Veteran fantasy fans will remember Fritz Leiber's pair of sword and sorcery adventurers, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. They are some of my favorite fantasy characters and when I was first entering into fantasy illustration, I did some pictures of the duo. This is the best one of the lot. It was one of the first things I painted in acrylic, rather than watercolor. And I have always been pleased at how my acrylic painting here turned out. I was able to model fabric, wood textures, figures, and even faces. I have a lot of trouble doing that in acrylic now, after more than thirty years! I remember painting this piece. I used a lot of reference photos and looked at a lot of other people's art to see how they used acrylic or other somewhat opaque paint. Somehow I was able to paint a bimbo who had a decent face and nice flesh tones. She was from a reference photo too. I call it beginner's luck. I was rather disappointed that this picture wasn't popular and I sold it for a way-too-low price at Boskone (at the time, the only science fiction convention in Boston) in 1979. The colors of my slide are faded and this is the best I could do to recover the look of the original painting.
"Fafhrd, Mouser, and Friends" is acrylic on illustration board, 8" x 10", January 1979.
1 comment:
cute! Looks like you had a good hand at Acrylic then and as you say, yor faces are pretty good here. Seems to me it must be a mental block and not a matter of not being able to do it artistic/skill wise now!
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