New York Academy of Art

Greg Follender is a New York-based artist and illustrator whose passionate pursuit of rendering the human form has taken him from the dynamic world of comic books and graphic novels to character design and costume fabrication in the industry of film and television. After receiving his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, he worked as an illustrator for many years for such prestigious clients as The New York Times, Scholastic Publishing, and Time Magazine. Through his connection to these organizations and their educational branches, he eventually parlayed his love for the visual medium into instruction. This inspired him to instruct drawing, painting, and sculpting classes at the American Museum of Natural History in their Education Department for over two decades. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is represented in many private and public collections. He also published his episodic graphic novel, The Pugilist, in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. Mr. Follender holds gestural life drawing workshops in La Morra, Italy annually and is deeply influenced by the draftsmanship of the Italian High Renaissance. His allegorical paintings are firmly rooted in this classical tradition, and the dynamic figure drawing tenets of that time continue to inspire his personal narrative imagery. Mr. Follender teaches various Life Drawing and Comic Book Illustration classes at The Art Students League and Chelsea Classical Studios in New York City.