Inspirational Art: Ken Kelly

Ken Kelly is our inspirational artist this week to continue on from Silver Age Appendix N: Coming of the Horseclans. The image to the left is the cover of the Signet edition of the book and I find notable for one big reason. I want you to look at the woman to the left (I believe that is Mara). How is she different from most fantasy swords women?

Kelly is known for, at least somewhat, for female warriors who aren't members of "you have to be kidding me" armor club. The woman at the right, in fact, made a splash at RPG.net in a threat about women in fantasy art who were actual threats.

That said, Kelly has done plenty of traditional women. In addition to the Horseclans series at Signet he did Gor covers for the DAW editions of the Gor books. He has also done classic chainmail bikini covers of Red Sonja, among other. Outside of books, he has done album covers for Kiss (in his own words his biggest break), Man-O-War, and Rainbow. Finally, he has done some RPG Art as you can see at the left.