Creativity Quote by Boris Vallejo

Vallejo isn’t just comparing materials; he’s staking out an artistic ethic: fantasy realism as seduction, not speed. Acrylics, with their quick-dry “charm,” represent the modern pressure to produce efficiently, to keep moving, to lock decisions in place. He grants the selling point, then undercuts it. The “however” is doing the real work: fast-drying paint isn’t freedom, it’s constraint. You get a surface that behaves like a deadline.

Oils, in his telling, aren’t merely a medium; they’re a tempo. “Softer and more flexible” reads like a manifesto for image-making that stays negotiable longer, allowing forms to be coaxed rather than stamped. That matters for the kind of bodies and atmospheres Vallejo is known for: polished skin, metallic gleam, smoky transitions, the slow gradient from shadow into highlight that makes an invented world feel touchable. Blending isn’t just technique here; it’s the mechanism of illusion.

Then he slips in the real tell: “colors are brighter with oils.” It’s a straightforward claim, but culturally it aligns him with a lineage of painters who treat luminosity as credibility. Brightness becomes a promise to the viewer: this isn’t concept art’s quick shorthand, it’s a fully realized spectacle. The subtext is quietly defensive, too. Vallejo is often discussed as much for his subject matter as his craft; emphasizing oils foregrounds discipline and tradition, reframing his work as painterly labor rather than mere genre fantasy.