Carving form in pencil

Finally got in my Creepy Archives #1 book that I ordered literally like a month ago! Wow, how excellent to finally see how it all began! And it includes Frazetta's one and only comic story done for Warren, his  last before moving permanently into oil painting.

The stories are all pretty lame, all 8-pagers, based on the EC layout from a decade previous. But some of the art is just insane, and especially of course the Frazetta story. Reed Crandall also turned in some real winners, and a couple of other artists.

This had me looking up black and white horror coic art (and just b&w comic art) and I found some nice gems online. From all of it I got this impression of a certain way to draw - and I also got the sudden knowledge that in order to really be able to paint I must first be able to draw exactly the way I want the paintings to look. Same is true for ink drawings and wash drawings etc (and ink & wash is a precursor to painting - so you need to be able to do it in wash before you can paint it too).

There was something amazing about looking at all this more contemporary (for the early 60's) ink and wash work that's totally different from the classical masters... more assuredness of line and form. Something about the way they carv out form with swatches of lines. Oh, last night I also gathered unto myself all the Creepy Eerie and Vampi covers and lots of drawings and paintings by the main cover artists, Frazetta, Sanjulian and Enrich. Also lots by St. John - and I suppose it was largely pencils by him and Sanjulian (especially a very Bama-esque Doc Savage drawing/painting he did as a commission) that really gave me this idea of carving out form in pencil. I sort of did it above, but got a ways to go.

I LIKE this way of drawing!! Want to do lots more of it. For me it all starts in pencil.

BWAAAHAAAHAAAA!!!
Just cracked up when I realized how much that looks like Tarrantino!! Totally unintentional.

Realized I'm also getting this drawing style from pen illos from the heyday of pulp and magazine illustrators. Some by St. John that I found last night in fact.