My core trio of artists - what they have in common

I've made many posts discussing Frazetta, Jeff Jones, and Kent Williams. The first 2 were heroic fantasy artists of the 60's/70's, while Williams started in the 80's and never did fantasy art. And yet in some way I associate them very closely with one another - and it's not just that they were my favorites. I think I have a handle on what it is they have in common.

Quite simply, of all the artists I've heaped respect and admiration on through my adolescence and young adulthood - the period so fertile with amazing art thanks to Warren publishing and then Epic Illustrated - these were the guys who did the best figurative painting. They also essentially made no concessions to genre in anything they did - though Frazetta and Jones worked as fantasy painters I know neither of them accepted the limitations of any genre and considered themselves artists and painters foremost, who were working in a normally limiting field but ignoring the limitations lesser artists would be forced to adapt to (or would choose to accept).

This is something I first came up with when thinking about progressive rock a few weeks ago - and how completely unlike anything previously (or since) labelled Rock it was. Rock and roll, when it was created in the 50's, was dance music with a simple repetitive drum beat and simple repetitive bass line. Nothing but pop music for the kids to bop to, with a rebellious streak. But the prog rock bands never did anything remotely like that - which made me wonder why ot was ever called rock to begin with. I reasoned it was really because it was being played on the FM stations - the ones adventurous enough to play non-format music and to spin entire album sides rather than just play hit singles under 3 minutes. It was in the mutating field still called rock music that the real excitement was happening - and it no longer conformed to any formulaic labels of what rock music was. It had the rock sensibility to it - edgy and energetic, often made by rebellious and rowdy youths. Even the more orchestral music like Kansas and ELO was powerful in a way no orchestra music ever had been before - it was something entirely new and as I once heard the drummer from YES say - nobody had ever told him rock drumming was supposed to be simple and catchy.

So I realized these guys were basically not making any particular kind of music at all - they were just making great music, with no limitations, no genre, no labels. Drawing inspiration from all sources available. It's just that the only place they could get it played was on the ostensible 'rock' stations.
It's the same for the fantasy artists and the - whatever you'd call Williams. They're really continuing the tradition of figurative painting begun in the Renaissance that moved to magazine illustration when the 'art world' lost its collective mind and declared the figure to be dead. It then moved to the pulps when the golden age of the illustrated magazine died, and then when they went the way of the Dodo it moved to Warren and the Epic Illustrated and similar formats.

So essentially my trio of artists were really just great figurative painters finding where it was possible to get their work published. Their work always went above and beyond the limitations of genre, they were in love with the figure and with painting it.


Then it hit me - the great rock stations of the 70's, Warren Publishing, Epic Illustrated - what they had in common was that they pushed for excellence in a field that's normally limiting, and thus enabled artists to flourish and to do amazing work. And I suppose that's the real key - amazing art can only happen when there's someone pushing to allow it to happen. A publisher like Jim Warren, who went way above and beyond what was necessary to make money on the publishing game - he created an environment where excellent artists were rewarded and were enabled to do what they love and to do it to the highest standards. If not for people like that, the great art would not be getting made - people like Frazetta and Jeff Jones and Kent Williams would be forced to work as plumbers or bakers or something.

One step forward, two steps back

It's hard to get used to the nature of improvements - the fact that as you make some things better other things slide downhill or are destroyed completely. I clearly remember when the bluff looked like it did in the below post, and thinking it needed the detailing hardened up a bit - some solid edges and some rugged detailing. I went overboard on it at first (pics coming soon below) and then sort of evened things out by applying a layer of mid-opaque browns over all the shadows and some of the light areas to draw the values together more and push the detailing into the background more. It still kind of fights for attention with what you're supposed to be looking at - I've considered flattening the best-looking part of the bluff, just behind Fafhrd's shoulder, which is the busiest and highest-constrast part of the bluff. Tough call. But unfortunately that bluff steals all my attention now.

I've really addressed the problems with Faf's pose though. Compare to below image - so much more natural and relaxed, as well as taller and more lanky, as he should be. I removed all the pink from his skin tone, but now he looks too contrasty and a bit sickly/greenish.

Been lightening up the dark shadows all over, and adding in patches of faintly visible greys and blues and occasionally reds.

There are two essentially different techniques being used here - one that I consider a 'painterly' approach, with visible brushstrokes and form developed by layering midtones and lights over the darks - proper shading technique And then there's the kind of techniques I developed in my pencil drawing days, like I used on the bluff. The tones are in the right places but you don't see any brushstrokes, instead it's either smooth s can be or there's fine lines visible - because I used pencil techniques essentially. I want to move more toward the painterly stuff.

I also want to work on design - I mean really work on it. I keep thinking about those amazing Jeff Jones covers for the Fafhrd/Mouser series and how incredibly simple and strong they are. No details at all - they're just the way Leiber described Robert E Howard's writing. But I don't only want to work like that - minimalism to the extreme. I couldn't handle that. I also want to do fully detailed pictorial paintings like this one with natuarlistic landscapes or somewhat fantasized landscapes and details galore.

Scarlet

Comparing these you can see how I straightened Faf up - I kept thinking there was too much headroom, and his body lingo was all slumped and weak. Now he dominates the space.

I also decided against the yellow stretchy pants - it was looking like a Calvin Klein ad or something. Swapped em in for some nice barbaric pants with metal-adorned belt.

But mainly Ilm dealing with one of my most persistent problems - color saturation and how to deal with it. It's fantasy art, so it should be brilliant and juicy, but not all over - you need a strategy for where and when to crank it up. In my head I know the strategy - saturation only in mid tones, as color moves toward dar and light grey it down. I know this, and yet I don't do it - not sure why. Then I have to go through all kinds of acrobatics to fix it.

I also think I should have put some reflected sky blue in the shadows, same as I did on Faf. Why would the entire cliff face, in sunlight and shadow, be orange? Slap forehead now.

I suppose it's just a matter of starting to trust my instincts and act on them.

Mouser takes form