Frank Frazetta's "Famous Funnies" Covers

Frank Frazetta (1928-2010) is famous amongst those who pay attention to science fiction and fantasy art, this largely having to do with book and magazine cover illustrations that he painted from the early1960s on.

There was more to Frazetta than those paintings. As his Wikipedia entry indicates, his early career centered around comics work. At first he was involved with comic books, then in 1953 (according to this source) he was hired by Al Capp to work on the Li'l Abner newspaper comic strip, one of the leading ones of its day. Frazetta did Li'l Abner strips from 1954 into 1961, when he resigned. It was at this point that he began his transition to painted illustration.

Comics art is normally based on black-and-white inked drawings. Shading, if required, was done via hatching or crosshatching, though some artists relied on Ben-Day, Zipatone and other quasi-mechanical aids. A colored cartoon usually had minimal shading on the original inked artwork, colors being applied as solid areas by the printer based on the artist's instructions.

In the early 1950s, Frazetta created a number of covers for the Famous Funnies publication that went defunct with issue No. 218, July 1955. Frazetta created covers dealing with Buck Rogers for issues 209-215, not long before publication ceased. Some sources above attest that these cover illustrations helped Frazetta to get hired by Capp. His version of Rogers and girlfriend Wilma Deering are his own interpretation, and not done in the styles of Dick Calkins or Rick Yager, who did most of the work on the strip in its glory days.

Below are Frazetta's covers in sequence.

Gallery

Sad to say, Frazetta's drawings here are not top-notch.  Numbers 210, 211 and 212 feature foreshortening that strikes me as off: heads are too large for Buck in 210 and 212, and for Wilma in 211. Wilma's muscles are too well-defined in 213; she should be more feminine (an error Frazetta seldom made in later years).  Wilma's legs are too large in 215.  The 209 drawing seems okay, as does that for 214 (though the couple are too squeezed together in the spaceship's cockpit, plus being too large to fit in the ship's structure as drawn.

That said, the cover for No. 214 is my favorite, especially with the colors removed as in the image above. Click to enlarge.

John Harris: Sci-Fi Artist in Oils

A large percentage of book cover art for the science-fiction and fantasy genres is now done using digital media. The resulting images can be quite striking at times, especially when complex shapes overlay one another; the effects would be difficult to achieve using traditional media. On the other hand, the digital image needs to be printed in some form if an admirer wants to cherish it someplace besides a computer/tablet/smart phone screen and doesn't want the interference of a book title and other cover necessities. In any case, there is no true "original" image in the sense of a traditional drawing or painting.

Some cover artists prefer to use traditional media, oil paints especially. This is true for many contributors to the Muddy Colors group blog managed by oil painting artist Dan Dos Santos.

A somewhat older artist than the Muddy Colors crew is British cover artist John Harris (1948 - ), who worked in acrylics and other media for some time, but finally settled on oil paints because he could best achieve desired effects in that way. The best biography of Harris that I could find on the Internet is here.

Harris can be painterly or (comparatively) hard-edge, depending on requirements. Here are examples of his work.

Gallery

The title associated with this on the Web is "A Minor Incident," but I couldn't locate a cover image to confirm this.

A segment at the left of this was used as cover art for a book titled "Ancillary Justice."

I have no titles for the four images shown above.

This is titled "Quiet Night" and seems to show the moon disintegrating as it approaches too close to Earth at some future time. Or it might be another moon-planet location entirely.

This rather hard-edge Harris painting is titled "Temple."

Norman Wilkinson's Travel Posters

Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971) was an illustration all-rounder. As his Wikipedia entry indicates, besides the travel posters treated in this post, he was a noted painter of naval scenes as well as a camouflage expert. With regard to the latter, he is credited with inventing "dazzle" camouflage for ships during the Great War.

From what I can glean from viewing Images in Google, most of Wilkinson's poster work was done for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway between the world wars. The LMR's main routes were up the west side of Britain, so places such as the Lake District, Wales and Western Scotland were often featured in his work.

Not shown here are Wilkinson's naval paintings -- I might feature those in another post. For those, he used a painterly technique quite different from the areas of flat color he judged appropriate for poster work. A versatile professional, and good at what he did.

Gallery

Of course, London itself was a tourist destination for people living in other parts of the UK. True to form (as all the other images shown indicate), Wilkinson includes water -- in this case the River Thames. I chose to use a downstream sequence of views for the three posters shown above.

Roaring Twenties Illustrations

For reasons I don't really understand, and therefore can't explain, I've been fascinated by the 1920s for most of my life. So when I surf the Internet and stumble across interesting paintings or illustrations depicting that era, I'll copy them on the hard drive of my desktop computer.

Today's post presents some illustrations I've collected. They were done by artists who are not now well known here in America. I might feature one or more another time, but for now will simply display the images without any supporting information.

