We were supposed to have a pretty different post today, but unfortunately, the news has happened. For those not sure what this is about, legendary Games Workshop Art Director, John Blanche passed away very recently. There are going to be lots of far better eulogies written and posted, so I’ll just talk about my earliest personal connections with a man who never knew of my existence.

As people who read this blog know by now, I paint a lot more than I play. There are a couple of people to blame for this, aside from the fact that I was always a “drawer” from my early kiddie days. One is my departed brother, who is the one responsible for all this in the first place, introducing me to RPGs via reading the Tunnels & Trolls solo adventures to me when I was a little’un, and equally influential – his collection of fantasy and medieval Minifigs which he later passed onto me along with a collection of Humbrol Oil paints. My first miniatures!

One of the others in a roundabout way was John Blanche, through the “Blanch-itsu” articles that were a part of White Dwarf magazine during the 100-ish period. Just take a minute to at least skim these articles. All very basic stuff for the readers of this blog I’m sure, but rewind to the pre-internet days of 1988 or so and think about how a teenager would actually access this sort of information in suburban Melbourne or wherever you live (unless you live in Nottingham, apparently!) Sure, the one above is also an advertisement for the Citadel Inks Set, but look at the information there!

Next we have drybrushing explained in text without any video or even any images. And you know what? Through a couple of paragraphs in this small article on multiple topics, John Blanche taught me how to drybrush. A fundamental skill that I still use regularly today.

I’ll end this with the time John Blanche taught me to paint horses. Yeah, another written article – this time referencing the colour plates in ‘eavy Metal. This is the one that most comes to mind for me when I think of these articles, and in many ways indicative John Blanche meant and still means to me the most.

So for me, it’s not the artwork from Rogue Trader, or Realm of Chaos, or Battlefleet Gothic, or 40k Second Edition, or Inquisitor or any of that. It’s not my copy of Ratspike in the shelf upstairs. It’s the fact that his articles in those early (for me) White Dwarf magazines, showed me how to emulate what I could see in the photos of painted miniatures that we spent so long staring at. it’s the information passed across to me and undoubtedly so many others of the time, in an era where we didn’t have the internet and incredible amounts of information at our fingertips – just monthly magazines.

Vale John Blanche. May your bristles never bend.