The Dynamic Pulp Art of Virgil Finlay

        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, and even a comic strip until his death in 1971 at the young age of 56. His style is pretty incredible honestly. The atmosphere, the strangeness, and the composition of each piece amazes me. Here are a number of his scratchboard illustrations as well as his paintings. "The Tell Tale Heart", "the Crystal Man", "Earth's Last Citadel", "Cancer Sign", and "Robot Grave".

        While he didn't paint as much as he did scratch board, but the small handful he did were pretty incredible. "Unknown", "the Witch", "Reaper"

        His style is just so incredible, a real inspiration for my own pen and ink illustrations! Well thank you everyone for reading this weeks blog post, please let me know what you think about his art in the comments, and until next time, stay weird!