Gallery

This nice 1926 illustration is signed by a monogram that looks like the initials "BT," though I might be misinterpreting. Can anyone out there help identify the artist/

By Ruth Eastman

By Jacques Leclerc - 1926

By Fabius Lorenzi - 1926

By Annie Offterdinger in "Jugend" - 1923

By Paul Reith in "Jugend"

I don't know who the artist for this was. It's possible the image was cropped from something larger. And it's possible, because it's context-free, that it was created more recently than the 20s.

By Vald'Es in "La Vie Parisienne"

By Wilton Williams in "The Bystander" - 12 August 1925

Terence Cuneo's Railroad Paintings

I was never a railroad buff. Perhaps should have been, given that my grandfather and uncle on my father's side were railroad men. Maybe that is why, when I think of Terence Cuneo (1907-1996), a famous British illustrator and painter in his day, what comes to mind are his wartime, aircraft and automobile works rather than the railway paintings that seem to be what he is best remembered for. That memory was manifested in a statue of him placed in London's Waterloo Station a few years ago.

No doubt some -- or even many -- readers are train fans. So with that in mind, I'm presenting examples of Cuneo's railway art. Some are simply portraits of famous locomotives, other works deal with various aspects of train travel.

Information on Cuneo can be found on his Wikipedia entry, this post on Lines and Colors blog, and his daughter's comments here.

Gallery

Flying Scotsman - 1984

Golden Arrow - 1984

Royal Scot - 1984
Some portraits of famous locomotives of times past.

Clapham Junction - 1961

Giants Refreshed: Pacifica in the Doncaster Locomotive Works - 1947

The Day Begins - 1946

Bon Voyage: Joining Steam Ships at Calais - 1952

Waterloo Station - 1967
This is a huge painting that can be seen at the National Railway Museum in York, England.

Eric Sloane: Illustrator of Rural America

Eric Sloane, born Everard Jean Hinrichs (1905-1985) was a prolific and popular illustrator and writer of books dealing with rural life, largely in New England and the northeastern United States. I was well aware of his publications when I lived in Upstate New York and he was still active.

His Wikipedia entry explains why he used a pseudonym to launch his career. Some other sites with biographical information regarding Sloane are here and here.

Sloane's illustrations are rather tightly drawn or painted, probably because he thought it necessary to document how the components of the structures he was depicting were assembled. He was more lyrical when it came to the buildings' settings -- particularly skies and other atmospherics.

Sloane spent time in Taos, New Mexico as well as in the Northeast, but the images presented below deal with the latter, because that region was his main focus.

Gallery

Page from one of his books illustrating mid-1800s construction methods

View of an abandoned barn

"End of Summer"

"Late Summer"

"February Morning"

"Skating by the Bridge"

"Autumn in New England"

"Autumn Clouds"

James Montgomery Flagg, Illustrator

James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960) was one of America's most popular illustrators from early in the twentieth century through the 1930s, and to a lesser extent beyond, as his sketchy style fell out of synch with illustration fashion.

A brief Wikipedia biography is here, but more useful sources are here (for details) and here, where you can scroll to view examples of his work.

I am ambivalent regarding Flagg's art. That might be because it's a little too loose and too stylized for me. Let me elaborate. The looseness could drift towards a lack of control. As for stylization, his faces sometimes came off more Flagg-like than how peoples actually appeared. I'll point out examples below. On the other hand, he was quite capable of "nailing it," and I'll point that out too.

Gallery

Army recruiting poster - 1917
This is by far Flagg's most famous work: iconic to this day.

Illustration for Judge magazine cover, 31 March 1917
Flagg could paint in oils, but that was done mostly when he wasn't illustrating.

Pen and ink illustration
Much of Flagg's illustration work was for magazine interiors, rather than covers. Before the 1920s, he often used pen-and-ink, as did many other illustrators at that time. (This illustration seems to be from the 30s, however, so he continued to use a pen when he could get away with it.)

Wash or watercolor illustration - 1930s
By the 1920s and 30s, he had largely switched to water media. The girl is nicely done, but the Rolls-Royce in the background is far too sketchily done (inaccurately drawn) to suit me.

In Liberty Magazine - 27 October 1934
But here Flagg shines. Not the whole illustration, but with the seated women. Especially the expression on her face.

Sketch of actress Jean Harlow
This is an example of Flagg-style taking over bits of portraiture. Yes, it looks like Harlow. And yes, there's no mistaking who drew her.

"Lost Horizon" poster - 1937
More Flagg intrusion, especially his treatment of the subjects' noses and the general sketchiness that detracts from what many people expect from a movie poster. Flagg's treatment of Ronald Colman's right shoulder is just plain wrong.