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.