Frank Frazetta started out as a comic book artist doing jungle books and such but then one day someone asked him to do a movie poster, and he purportedly made more on that single commission that he was making in a whole year doing comics, so he gladly went over to the commercial art field where he did a lot of book covers and posters and such featuring lily white topless women and about three poses of be-muscled beefcakes hefting a sword or an axe (no offense he was a good illustrator but the formulaic and repetitive nature of his work gets to you when you have to go through it like I did for this).
But the real gold standard of his work is his ritualistic avoidance of drawing the feet of his subjects. Over and over and over and over again (see below), the feet of his figures are conveniently behind an object in the foreground, off the edge of the panel, or shrouded in shadow.
Since becoming aware of this I have noticed that a fair share of current and former comic book artists do the same "cheat" so FF is by no means alone in this regard.
The below is one of my faves: her feet aren't quite in shadow - they just sort of blur out...
Hey here's a foot! Although it could easily also be the bottom of a really dirty sock - doe that guy have two giant toes?
Three, maybe even four feet in this one below! The one in the dead bottom center is pretty weird looking...
I guess the sky light people in this one have feet?
This last one: WHERE ARE HIS BALLS??
-d.d.
Why do you wanna look at feet so bad, anyways?
ReplyDeleteBecause feet are the measure of a man.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you wanna measure men so bad, anyways?
ReplyDeleteFrazetta was such a master it goes un-noticed. He does so many other things so well that it is a non issue. As an artist when you compose you try and direct the viewers eye. In his case I believe he was attempting to keep the eye from focusing downward to focusing on the entire picture and all elements within the picture as they relate to each other. He was great. Respect the method of his greatness.
ReplyDeleteThese don't do much in the way of feet but Frazetta did many paintings and drawings with detailed feet, for example, MoonMaid, Hobbit, and Flashman on charge. Feet just aren't the focus and they can be time consuming to do.
ReplyDeleteThank you for helping us find feet pics on the internet, AVTPro.
ReplyDelete