Zach's Weird Writing Corner

          Hey everybody! I wanted to get back into talking about writing this next week, but for my final art post for now, I’m going to discuss a person who is possibly one of if not the greatest pulp artist ever. Virgil Finlay (1914-1971) was an American illustrator who took up painting in his high school years and during the great depression started working as an interior illustrator for Weird Tales. Throughout his life he worked with titans like HP Lovecraft and Seabury Quinn. One of his two main styles was a scratchboard technique where he carved into a black board, leaving behind exposed white, kind of like a reverse pen and ink. His other style was painting with either gouache or oils, in a relatively clean and realistic manner.           After the death of pulp magazines, Finlay got a various amount of different illustrator jobs, including doing art for astrology magazines, sci fi paperback novels, book illustration, an...

          Hey everybody! This week I wanted to talk about a really good illustrator that I like quite a bit, Eyvind Earle (1916-2000). Born in New York Earle had a difficult childhood, as his father kidnapped him and took him to Mexico for artistic training. He made Earle paint a picture every single day for a few years. During his first showing in Paris however, his half brother helped him escape back to the states to live with his mom.            When he was young, him and his mother lived in poverty during the great depression and in order to make money, they sold Christmas cards. Over the course of decades he became prolific at making cards every year. He also had art shows where he caught Walt Disney’s attention.  Disney asked him to be a part of his team as a background designer. He agreed and helped make movies like “Peter Pan”, “Lady and the Tramp”, and eventually becoming the art director for “Sleeping Beaut...

          Hi everybody! This week I would love to discuss another one of my favorite artists, the incredible Gustave Dor é ! Dor é  (1832-1883) was born in France and grew up during a time in western history when printing technology was starting to make some real breakthroughs and illustrations became a far more common sight in books. As you could guess, Dor é became an illustrator and made (in my humble opinion) some of the greatest pieces to ever grace the printed page.           Over his life time he made both wood block prints as well as etchings for books such as "the Bible", "Paradise Lost", "the Divine Comedy", "Grimm's Fairy Tales", and "Orlando Furioso". His works have a dark and beautiful atmosphere to them, as well an incredible amount of detail in each line. Modern pen and ink illustrators got their start being inspired by his generation of artists. The method for making etching is to take a copper sheet, cover...

          Hey everybody! I wanted to pivot a little bit away from my series on pulps to talk a bit about my interest in visual art. I graduated from Montana State University with a degree in fine arts, so suffice to say, I really love painting and drawing. I wanted to talk about one of my favorite artists, the Romantic landscape painter Casper David Fredrich.                                               Casper David Fredrich Portrait by Gerhard Von K ü gelgen 1810-1820          Casper David Fredrich (1774-1840) was a German Romantic landscape painter that focused on nature, religion, and the sublime, which was a philosophical movement that focused on awe inspiring subjects as a way to humble humanity and remind us of our mortality in the presence of an immortal deity. Mountains, oceans, storms, space, an...