owls and other raptors, with shorebirds, warblers, mammals, macro and landscapes taking a close second. Here is more at his Pixoto page

Lots of eagles and other critters at Wallpaper Abyss

Jess Lee Photos is world renowned source for great scenic North American wildlife and western photography

Wildlife Photo Safari has a lot of great African wildlife, scenic and cultural images

Wing Photos- If you're sculpting feathers, check out this great photo archive from the Slater Natural History Museum at the University of Puget Sound

National Geographic- More great critter pictures than you would have time to look at, let alone sculpt

Will's Skull Page-The head bone's connected to the....

SKULLS- Lots of different species from the nice folks at the California Academy of Sciences

Beautiful Bugs- a place where you can see some amazing extreme close-up insect photos

Insect photography by Alex Wild, with an emphasis on ant species. Includes galleries of images and wallpapers.

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Dinosaurs

Art Dinouveau is an Australian-based model-making company specialising in the creation of museum- quality, life-size dinosaur models and prehistoric dioramas.

CM Studio produces realistic dinosaur models and sculptures in both life-size and scale models.

Micheal Trcic -the sculptor of the T-Rex used in the "Jurassic Park" movies and the IMAX feature "T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous", offers amazing dinosaur sculptures, as well as Western and fantasy pieces in bronze and model kits

Paleoartist Mark Hallett illustrates prehistoric life and environments, and has created dinosaur art for National Geographic, Disney, Universal Studios and many others


Welcome to the Natural History Museum's online guide to dinosaurs with images, facts and figures for over 300 dinosaurs.

William Monteleone - Natural History Sculptor

Prehistoric Planet- Critters even older than I

Luis V. Rey's Art Gallery- Dinosaurs and Paleontology

John Sibbick Illustration- Prehistoric, natural history, and fantasy art

Search4dinosaurs.com will help you locate great illustrations of dinosaurs

Prehistorics Illustrated Dinosaurs is full of dinosaur illustrations and pictures of prehistoric creatures with paleo news and more

The Dinosaur Art and Space Imagery of Joe Tucciarone

Dinosaurs in Art is the official website of paleo artist Michael Skrepnick


Science Daily's Dinosaurs database allows you to find and compare dinosaurs based on their size, time period of existence, diet, native region, and more.

The Dinosaur Society is dedicated to promoting an interest in everything dinosaur related

StrangeScience.net may be a self-proclaimed eclectic collection of old illustrations and information, but it is also an outstanding resource on the the history of paleontology and biology. The Goof Gallery is loaded with great old timey illustrations of the mysterious beasts that haunted those unknown lands on the map

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Armor, heraldic, and historical sites

Heraldry of the world contains at present 29,250 pages and 95,322 images, the total site has over 50.000 pages. Check them out on Facebook as well

Wish I had a teacher like Mrs. Osborne- she has assembled an amazing portal of historical and mythological sites that would take weeks to explore

The Oakeshott Institute was founded by Ewart Oakeshott and his wife Sybil Marshall with the purpose of furthering research and education in the field of ancient arms and armor. Ewart's life long study of weapons and armor helped revolutionize our understanding of Medieval culture

From the nice folks at Wholesale Costume Club- check out their Medieval Resource Center. They have dozens of great historical links in case you need to get medieval on someone

Check out Reenactor.Net- the world-wide, on-line home of historical reenacting!

Welcome to HistoryOfWar.org They aim to make their site your first call for information on any aspect of military history. Your probably won't live long enough to read it all- be prepared to lose a few days just getting to the B section

Best of History Web Sites is an award-winning portal created for history teachers, students, and general history enthusiasts. BOHWS contains annotated links to over 1000 history web sites as well links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more throughout its pages

JuniorGeneral.org promotes the use of historical simulations as a tool for teaching history by providing free resources that anyone can use. 1000's of free military reference downloads

Rome Exposed- the site geared toward the spreading of information on Roman Life throughout the Internet. In the other sections of Classics Unveiled, you can find information on Greek Mythology, Roman History and Latin Vocabulary and Derivatives

