When you type "Frank Frazetta" into google, then choose "images". This is the first image that appears. It's as good a place to start as any.
I'd like to start with the details of Frazetta's personal technique that are rarely mentioned, and talk about where they come from and how they work so well.
First, and probably most impressive, is how Frazetta chooses to simplify some things and detail others. It bears noting that, inch by square inch, most of his canvasses are roughly sketched in. In this particular painting, I can count the finished parts with one hand:
1) His left arm. Should I mention here that fully 1/4 of the men in Frazetta's paintings have an outstretched arm? Can we agree that he had a mirror in his studio or not?
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| Silver Warrior |
3) You know what? There is no "3".
There is a second tier of finish that you can pick out in a bunch of places. The very frazetta-like (and really just tired "filler") decoration on the sled. The clothing... the parts that aren't just blacked out (more on that later. Hint: It's genius and skill). The sword.
Frazetta was a commercial artist. And by his own admission he was very lazy. So it shouldn't surprise anyone, if you actually tally up the amount of area covered by detailed and careful painting, to note that 90% of this painting looks unfinished.
Look at the bears, completely done in washes and sketched in shapes. Check out the ice mountain in the background.
And for gods sake, look at the background and foreground. Flat, splotchy color areas, barely any change in value or hue.
Do you see any detail in shadow areas? In real life, there is almost always bounce light that allows you to see details in shadow areas - especially on a bright Winter day with reflective snow all around. Frank's shadows are empty. Flat black or blue or some mottled color that hides definition. Always.
How are the skis mounted to this silly snow chariot? No one will ever know. Not even Frank Frazetta.
What's the point of this crabing? It's really admiration. Really! Ugh! I'm almost choking on it!
It's hard for me to say because I'm going to sound like all of the talentless fan boys out there. It's all been said before a hundred times, and in print.
Frazetta knew what to leave in and what to skip over. It's one of the 3 pillars of his work. Your eye is guided by, among other things, the natural and intelligent placement of levels of detail.
A perfect finish on the underside of the skis wouldn't add anything to the allure and power of this work. In fact, if every part of the painting had the same finish as, say, the helmet, It would probably be a more bland piece. I would like to see that. Someone who can work in the style of Frazetta finishing an entire painting with a reasonable facsimile of his most polished technique.
In the end - and by the end I mean when you're done looking at this painting - you're left wanting more. You're left with a figurative boner for more Frazetta paintings. And this is part of the commonality of experience all Frazetta fans share. More, more, MORE! Frank was a consummate art tease.
But now I'm going to get mean.
Is this any different from any other Frazetta Painting? Other than we've got polar bears in the foreground instead of tigers?
Check out the hippie on the sled. Wasn't he in the band Thin Lizzie?
Like the gay-assed baubles hanging off his belt? They didn't have key chains back then. Like them? They're on every other frazetta painting.
What's his sword out for? Is he posing for a barbarian snow-biker chick? What are those silly wing-things off of his boots? They're not unique to this painting, or just to Frazetta boots. Bare arms in the frozen tundra? No wonder his skin is blue.
This is a picture of a harley biker in a fantasy barbarian snow land. It really is god awful silly.
But in the end, you can almost hear the polar bears roaring.
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