Yup... they're called comic books, and I had a TON of them [img]wink.gif[/img]
Can you think of or remember some of your earliest art influences-
Stuff that still relates in some way to your taste ?
Stuff that got into your brain when you were real, real young and kinda just hid out there?
Just wondering................
<font color="#cd6600" size="1">[ December 09, 2004 04:38 PM: Message edited by: Street Worm ]</font>
Yup... they're called comic books, and I had a TON of them [img]wink.gif[/img]
batman the animated series
when i was a kid i would sit in front of the tv...watch that show and draw like crazy
the x-men cartoon as well
that led me into comic books...
my first true influence was Joe Madureira
Some of the earliest things I remember taking note of-
My parents used to drag us to symphonies & concerts when we were real young, usually at the
Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, that had a huge mural painted on the ceiling
("Drama" by Barry Faulkner-1929) which amazed the hell out of me.
There was an art museum in New Britain, Ct. (where I grew up) that had rooms full of wall sized paintings by Thomas Hart Benton.
These also amazed me.
I think the first "Surrealist" painting I remember seeing was "The Eternal City" by Peter Blume at the Met in NYC.
Quite a treat after looking at endless portraits & bowls of fruit all day............
pic
Another influence was Art Deco Architecture in old movies like "The Black Cat" (1934) & "The Big Clock" (1948)
Then came the '64 World's Fair, and I was all done~
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Earliest were guys like Bernie Wrightson, Frank Frazetta, Richard Corben, Moebius, etc. I also had Mike Mignola's Rocket Racoon mini-series, loved the art. Things from Movies and games were influences too.Originally posted by Street Worm:
Can you think of or remember some of your earliest art influences-
Stuff that still relates in some way to your taste ?
Stuff that got into your brain when you were real, real young and kinda just hid out there?
Just wondering................
<font color="#cd6600"><font size="1">[ December 09, 2004 04:38 PM: Message edited by: Street Worm ]</font></font>
Early teens it was fantasy/sci fi art books (old and new material), euro comics, McKean, Miller, Stout, Kaluta, Art Adams, Darrow, Todd, Simonson, etc.
Mid-to-late teens and on up to adulthood brought old dead fine artists (Schiele, Klimt, Kahlo, etc) and some modern ones, graphic artists, more comics artists, etc.
Even now I still dig all kinds of stuff, and the art that I do ranges from pop culture to fine art. Both can compliment eachother at times too. Variety is good!
Cartoons, Star Wars, and, later, comic books and scary story collections (when I learned to read).
Grew up on a steady diet of Spider-Man, GI Joe, Gobots, Transformers, He-Man, Robotech, and a million other 30-minute TV commercials for toys. That love of toys and pop culture characters eventually found its way into my customizing, which I consider one of my main artistic outlets.
When I was a little boy, I wanted to be an animator for Disney, but then I discovered that I wasn't as good an artist as I was a writer.
When I first seriously began writing, my favorite writers were Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Sobel (author of Encyclopedia Brown), Daniel Cohen, and Roald Dahl. Then I became heavily influenced by Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone. Now I read a lot of non-fiction and Chuck Palahniuk. The Harry Potter books, too.
Never lost my love for the motion picture, and fell in love with the films of Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Stanley Kubrick, David Fincher, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, Wes Anderson, and Chris Nolan. I'm more interested in making documentaries than fiction films, but do get to mess around with my friends every once in a while to make short films based on our crazy ideas.
Good thread topic, SW. [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]
basquiat
Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.
No joke - when I was only about 2 or so and was growing up watching these shows, for some reason I still wanted to "see" all my favorite characters even when the shows weren't on. So I picked up my crayons and some paper and started drawing them.
It was really funny - for some reason I used to draw them from the waist up only, right at the very bottom of the page. But if you think about it, I guess it makes sense - they were puppets and you rarely saw their with legs.
I had several influences:
Gil Kane - Saw Kane's work for the first time when he was illustrating the "Death of Gwen Stacy" Spiderman story arc. He was the first comic artist that really made me want to BE a comic artist. I'd never seen that kind of realism and detail in comic art before. I think Kane's really underrated.
Frank Frazetta - When I saw Frazetta's work for the first time I knew I wanted to illustrate book covers instead of comics.
Boris Vallejo - I still really like Boris' paint technique but his people have a traced mannequin look - I'm not as big a fan as I used to be.
H.R. Giger - A total original. Nuff said.
M.C. Escher - loved his stuff during my psychedelic period in the 70's. [img]wink.gif[/img]
Andy Warhol - When I switched to graphic design, Warhol had a big influence on a lot of my early stuff. The guy was one strange little genius.
The very first things I can remember drawing were the Universal Monsters, Alien and Predator, Swamp Thing, etc. That must have been 10 years ago.
I became even more avid after discovering comic books.
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