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is charged with coordinating and stimulating the interdisciplinary exploration of Medieval and Renaissance culture. Check out their Facebook page for current news and events

De Re Militari- Your portal to scholarly information on warfare in the Middle Ages

ARMA - the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts, is an educational non-profit organization dedicated to the study and practice of historical fencing and the exploration and promotion of our Western martial heritage

Arador Armour Library- Arms and armour education

Pictorial Glossary of Armor Terms-based heavily on the glossary in Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight

MEDIEVAL ARMOUR- articles and links on armour as it applies to the Middle Ages, the SCA and to SCA combat.

Knights in Central Park armor collection from the Metropolitan Museum of Art has more than fourteen thousand objects from many countries and covers fourteen centuries of history

Medieval Life and Times- Step back into history get Medieval facts and information about the famous people, life and events of Medieval Times

Medieval Collectibles-your one stop shop for Medieval Swords, Renaissance Clothing and many other Medieval and Renaissance items

Medieval Reproductions-Loads of Armor

myArmory.com helps educate the collector and enthusiast regarding the various aspects and particulars of the modern replica

MuseumReplicas.com- Historical and fantasy arms and armor from the nice folks at Atlanta Cutlery

The Sword Manufacturers Guide (SMG) is the companion website to Paul Southren's Sword Buyers Guide.com and has been developed to provide you with the most up to date and relevant information on the major production (i.e. non custom) makers in the industry

Check out swords and armour by St George Armoury

Dressed To Kill, the vision of armourer Mark Taylor, has been making quality arms and armour for museums, castles and re-enactors since 1992.

Heavenly Swords has lots of weaponry, including historical reproductions as well as fantasy arms from movies and games

Armor Venue- has a wide variety of armor, weapons, and military replicas from ancient to modern eras

Albion Swords Ltd.- museum-quality swords handmade to exacting design specifications, based on countless hours spent in the detailed study the of original swords

Toledo Swords- Another dealer in fantasy and historical toadstickers

Welcome to Amethyst's Closet, where you'll find Ms. Amethyst's ever-growing prop and armor portfolio, along with articles and tutorials on how to make your own props and costumes

Global Effects Inc. manufactures, sells and rents all types of props, costumes, armor, miniatures, sets, creatures and makeup effects for TV, movies and museums.

EveryCastle.com is a comprehensive resource about castles, palaces and fortifications.

Castles.org- Castles, palaces and monasteries including: castle tours, medieval architecture, hotels, travel, plans, weddings, castles for sale, souvenirs, books, directory, site of the week, and history of castles

Medieval-castle.com is another nice resource for those interested in castles and medieval life

The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies sponsored by Georgetown University

Medievality.com provides plenty of information about castles, medieval life, medieval warfare and much moree

Grey Company Trebuchet page- Medieval WMDs

Odin's Castle of Dreams & Legends- A massive archive of historical resources

NetSERF- The Internet Connection for Medieval Resources

Gode Cookery is an extensive and enlightening guide to life, food, and the arts of the Middle Ages

Medieval Gastronomy - In Images is a nicely illustrated guide to food, diet, meal preparation and dining customs back when salt barrel herring, black bread, and cabbage soup were good eats for the average schmuck- Now some dingus will write a "Peasant Diet Plan" book, get on Oprah, and they'll all make another kazillion bucks

Welcome to Exploring the Middle Ages, where you will find information on heraldry, myths and legends, religion, medicine, and other aspects of life in Britain during the Middle Ages

Modar's Heraldry Page

A Heraldic Primer, from the nice folks at the Society for Creative Anachronism


International Heraldry & Heralds has a lot of good information


The Heraldry Society exists to increase and extend interest in and knowledge of heraldry, armory, chivalry, genealogy and allied subjects

How to draw Celtic knots (or sculpt them)

Images of Medieval Art and Architecture- Watch your apse!

Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Costume Illustration- Nearly 20,000 prints, drawings, watercolors, and printed book and magazines illustrations of military costume

Prints, Drawings and Watercolors from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection- The artwork vividly documents all aspects of military and naval history, with emphasis on the history and illustration of world military and naval uniforms from the 17th century to the present

The Selected Civil War Photographs Collection contains 1,118 photographs. Most of the images were made under the supervision of Mathew B. Brady, and include scenes of military personnel, preparations for battle, and battle after-effects. The collection also includes portraits of both Confederate and Union officers, and a selection of enlisted men.

The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis- Library of Congress online image collection

Native American History was created by the University of Washington Libraries' Reference and Research Services Division and provides users with an "Annotated list of links to Native American history sites."

Images of Native Americans: The Bancroft Library

Costumer's Manifesto- A huge costume reference portal

New York Public Library Digital Gallery- over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources

Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences contains a lot of good historical information and occasional illustrations on the varied arts and styles of opening up a can o' whoop ass. Check out the Journal of Western Martial Art and the Journal of Manly Arts: European and Colonial Combatives, 1776 - 1914

The Defence of DUFFER'S DRIFT- The classic in small unit tactics, this Boer War scenario still has sound lessons for today's infantryman, as well as being a great wargame adventure. I reformatted the book and cleaned up the graphics to make it easier to navigate

World War I Color Photos -"World War I.... who would have thought there were original color photos of WWI? This site contains hundreds of photos taken by the French in the last two years of World War One."

Shorpy.com is a photo blog about life a hundred years ago- a great source for period character study, with tough people in tough times

The Old Picture internet site features an extensive collection of original, historical photographs, including over 80,000 images spanning the years 1850 to 1940. "These photographs span the globe, and capture the defining moments of our collective history"

Search the Smithsonian Institution Archive Collections

They Drew Fire- the combat artists of World War II

Historical Military Pictures and Photos from WWII & Vietnam- Explore the largest free collection of historical US Military photos from WWII and Vietnam on the Web—digitized by Footnote from the vaults of The National Archives

Things wwith Wings has fascinating aircraft design drawings and photos of some unusual experimental, military, and commercial aircraft

Airplane-Pictures.Net has lots of creative aviation photography (and girlie photos, featuring the aircraft, of course)

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Firearms- Antique to Modern

Rock Island Auction Company is the worlds leading auction house for firearms, edged weapons and military artifacts. They have highly detailed phtos of all of their auction items, from antiques to modern items- a great place to check for firearm and military reference photos

The Specialists.LTD. is a full service prop house with thousands of high detail photos of the weapon replicas they design and supply for movies, TV, theater and advertising. From Paleolithic knives to modern miltary equipment, if you need it, they have it

The Internet Movie Firearms Database is a great source to find out who is shooting what in movies and TV

Modern Firearms & Ammunition- Online encyclopedia of firearms and ammunition of the 20th and 21st centuries

The Gun Zone will be the primary resource of authoritative firearms-related information for the Internet-enabled gunperson

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Interesting Miscellaneous Art Sites and Online Galleries

The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available online

Friend and talented artist Ryan Mowry does very nice old school silkscreen posters for bands and events. Check out his work at his blog, PencilPlan. Poster artists, due to the silkscreen techniques and printing process, usually work with limited colors, and have to get the most out of limited detail lines and negative space to create a good, balanced image. Gadzooks! Thats kind of like what miniature designers should do! Ryan gave me a couple of nice current poster art sites to peruse- INSIDE THE ROCK POSTER FRAME and OMG Posters. Check 'em out- should be some solid inspiration for form, dynamic flow, and how minimal lines can have quite an impact

Street Art Utopia is not simple graffiti- it is an amazing collection of street art varying in scale from minute to monumental, across a wide variety of techniques and genres

Monster Brains A never ending celebration of monsters, is a blog by fantasy artist Aeron Alfrey. Mr. Alfrey has posted an amazing collection of fantasy illustrations that have inspired him, and will do the same for you. I especially appreciate his great selection of the works of Virgil Finlay

