Further Frazetta Sketches

More Frazetta sketches...I can't help it, I'm obsessed. Without the distractions of color or extra dimensionality, a good drawing has an essential quality unmatched in any other medium.  Nowhere is art more human, regardless of subject matter.

"Drawing is the honesty of art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad." - Salvador Dali

These few sketches (on the cream toned paper) are from a single page of Frazetta's sketchbook, presumably for sale. 

I have a rant about naked ladies and art, a rant which I will refrain from repeating here, but despite my serious boredom with sexed up art, I get the feeling that Frank Frazetta really liked women, of all shapes and sizes and dispositions. I like Frazetta's women because most of them have not only real hips and real bellies and real ten-days-on-a-murderous-jungle-rampage hair, but also real character. 

When they have teeth, they have teeth.

Master Drawings

For today, here's a small collection of drawings by three masters of narrative figuration, Frank Frazetta, Francisco Goya, and Jeffrey Catherine Jones. So much compression....so much information in so few marks....

The above drawings were all Frank Frazetta's, made in the mid-to-late 20th century. 

The three above are by Francisco Goya, done in the late 18th century.

These last five are sketches by Jeffrey Catherine Jones, the 20th-century artist and illustrator who passed away in 2011. Frank Frazetta himself considered Jones to be one of the greatest artists of their time.

Storms

And today, some of the images of storms I've been gathering....

"Vesuvius" by William Turner

A very stormy abstract by contemporary Dutch painter Eelco Maan

James Lavadour's "Redface"

One of my current favorite works, "Tumult" by contemporary figure painter Zack Zdrale. I love this painting.

"Northern Spirit" by Nineteenth-century Romantic painter John Martin

"Sea Witch" by Frank Frazetta

An illustration by Yoshitaka Amano that I can't find a title for, unfortunately.....

Jesus Rays

One day I was out walking with a good friend of mine. It had been raining intermittently in varying parts of the countryside, and it seemed like the sun was out here but not there, there but not here, and pockets of shadow stood side-by-side with pockets of bright daylight. Suddenly she pointed and exclaimed, not entirely piously, "Oh look! Jesus rays!"

Ever since then I have been unable to see those stray shafts of sunlight without thinking of them as Jesus rays. Sometimes they creep into my own work, and even when I use them without a trace of conscious irony, it's hard to think of them differently.

So, for when subtlety just won't cut it, and you need a firm clear indicator that this is, by damn, Important, there's always the Jesus ray.

Above is an untitled painting by Agosto Arrivabene, a contemporary Italian painter who reminds me of a cross between Blake and Giger and maybe Anselm Keifer. 

And above is one of my favorite images by Frank Frazetta, usually just titled "Sound." (This is my current screensaver, in fact. Frazetta was always a painter first and an illustrator second, and I like that.) It's not exactly a typical Jesus ray situation but it is, certainly, emphatic. 

Above, another untitled oil by Agostino Arrivabene. 

And these last two are depictions of holy emanations from the master himself, William Blake. These are illustrations from Europe: A Prophecy and Song of Los, respectively.