Whats this for?

I've been a fan of Frank Frazetta since I was 13 in 1974, when I first saw this book cover:

So I was instantly transformed into a fan. But I was also instantly transformed into an artist. Well, not instantly. But for the next 4 years, I tried to copy probably 4 Frazetta paintings. Then I discovered the then nascent Heavy Metal magazine, and Richard Corben, and Moebius. Then Barry Windsor Smith, then Berni Wrightson, then the Illustration annual, and on and on.

Now I'm 50, and I make my nut as a 3d artist. All of those years drawing and painting, and now I'm stuck in front of a computer all day.

So, to get back onto the business of actually creating something exciting, I'm painting again. Finally I'm able to make oils work (http://radiance-media.com/Traditional_Media.html). I'm never going back to the airbrush. It's great to be back to making art that people want to stand in front of and own. But who is the artist I want to emulate most?

Frazetta.

Now that I have 35 years of technique under my belt, I can begin to understand and even appreciate his rather inscrutable work. I'm buying the new volumes about the man, artist and his work. And the impression that I'm left with is...

Meh.

What a lot of bloviating, uncritical fan-boy Bull Shit. I've got the Fire and Ice DVD and god, it's so sad. After his strokes, even Frazetta himself can't describe what he does. He's so old that all he does is reminisce about the same things that have been printed about him for the last 40 years. Zero insight about how he creates his work. No regrets about any of it. No self-criticism at all.

In the world at large, there are precious few new insights about how he made what he made, and an ever-growing mound of worshiping fan-boy experts' so-called examinations of his work.

In an effort to get beyond this, and perhaps raise the intelligence of discussion about the most influential illustrator in the last 50 years, I'm going to go one painting at a time and discuss the work regarding its creativity, social outlook, place in art history, technique and every other aspect that I can think of. 

There is a lot that is amazing about the work of Frank Frazetta, but there just isn't any in depth analysis into what exactly is amazing about it. But there isn't a shred of criticism about things like the banal subject matter, the phenomenally limited library of imagery he uses (Hey, how about I put the moon in this picture, too!), the obvious sexism, or how to determine what and why that is, and then juxtapose all of that with why his work is so visually and viscerally juicy and tantalizing.

Wish me luck.