The Field Guide to Wild American PULP ARTISTS features basic biographical information to broaden awareness of pulp magazine illustrators, mainly from 1930 to 1960 when technical advances in color printing led to a golden era of pulp art

CG Artist Petry, whom I believe is Romanian, has some mad Wacom skills, and is a brilliant caricaturist and is crazy good with anatomy- check out this ballerina écorché

Don Marco, The Master Crayon Artist, creates fine art using Crayola Crayons

The British Museum is the authoritative source of images depicting world culture and history including ceramics, sculpture, prints, drawings, and paintings

Beautifullife.info is a daily updated online magazine dedicated to all aspects of design

The Artcyclopedia is an index of online museums and image archives:find out where the works of over 8,000 different fine artists can be viewed online

Art History Resources on the Web is another massive index of links maintained by Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe of Sweet Briar College, Virginia

The Art Browser lets you search by artist or movement, with categories taken from Artcyclopedia, and prints from art.com

ArtLinks allows users to browse or search for links within a group of topical headers: Animation, Architecture, Comics, Dance and Literature, just to name a few

The Timeline of Art History is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated especially by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection

At the Coudal Partners Museum of Online Museums, you will find links from our archives to online collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions

The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 12th to mid-19th centuries

African tribal art-Wooden and bronze statues, masks, totems & symbols

Here is a fine selection of Oni demon masks and sculpture

A Love of Monsters- Gargoyles and Architectural Sculpture in NYC

Walter S. Arnold, Sculptor-Stone Carver. Get your gargoyles here!

I have admired the fantasy illustrations of Ian Miller since I saw the interior illustrations in the paperback edition of Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead (The 13th Warrior) as well as The Tolkien Bestiary

Fantasy Ink is a collection of comic and fantasy art plus artwork from the Golden Age of Illustration and whatever else sparks blogger Tom's interest- updated frequently with great content and links

Beej's Pirate Image Archive- ARRRGGH!!!!!!

Welcome to Elfwood - Science Fiction, Fantasy and FanArt Pictures & Fiction

The art of Matt Dixon- Over the top fun fantasy, sci-fi and horror

Clyde Caldwell is legendary for his outstanding fantasy illustrations

Keith Parkinson is sorely missed. Take some time to appreciate his talent

The Offical Site for Larry Elmore

Stephen Hickman has illustrated more than 450 book covers for major speculative fiction authors—including Harlan Ellison, Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey and Larry Niven—since 1976

Paul Bonner has produced work for all the big names in fantasy role playing

Manuel Pérez Clemente (better known as Sanjulián) is a Spanish painter best known for his sci-fi and fantasy magazine and novel cover illustrations

The official website of Burne Hogarth presents a definitive, career-spanning insight into one of the most respected and influential artists of the 20th century

The Official Frazetta Art Gallery

FrankFrazetta.org- The UNOFFICIAL Frank Frazetta Fantasy Art Gallery has a lot of quality scans that the official site does not provide

The Official Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell Website

The Official Hajime Sorayama Website

Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.'s Illustrator Biographies is THE site devoted to classic 20th century illustrators, featuring great info, pictures, and resources for further research

The work of illustrator Alphonse Mucha is a valuable source for figurative study- here is another nice selection of Mucha's Art Nouveau posters, lithographs, and illustrations

ImageNETion- Huge galleries of pin-ups, fantasy art, comic and digital art

The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists

Draconika.com I think they like dragons

Here Be Dragons is also rather fond of scaly beasties

The Pin-up Files- contains over 1500 pin-up art images from "classic" and "contemporary" artists. Galleries are devoted to each featured artist. Each gallery contains artwork, a biography, notes on each image and important links

I was always a big fan of movie poster artist and illustrator Reynold Brown, whose artwork was often far better than the movies it was advertising. Here's Brown's section at American Art Archives, also check out Learn About Movie Posters.

