Maz Bourne

One of the Archive's most prolific contributors, Maz Bourne is also one of the best-known names on the site, and with good reason—her art is some of the finest you'll find around here. It was only a matter of time before she ended up the site's Featured Artist.








In the Artist's Own Words:
“  *Opens emails expecting to find more spam to delete and falls off chair in shock* Woah!! 0_o What can I say?? I really wasn't expecting this!! Even after I had a number of my friends keep telling me "Check your emails, you get one off Brian yet?" and all my reply was "about what?" Just comes to show how correct other peoples suspicions can be =^.^=

Firstly I wanna say a huuuuuuuuuge thankyou to everyone who voted! *pouncehugz to each and every one of you guyz* And where would we all be without the wonder that is Brian Tiemann eh? Certainly not here coz without him I doubt this place would exist, and if it did, I know it wouldn't be as much fun =3 So I must state a huuuge thankyou goes to Brian amongst all this rambling aswell =D *pouncehugs Brian*

I've only been a member here for a year (on the 5th of Jan) and I've only really been drawing Lions since I joined here. Before then all I ever drew were horses from a really young age, so drawing lions was something pretty new to me and I had to try and figure out their anatomy which is actually a fair bit different. At first I tried drawing in a more TLK style and only recently I've been experimenting with the style, not to mention having fun with a lot of different poses =3 The reason I tend not to put backgrounds on my pictures is that... Now that I'm at University I have very little time to put so much detail into my art, plus backgrounds take an eternity for me to do, so I usually either try to keep them very simple or just leave it altogether.

I would like to encourage other artists out there to experiment with their work and not to rely on other artists too heavily for poses or character designs because originality is what makes you stand out. Everyone has their own talent and a true style apparently doesn't develop till your late twenties or thirties as I've heard, so don't listen to people who tell you your art is bad or has flaws, just keep practising (studying the real thing can be more rewarding than you may think) and you may end up shocking yourself with some of the pictures you end up doing =)

Well, enough of my random ramblings, I really can't think of much else to say apart from a huuuuge thankyou to everyone who's supported me and helped me through some bad times, and those I've shared good times with, I'd love to be able to meet some of you guys, 'coz I know alotta you guys seem really nice =^.^= Who knows? Maybe one day I'll bump into one of you guys =)

Lastly, again I'm gunna say that this has been a great surprise for me, and I wish you all the best, keep at it, and who knows? You may be the next Artist Of The Month =3

Best Wishes, Maz B. =3 		”





It was less than a year ago that Maz Bourne first appeared on the Archive, with a handful of computer-drawn Lion King picures that showcased her already impressive talent honed at DeviantArt and elsewhere. Now, just a few months later, her style has developed so much that it's only the distinctive facial characteristics she exhibits so naturally that make it easy to recognize as her work. Maz Bourne's recent drawings showcase a finely honed sense of anatomy and balance, as well as effective cartoonish caricature and simplification of deceptively complex anatomical structures like legs and feet—to say nothing of the whimsical sense of design she's lately been applying to her lionized versions of characters like Alucard, her most recent focus and exhibit of her talent.

Some of the best stuff in Maz Bourne's gallery is her canon Lion King art, and her characters that fit squarely into that universe. Her "TLK characters" folder is full of great pictures of Simba, Mufasa, Scar, and others whose style ranges from some of the artist's more outlandish stylistic experimentations to a canon-like style that ranks with Disney's own. It's this range of styles that particularly characterizes Maz Bourne's work; she uses the familiar shapes and expressions of our favorite characters as a substrate for experiments into new and ever more challenging avenues of art.

Maz Bourne's style is suffused with a wry humor and a tongue-in-cheek sensuality that brings a whole new dimension to Lion King fan-art as practiced and realized by the fan-art community at this site. She's one of the main movers and shakers on the Archive today and one of the foremost proponents of the increasingly popular self-aware and semi-parodical style that's made her a mainstay of the site's artist community. It's work like hers that is helping to turn "Lion King fan-art" into a genre in its own right, alongside the broader and more widely known disciplines catered to elsewhere in the online art world, and what's helped make this site ever the more popular the more time goes by.

Congratulations to Maz Bourne!

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