Paul Kidby (born 1964) is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 artist

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

. He was born in Northolt

Northolt

Northolt is a town in the London Borough of Ealing, England. The town has London Underground and Network Rail stations and is on the A40 road...

 and is currently living and working in Fordingbridge

Fordingbridge

Fordingbridge is a town and civil parish with a population of 5,700 on the River Avon in the New Forest District of Hampshire, England, near to the Dorset and Wiltshire borders and on the edge of the New Forest. It is south west of London, and south of the city of Salisbury. Fordingbridge is a...

, New Forest

New Forest

The New Forest is an area of southern England which includes the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in the heavily-populated south east of England. It covers south-west Hampshire and extends into south-east Wiltshire....

. Many people know him best for his art based on Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...

's Discworld

Discworld

Discworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from, J. R. R....

, which has been included as the sleeve covers since Josh Kirby

Josh Kirby

Ronald William "Josh" Kirby was an English commercial artist born in Waterloo, on the outskirts of Liverpool, Merseyside. He was educated at the Liverpool City School of Art, where he acquired the nickname Josh, which comes from having his work compared to that of Sir Joshua Reynolds...

 (another English artist who is often confused with Kidby) died in 2001.

He drew a lot during his childhood and adolescence, but left school with few qualifications to his name.

Later Kidby was trained as a dental technician making false teeth, but abandoned this to become a freelance artist in 1986. He produced artwork for a variety of products ranging from video film sleeves to computer game packaging.

Between 1991 and 1995, Future Publishing

Future Publishing

Future plc is a media company; in 2006, it was the sixth-largest in the United Kingdom. It publishes more than 150 magazines in fields such as video games, technology, automotive, cycling, films and photography. Future is the official magazine company of all three major games console manufacturers...

 employed him and he designed and painted more than 200 magazine covers.

In 1995 he started working exclusively for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. His Discworld art, and many descriptions of the pieces, are included in The Pratchett Portfolio

The Pratchett Portfolio

The Pratchett Portfolio is a small collection of the artistic works of Paul Kidby, illustrating the characters of Terry Pratchett's Discworld. It includes a small blurb on each character, and a picture of said person. In addition to the art, each blurb talks about how Pratchett created the...

(1996) and The Art of Discworld

The Art of Discworld

The Art of Discworld is a descriptive book of the world of the Discworld as portrayed in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. It showcases the art of Paul Kidby with descriptions of characters and locations by Pratchett and some details of the development of the art by Kidby himself.The book...

(2004). These showcase full versions of work and some paintings previously unseen. He also illustrated The Last Hero

The Last Hero

The Last Hero is a short novel, the twenty-seventh of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. It was published in 2001 in a larger format than the other Discworld novels and illustrated on every page by Paul Kidby.-Plot summary:...

, a Discworld "fable" and number one bestseller in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, selling more than 235,000 copies.

His art is in several cases a tribute to (or a parody of) well known paintings such as the Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...

by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

, Night Watch

Night Watch (painting)

Night Watch or The Night Watch or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq is the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn....

by Rembrandt, and An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, one of a number of candlelit scenes that Wright painted during the 1760s. The painting departed from convention of the time by depicting a scientific subject in the reverential manner formerly...

by Joseph Wright

Joseph Wright of Derby

Joseph Wright , styled Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution"....

.

External links

• PaulKidby.net - Personal site
• PaulKidby.com - Official site