Wrong Side of the Art- Horror, sci-fi, exploitation, cult, trash, and B-movie posters, large size, well indexed and fully linked- you are guaranteed to find some old favorites you are too embarrassed to admit you enjoyed

Check out Tony Merrithew.com- Mr. Merrithew is well known for his stop action movie work, as well as his amazing horse, auto, and dinosaur sculpture

Shiflett Brothers- These boys do some interesting work

The CS Moore Studio and sculptor Clayburn Moore proudly present premier licensed and original statues, busts and more

The Mariusz Kozik vel Lacedemon Portfolio - Mariusz Kozik currently lives in Lublin City, Poland where he works as an illustrator and concept artist, Lots of stunning war art at the bottom of the page, including some great Osprey work

Epilogue.net Art Galleries- Epilogue is all about Fantasy Art

Presidia Creative is a creative media blog that is dedicated to bringing together the best content from blogs and resources in areas such as art & graphic design, web development, and professional audio

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Assorted Literary Links

The Fantastic in Art and Fiction- from the nice folks at the Cornell University Library

Nonsenselit.org is a portal devoted to Nonsense literature, with a lot of great illustrations and art links as well as the fun prose and poetry

Encyclopedia Mythica- An expansive and comprehensive database and portal

Welcome to the Theoi Project, a comprehensive guide to the Gods (Theoi), Spirits (Daimones) and Monsters (Theres) of ancient Greek mythology and religion

Paleothea.com: Women in Greek Myths- Ailia Athena has compiled a remarkable treasure trove of tales, art, and great reference sources for the classically inclined

The Medieval Beastiary: Here begins the book of the nature of beasts. Of lions and panthers and tigers, wolves and foxes, dogs and apes

Dave's Mythical Creatures and Places

Glorious Nonsense- All things Jabberwocky

Edgar Governo - Historian of Things That Never Were. 365 Fantasy and Science Fiction timelines from television, movies, books, games and comics

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts

Our friend Peggy sent us another very nice link page for myths and legends: Resources for Myths Around the World

Fables and Fairy Tales A massive online archive of classic tales and childrens stories, with artwork scanned from the original 1909 book illustrations

Tarzan of the Internet- A jungle full of great images and links!

The Works of Robert E. Howard -The idea behind this page is to make available for the Howard scholar and collector, a list of every story, article, fragment and synopsis written by REH, and where to find them

Barbarian Keep- another Conan and Robert E. Howard Website

Welcome to the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center-celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations

Fantastic Fiction - Fantasy & Sci Fi Literature Database- Information and links for over 6000 authors

Check out Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions

PULPS et MAGAZINES AMERICAINS- Outstanding French site with a huge archive of cover art from the great American pulp golden age, featuring fantasy and sci-fi from Amazing Stories to Weird Tales, from the 1920's into the 1960's.

Welcome to the Lambiek Comiclopedia, an illustrated compendium of over 7,000 comic artists, listed under last name (or pseudonym)

For those of us who remember when comic books cost 10¢, Superdickery features the unintentional hilarity and the thinly veiled lurid innuendo of old comic book covers, mostly old DC, but with lots of good references-(Mirror site with updates)

Golden Age Comic Book Stories is an amazing archive of comic and pulp story references, resources and artwork

Cover Browser - displays galleries of comic book covers for comic book fans & enjoy (there's also links to find out more about individual comics or to buy them). Some of the artists you'll find : John Byrne, Barry Windsor-Smith, Frank Miller, Ivan Brunetti, Alex Ross, Todd McFarlane, Mark Bagley, Steve Ditko, Jim Lee, Daniel Clowes, Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, Jack Kirby, Rob Liefeld, Andy Kubert, John Romita Sr. and Jr., Sam Keith, Dave Gibbons, Erik Larsen and many more.

Check out the cover art of 1960s-80s Warren comics CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA, as created by a literal Who's Who of fantasy artists. Flash-enhanced site; English-language, hosted in Japan.

CRIME BOSS- Crime Comic Books of the 1940s and 1950s, with great galleries of dangerous dames with gorgeous gams and gats galore!

