Vampire Art Now
Jasmine Becket-Griffith & Mathew David Becket

Harper Design / Harper Collins Publishers
September 13, 2011 / 0062025716
Non-fiction /Art
Amazon

Reviewed by Carmen Ferreiro

Vampire Art Now is a look at vampires through contemporary art.

Stunningly beautiful and, at the same time, disturbingly ugly, the almost two hundred pictures in this collection depict vampires as you may have imagined them in your worst nightmares. The pictures present a wide variety of styles and media, from cute cartoons with an edge to real model photography, from drawings in pencil to digital illustrations, from watercolors to acrylic on wood.

As it would be expected from the darkness of the subject, black is the predominant color, together with red (for blood) and white (for undead skin).

Despite the current invasion in literature of good-looking vampires with tortured soul that yearn to be human, the overall impression I got from these authors' illustrations is the most traditional one of vampires as unrepentant and evil creatures of the night.

The illustrations are gorgeous and I found the explanations from the authors that accompany them most interesting, so if you're interested in vampires, the Gothic and the macabre and enjoy a good scare, this book is for you.