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It's the mid sixties and the Beatles craze is full on with British pop music creating a look back culture that exists to this day.

But what am I and my friends doing at this time? We're into American Comic books Batman, Superman, etc. -- all conveniently available at a local news agent  around the corner from where we lived in Reading, England -- comics used as ballast for ships coming from to US to the UK. This was to be my first introduction to Fantasy and Scf-Fi that lasts to this day. 

I really got into the comic book art work, so many different styles and the overall excitement of the stores and characters provided every month were totally compelling to me as a young boy.

1967 
Dragon books publish a young readers version of a number of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels of Tarzan -- the ape man that grows up with apes, but who eventually falls for a girl called Jane. He has many adventures in strange lands with cliff hanger dangers, but it seems Burroughs also had another colorful creation: John Carter, a character transported to Mars. This was all high adventure with no limits to the imagination.

After this I started getting all the Burroughs books I could get my hands on: At the Earths Core, Land that Time Forgot, Carson of Venus to name but a few.

I starting sending my art efforts to ERB-dom in the early '70s and was delighted to see them in print.

September 1973 
At the age of 19 I spent a magical two-week holiday in Hollywood, which gave me the opportunity to visit Danton Burroughs at Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

After a Greyhound bus ride to Tarzana a local pointed out the property. It was just a few yards from the bus stop and coming up to the house I noticed the tree that marks the spot that Edgar Rice Burroughs was laid to rest.

Danton showed me around the archives of  Burroughs Inc and let me take pictures and displayed artwork of several artists that contributed to bringing the stories to life over the decades. He also gave me a chance to have a telephone conversation with artist Russ Manning. Overall, an amazing experience never to be forgotten.

1980s
I contributed to a Bristol base Star Trek fanzine at this time. I did not have an outlet for my Burroughs work.

2005
But with the advent of the Internet I came across ERBzine in 2005 and was impressed by the content of the web site as it gives insight to all things Burroughs, time to get my Burroughs fix enabled again so I have been contributing to the web site since I first came across it.

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INFLUENCES

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Lancer books published the Conan stories in paperback form in the late '60s. Most of the covers were done by the now-legendary and ultimate fantasy artist, Frank Frazetta. He created amazing depictions of muscle heroes and beautiful scantily dressed females in need of rescuing, dark dungeons, shadowy monsters, bright burning colours, etc. 

Another inspirational artist is Roy Krenkel, lifetime friend of Frazetta who worked extensively on Burroughs novels.

Simon Bisley is another favorite -- I especially like his hardcore Frazetta-like work on Death Dealer to name but a few.
Other favourites include Jim Murray's master work on DC's Batman / Jude Dredd, and Boris Vallejo's photographic-like detail.

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PICTURE CREATION

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Up to the late '90s Acrylic paint was my choice for fast drying bright Colours and oil paint-like finish, but this changed in 2002 when I started using Photoshop -- first to manipulate photos, then after getting used to working with it I noticed the painting potential of the software. 

I found how useful the Dodge and Burn tools are for rendering skin tones, layers for overlapping images, the ability to change colours at a click, and the variety of brushes giving a large extensive range of effects. So soon I had moved to using Photoshop and trashing my tube of paint for good.

In the example below The High Priestess of Opar, I first created the picture of the girl separately from the background. I then cut out the image of the girl, placed it in position, dropped the layer down, and carried on with adding more detail as needed to complete the picture.

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EXAMPLE: High Priestess of Opar
The girl is moved over on to the background then resized and extra detail added.

Completed picture 

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Creating pictures in a jigsaw fashion gives me the freedom to change the overall look and composition of the finished work. This is all at a time-save premium, meaning that for any work created in Photoshop, as in the above example, it will only take a couple of days to complete. However, if painted by oils  or acrylics you're looking at a time scale of 2 to 3 months if you have other things to do with your life, like working for a living.

I also use Zbrush for complex images like space ships, and sometimes other packages, but 95% of the time Photoshop is my program of choice.