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Recommended Books and Movies

Empires - The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2004)."From a small Italian community in 15th-century Florence, the Medici family would rise to rule Europe in many ways. Using charm, patronage, skill, duplicity and ruthlessness, they would amass unparalleled wealth and unprecedented power. They would also ignite the most important cultural and artistic revolution in Western history--the European Renaissance. But the forces of change the Medici helped unleash would one day topple their ordered world. An epic drama played out in the courts, cathedrals and palaces of Europe, this series is both the tale of one family's powerful ambition and of Europe's tortured struggle to emerge from the ravages of the dark ages." This series gives a great basic overview of Renaissance art and politics in under 4 hours, so check it out.

Also check out Born of Hope, an independent film prequel to Lord of the Rings-very nicely done and free for all to view. More here

Burne Hogarth- Especially recommended- Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery

NOVA: Secrets of the Samurai Sword (2008) Follow fifteen traditional Japanese craftsmen who spend nearly six months creating a sword, from smelting the ore to forging the steel and finally to sharpening the blade to its keen and deadly edge

How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way- 'Nuff said

Meditations On a Hobby Horse and Other Essays On the Theory of Art -great essays about image creation, physiognomy, illusions and our responses to visual media by E. H. Gombrich

Troll Hunter - Good effects, impressive CGI critters, and a bit of dark humor. Subtitled

The Host - Nicely designed, disgusting and almost believable monster. Subtitled and dubbed

Peter and the Wolf Amazing stop action- beautifully filmed, Oscar winning animated short

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Graphics Editing and Web Stuff

Welcome to TinyURL! Are you sick of posting URLs in emails and forums only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires. USE THIS!!! Nobody wants to paste 9 lines of gibberish into the address bar just to look at your picture!

FileZilla, the free FTP solution. Both a client and a server are available. FileZilla is open source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License

Google has released Picasa 3, a digital image tool that has more features than the previous version. And, it's still FREE! You can edit, fix digital photos and even post them to a blog. Might be worth a look

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP.

Here are three more free graphics editors with more advanced features:

GIMP

Pixia

PhotoPlus

Piriform has free versions of several great programs that will clean your PCs, protect your privacy and make your PCs faster and more secure. Check out their advanced file recovery and system information tools.

HTML Code Tutorial "Our goal is to provide the most helpful and complete guide to creating web pages anywhere"

Spybot, Search and Destroy It's free, proven, updated regularly, and will cure and prevent most of the nasties you will encounter

Malwarebytes is another good malware scanner that has free for private use version

SpywareBlaster prevents the installation of spyware and other potentially unwanted software

Symantec has a free online virus checker

Grisoft offers a FREE version of their excellent AVG anti-virus software

VLC media player is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols

LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs

The Webpage Color Selection Tool is pretty handy for setting up safe and easy on the eyes colors on your page

At In obscuro, you'll find the amazing dark art gallery of Nela Dunato, as well as lots of great graphics and web design tutorials, tips and art resources

Blambot- Comic Fonts and Design- Nate Piekos is a great comic artist and designer with lots of cool free and pay fonts on his site, along with good entertaining info and links about comics, illustration, typography, and design.

Bill Blinn has been making computers understandable for many years- check out his site, Techbyter.com for his weekly column and podcast

Anti Spam


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WARNING! Some sites have varying amounts of nekkidness and other stuff that sensitive souls, such as your boss, coworkers, teachers, librarian, or mommy may find distressing, offensive, inappropriate, or against whatever policies or rules that may apply. Open any anatomy, pin up, pulp art and fantasy illustration links at your own risk. I have had no personal experience with any of the vendors that sell armor, weapon, and costume reproductions, the sites are posted only for visual references. If you have any interesting sites you would like me to post, or notice any dead links or sites that have been taken over by some purveyors of unrelated naughtiness, drop me an email. Other than graciously providing web space for this page, the fine folks at Fortress Figures are not responsible for the content, so if you find anything offensive, annoying, or disagreeable, contact me, not them @


Whoa, you made it all the way to the bottom! You deserve a treat- an interesting tale from Tom Meier