Edgar Rice Burroughs and Frank Frazetta

When I was in the 7th grade I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs.  My fascination with his stories continued through high school.  There was of course Tarzan but there was also Barsoom and Pelucider not to mention Venus.  Silly fantasy but it could have been worse - I might have become interested in Ayn Rand.  Burroughs  was a master of "graphic prose."  It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words: well Burroughs could do it with 20 words or less.  Fifty years latter I can't really appreciate Edgar Rice Burroughs like I did when I was young.  I watched the movie John Carter of Mars but wondered off to do something else abut a quarter of the way through it.  What I can do is think about what attracted me to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.  It was the art work on the covers of those Ace paperbacks by Frank Frazetta.
There is little doubt that cover art can sell paperbacks and Frank Frazetta was a master marketer.

Or as an adolescent perhaps is was the scantily clad voluptuous females.

Frank Frazetta could sell books and was a great artist at the same time.  Edgar Rice Burroughs died in 1950 and Frank Frazzeta died in 2010 but they will both be with us for a very long time - that's as close to immortality as you can get.

Art Stuff

As a print maker I need a good printer. My Epson 1280 died after six years and I purchased a new Epson 1800 today. As an engineer I know that Epson makes a great product - I worked for them for several years. As an artist I know they make a great product in part because of the wonderful media selections they have. Well I have been testing my new 1800 today. I was curious how it would do black and white. The picture above was taken with a Hasselblad about 30 years ago. I had a good 11x14 silver print so it seemed like a good test since I also had a scanned negative. I printed the scanned image - not as good as the silver image but close. I suspect that with a little effort I could make it as good since I did no tweaking in Photoshop. I think Ansel Adams would love the possibilities.