Melissa Benson - Fantasy Illustrator

Promoting Art & Culture in the Lower Naugatuck River Valley

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		Melissa Benson Melissa A. Benson of Ranting Centaur Studios, a native of Stratford, CT, is a fantasy illustrator and fine artist with a colorful, realistic style. She has been creating quality artwork for over fifteen years working mostly in a mixed media of watercolor dyes, and color pencils. Black and white work is high contrast multi-weight graphite on bristol paper and the oil works are on masonite. Her name is best known in the gaming industry for creating powerful and imaginative illustrations for many of the top collectible card game (CCG) publishers. Melissa worked with Wizards of the Coast before they became the corporate giant who published Magic: The Gathering in 1993.
She created several iconic character designs for that game, most notably Nightmare and Shivan Dragon. She did illustrations for many subsequent expansions of the popular role playing game as well. She has also worked for White Wolf Publishing when they started Vampire: the Masquerade, Iron Crown Entertainment's Middle Earth game, the Dragon Storm rpg game published by Black Dragon Press, the oriental card game Shadowfist published by Z-Man Games and Camelot Legends among others. Melissa specializes in believable anthropomorphic creatures and people in natural and historic settings. The bulk of her recent work has been private commissions for clients who want an accurate portrait of their role playing characters. Her work has been shown at the Tepper Gallery in NYC, the Art Institute of Seattle in Washington State and Willow Fine Art Gallery in Connecticut. After two Associate degrees, one in music and one in art, Melissa went back to college to further her art education and graduated in 1989 with a Bachelors degree in Illustration from the Paier College of Art in Hamden CT. She has freelanced with several graphics and marketing firms, Titan Sports (WWF), book publishers, a fashion manufacturer / designer, a theatrical make-up artist/ wig/ costume designer out of NYC as well as with New England Lyric Opera. As of May 20th, 2001 she became Mrs Joseph D. Jacouzzi and lives in Shelton, CT email: nightmareartist@melissabenson.com web site: www.melissabenson.com

Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism

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