I first saw the late Frank Frazetta’s work on the covers of the Creepy magazines (in Finnish it was called Shokki) when I was seven years old, back in 1972. Of course I didn’t know who Frazetta was, and I had no way of forming any kind of opinion, except that the images were extremely scary to me. They also looked very good.
I learned more about Frazetta only a few years ago, when I took a look at some of those covers again. The images looked even better than before – perhaps because I now had some kind of an idea about art. I then searched for everything I could about him, found a fan-maintained gallery site, bought a couple of books, and thought to myself: “This is something to look up to”.
It took me a while to work out that what mainly sets Frazetta’s work apart from most of his peers is his sense of composition. There are other factors as well – like the classical training he received when still young, his gracefully flowing lines and his firm brush strokes – but his compositions are so spot on that they always close the deal. How to attain that?
I tried to imitate Frazetta for a short while but then it dawned on me it was pointless… such a wonderful style to imitate! And such pain when it fails.
If you don’t know who Frazetta is, look him up. His paintings look so straightforward, bold and effortless that I still cannot stop wondering how he did it.