Mine for Horror Week: Wrightson's FRANKENSTEIN

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

My contribution to horror week. Nice juicy scans of five of the illustrations Berni Wrightson did for FRANKENSTEIN.
Along with "the Black Cat," this is the apex of his career, for me.

The style Wrightson chose to use was following the approach of Franklin Booth(and led me to studying him), which is
mistakenly called crosshatching, and there is plenty of that too, but what's surprising is that, when you look at it closely,
it's more made up of parallel lines than anything else.
Side personal note: When I was first reading comics with an eye to maybe being an artist myself, this, Dave Sim, and
Bissette/Totleben all hit me at the same time and warped my hand for life. This stuff is dear to my heart. Enjoy.
(And for those interested in seeing the rest, I think it's only fair to leave this link. )




And the greatest single piece of them all. I've nearly gone blind failing to imitate this kind of linework.
(c)Berni Wrightson.

Comments

[joseph_k101.insanejournal.com]

That is some gorgeous artwork! Excellent stuff!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dante_sparda_/ (from insanejournal.com)]

Holy sweet freaking god, that is some bloody fantastic work. :o

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I have the portfolio that came out for this years ago. Bloody wonderful stuff!

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

BW's finest work.

[heat16.insanejournal.com]

My dad whorships this book. Gave me his copy when I was 7. Probably the best art Wrightson has ever produced.

[daniellau.insanejournal.com]

You've outdone me with this one. Breathtaking.

Pity it's not a comic, but I guess the word balloons would be a stain on these.

[daniellau.insanejournal.com]

P.S. let's have as many cool takes on Frankenstein as possible for Horror Week!

[nezchan.insanejournal.com]

I have been coveting this book for years. One day, I shall have a copy of my own. One day...

[taggerung301.insanejournal.com]

*looks at this
*looks at own sketchbook
*breaks down crying

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I wouldn't worry, there probably aren't more than a dozen professional artists who wouldn't do the same, and those who wouldn't are the sort whose opinion isn't worth the having.

[abbadie.insanejournal.com]

I was once optioned for work at a comic intended for`public awareness, which had been started by Ruben Lara, creator of the mexican comic Chanoc. He showed me some "rough sketches" he'd made for the following issue: the pencils were intrincately and realistically detailed, with careful shading, worthy of those old Creepy pencils-only stories.

Now THAT is de-moralizing.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Yep, that's pretty much always been my reaction...

[geoffsebesta.insanejournal.com]

check my response below...

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Wow. That is amazing. I'm trying to remember what scene that first scan is depicting. Is the woman being hanged Justine?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Yep, that's her hanging for William's death, which the monster committed.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

My first exposure to Wrightson was through several Stephen King books. He did illustrations for The Stand: Complete and Uncut (paperback) and some volumes of The Dark Tower. It took me years and a few S_D posts to realize just who he was and how much he's done.

The man has used more ink in a painting than an entire small country's government does in a year. And not a single drop is wasted on him.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Oh, gorgeous. Just magic.

[brandiweed.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

I bought the full book in college (waaaaaaay back in 1986). Turns out they were teaching Frankenstein as part of Freshman Rhetoric (English). I ended up showing it to my teacher, and while she admitted that we needed the little paperbacks with the academic introduction, she asked me to find her a copy.

And I did.

I wonder if she still has it?

Damn that's good.

[nefrekeptah.insanejournal.com]

On a related note, I don't know what's more surprising about Frankenstein, that it was written by a 19-year old woman more or less on a whim, that it has never left publication since, or that many people dismissed it when it was first published because it had the audacity to be written by a woman.

...no wait, that last one I can understand perfectly, considering the time period.

Re: Damn that's good.

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Well, it does make a bit more sense with respect to why she wrote it when you consider that a number of people in her life had died or committed suicide, and IIRC she had a baby who died as well. Combine that with talking to people about ghost stories and reading about emerging science at the time, she apparently had an image of a mad scientist feverishly at work and she thought it would be scary and fascinating to make the story about a scientist discovering the essence of life.

[stratosfyr.insanejournal.com]

Verrry nice.

Cross-hatching sans cross is just plain 'hatching.' It's much more difficult to get the shading right without the angled second pass. I'm extra impressed that he was able to stick with it for almost the whole thing.

[mysteryfan.insanejournal.com]

Oh! Seriously gorgeous art! Thanks for sharing.

[geoffsebesta.insanejournal.com]

I met Mr. Wrightson a few years ago and asked him how long it took to draw the scene in the lab.

He said two months.

That made me feel better about myself and life in general.