Rob Howard

Rob Howard's first serious art lessons were at age sixteen in Provincetown with legendary teacher, Hans Hofmann. He later attended The School of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where he mastered classical painting techniques and drawing methods. With over forty years of experience in all aspects of art and having operated The Studio for Illustration, he now operates his own portrait studio. During that forty year period he illustrated eleven books for a number of A-list publishers.

The Sakura Company sponsored an exhibition of his work in five cities in Japan. His Japanese publisher is Yugakusha Ltd. His book illustrations are in the collection of The Boston Public Library and The Kerlan Collection. DC Heath, Lothrop Lee and Shepard, McGraw-Hill and Crowell-Collier have all published books of his illustrations. Over the years his illustrations toured numerous shows and museums.

Howard illustrated and designed hundreds of book covers for Little Brown, Houghton Mifflin, Allyn Bacon, Avon Books, Ballantine Books, Berkely Books and Dell.

He wrote and illustrated The Illustrators Bible, the top-selling definitive sourcebook of illustrator's techniques, published in the U.S and U.K by Watson-Guptill. He also wrote Gouache For Illustration for the same publisher. Gouache was the first book written on this subject in 30 years. Currently he is at work on two other art instruction books as well as a series of online courses and instructions.

Recent years have seen him shift his focus to a highly successful career in formal and corporate portraiture. His corporate client list includes Apollo Computer, Bank of Boston, BASF, Coca-Cola, Codex, Compugraphic, Converse, Daisy Mfg., Data General, Digital, Filene's, Fisher-Price, Gillette, Heublein, Honeywell Computer, John Hancock, Jordan Marsh, Lotus, Nynex, Ocean Spray, Papa Gino, Prime Computer, Reebok, Sony, St.Regis Paper and Wang.

Howard founded the Artist Forum on CompuServe. With over 60,000 subscribing artist/members, Artist Forum was the largest professional art resource in the world. Closing Artist Forum, he created the subscription-only website Cennini Forum at http://forums.studioproducts.com Cennini Forum became the definitive online source, dedicated to informing and aiding artists with unbiased and tested information about the professional levels of art.