The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy

The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy Boxed Set - Yoshitaka Amano
Wow. Just…wow. 

I can draw. I’m actually pretty decent at recreating anything you place in front of me. But the thing is, I can’t create. I can’t sit down, imagine a horrifying monster or a beautiful fairy and make it come to life. My lines always end up wrong or the features not quite what I picture in my mind. That said, I’m always more than a little in awe of anyone that can flawlessly pull creatures from their imaginations and with the tip of a pen or the stroke of a paintbrush give them life on a piece of paper or a canvas. 

This is not a pretty book of animation that you can flip through in a few minutes, nor is it one to set on your coffee table so that guests have something to do. At least I wouldn’t recommend putting it there if you plan on conversing with them because the second they pick it up they’re likely to fall under its spell and be lost to conversation and company. 

What this book is, is completely transcendent. Within it is page after page after page of gorgeous artwork. I can’t tell you how many times I paused for minutes on end staring at a creature or a landscape and marveling at the talent that it must have taken to create such a being or place. My fingers ran over lines drawn in pen and ink, the swirling mists of watercolors and rough yet brutally mesmerizing sketches.

The art was ethereal, exotic, alien, terrifying, feral, mythical, creepy and whimsical. Each painting or sketch pulled an emotion from me, each drew the eye. 

Mind? Blown.