Leo Leibelman

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Born in Moscow in 1972, Leo Liebelman moved around a lot as a child from Italy to Canada to finally settlle in Brooklyn NY where he grew up--all undoubtedly adding to and inspiring the tapestry of work that would end up in his paintings.

Being led to study at the HS of Music and Art, he graduated in 1990 and later attended the School of Visual arts for a year, taking a comic arts class with the legendary DC comics artist Carmine Infantino.Taking what he learned in that class he went to his first comic book convention ,and as luck would have it the editor who was doing the portfolio reviews for Marvel was also the editor for Conan! His fate had found him.

The editor did indeed see something in Leo's work and decided to give him a shot and thus began his career in comics . Following this fortuitous meeting came many covers covers and pinups for "Savage Sword of Conan," and that work opened the door for Leo to go to Acclaim comics as well, where he worked on Turok and Magic The gathering.

Other comics work included pieces for Topps Comics on "Hercules," NBM Publishing, Penny Farthing Press, Black Ice Comics and Arcana Comics.

The year 1996, brought more changes to Leo's life, as he moved to Toronto to be with his family, and he's been living there ever since. The move opened new doors artistically for him as well, as he branched out into other types of art work--mainly film and traditional illustration.

It was also around this time that Leo met two other artists that would greatly inspire him—Legends in their field. Stve Assael helped Leo hone his realistic painting techniques, while Boris Vallejo also gave invaluable advice. "I've always admired Vallejo since I picked up his first art book," says Leo.

For the next ten years Leo did every thing from romance novels to childrens books to paintings for movies .In fact, he's worked on over a dozen movies ranging from Disney, live action, to low budget horror films! "You'll see the later on the Sci-Fi network at three in the morning," he laughs.

Some of this film and TV work adding to Leo's credit's include: "Gene Roddenberry Earth Final Conflict," "Devil's Pass," "Mutant X," "Chicago," "Cube Zero," "Child Star," "Wild Card," "Codebreakers," "Skinwalkers," "The Way," "Sanctum," "American Pie 5," "Aaron Stone," "Sky Runners," "Aqua," and many more.

During those years he also got married and started a business in 2005, "I decided to try something different from art so I bought an 18 wheeler truck and drove across the U.S. and Canada.I did that for about a year and realized its a lot less dangerous drawing comicbooks," Leo explains.

An avid gym-goer and basketball player, these days, Leo is perfectly content to be pursuing his art full-time, finishing up a book for Arcana Comics and also doing some riveting covers for "Heavy Metal," and a secret "Planet of the Apes project. Recent work has appeared for Forest Primevil and Radical Publishing. "The diversity of driving a truck was nice," he explains. "But deep down inside I wanted to work in comics. That's what I was meant to do."

For more information on Leo and his work, contact:
evaink@aol.com