What are my artistic influences?

A question that I get often asked is, “What are my artistic influences?”

First and foremost is Frank Frazetta. I wish I had 10% of his talent. His work awes and humbles me. The man had a stroke a few years back, paralyzing his right hand (painting hand). So what does he do? He teaches himself how to paint with his left hand, never mind that by this point he is in his 60's (or 70's). The resulting work is still more amazing, real and creative than anything that I could ever do. Why I have not visited his museum is beyond me.

The other two painters would be Chris Achellios and Royo. I really want to paint the sci fi/fantasy type art like they do (see “Sword of Royo”, so named for Royo. . .obviously). I was not confident that I could paint figures in pastels with the necessary level of detail and I did not want to pencil and ink landscapes (yup, call me lazy) with that much detail either. So I developed a hybrid mixed medium method that actually worked out pretty good for me. As you can see, the pencil work is pretty simple, most of the details of the figure were done with the colored pencil (something that Johnie C showed me). Most of the pictures done in this style, unfortunately for me, was done before I had access to a scanner (well before the digital camera age), and since I gave them away, I no longer have access to them.

::sigh::

In terms of comic book art, the career path that I would forsake all other for, I am most heavily influenced by Michael Golden (whose style I aped in my early teens). I so wanted to be the next Michael Golden. Two others are John Byrne and Frank Miller. I never tried Miller's "Sin City" style, but his older work, like Ronin, really influenced my pencil work. I was so totally in to cross hatch because of that.

Now that I paint landscapes, I have researched the impressionists like Monet and Van Gogh (not saying I am in that stratesphere of artists, but I do try to learn from them). Still learning about color, so I think that my painting style will continue to evolve. Which is probably a good thing.

I am sure that there are others, but those are the biggest influences.

Sword of Royo
9x12, pastel with colored pencil and inks on bristol 

That's me with the hockey stick!

Found it!

Welcome to my grad school apartment, circ 1993. That is me with the hockey stick, Anthon-Z playing sega, Coney shooting hoops, Johnni C (the artist of this picture) and Stacy at the table drawing, with special guest appearances by Ax and Dale.

I must admit, Johnie was one of the most talented artists that I ever met. He could draw just like Shiro, imho. Too bad he was never able to break into comics. I think his manga like style was way ahead of the curve. It would be another year before Joe Mads broke that style wide open and became the regular artist of the X-men. But for me, Johnie C was the originator.

Man, I still wish I had some of the pages that he penciled and I inked. And Anthon-Z's pages for that matter. I will post the splash page that Anthon-Z penciled and I inked and colored very soon. It is the best comic book related work that I have ever done. No question.

Dragon Sun-the early years. 

One of my favorites

I just like this one (see "Frozen Bog" below). It is, for me, very difficult to make "dark" pastel paintings but with this painting I was able to achieve something I felt had a very "atmospheric" feeling to it. I was also able to give this piece a feeling of depth, something that I struggled mightily with for a time.

Again, this was painting around the same time as "Poppies". In fact, this, and all the others from that period that I will be posting in the next weeks, were all painted in the same spiral notebook. Now, I tape individual pieces of pastel paper onto an board and frame them when they are finished.

I believe that I have definitely grown as an artist in the last 10 years, but I have fond memories of this time when I began to relearn to paint. It was also a time when my apartment doubled as the hang out and official head quarters for for Dragon Sun Studios—Johnie C, Anthon-Z, Def Stacie, Coney and my boy Charlie "F'K'N" Ward (okay, he existed only as his EASports digital self, but he was always there). In truth, somebody was awake 24/7, either drawing something or playing Sega or Nintendo. Ah yes, those were the days.

Now I am going to have to find Johnie's "Mangaverse" version of my apartment.

Frozen Bog
9x12, pastel on paper 

Even more from the archives

Okay, I admit it. I have been a big slacker and have not been painting at all of late. But I do, have a host of paintings from my archives that I had previously been unwilling to post.

Why?

Well, I have signed my name to them and I had been clinging to my "anonymity" of my blogger name. But realistically, the only people who don't know my real name are the ones who did not care to take 10 seconds to figure it out.

With that said, here is a painting that I did over 10 years ago when I first began to "relearn" painting. In high school, I wanted to go to Art School instead of a 4 year college. When I decided to go to a 4 year college I more or less stopped painting and drawing. Can not really explain why, but I did. At some point in during graduate school I decided to start painting again. "Poppies" is one of the first painting that I did from that period. I did not know about workable fix or different grades of pastels. I just painted this all in one layer. I think it holds up well, all things considered.

So, since I know that even if I do start a painting in the next few days, I will not have anything to post for a few weeks. Therefore, I am going to start dipping into my archives and bring out some paintings from 10 years ago.

I hope you all enjoy.

Poppies
9x12, pastel on paper