Gallery Comments by Steel Shredder

Owner:

The Slade school was pioneering in offering women access to life classes, though they were often restricted to drawing lightly draped models. I wondered if this painting was done by a women because of this. The school was also ground breaking in offering prestigious scholarships to female students. At this time great artists like Evelyn de Morgan were at the school. 

Owner:

Thank you. Yes I was very pleased with the find. Some incredible artists, male and female came through the Slade. I will carry the research on to see if I can find out which artist this was, or who was there in 1881. There would not have been a huge number.

Owner:

Adam, thank you, and glad you liked it. Yeah I always enjoy looking at it. It hangs in the front room, along with many others. 

Your Conan the Victorious prelim you posted today is lovely, big congrats on that find.

Owner:

Tristram Portal

Superb piece!!

Owner:

Johnny C.

Lovely work by the master Matania!

Owner:

Thanks for your comment. Wasn't sure this artwork would garner as much attention as normal, but it's my wife's fourth original artwork by the major Flower Fairy artist Cicely Mary Barker. It is great to have her collecting alongside me.

Owner:

Nice!

I have the pencil prelim for this, and the figures are smaller, Les told me “the publishers wanted the figures made larger, which I did...”.

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1889153

Owner:

Tristram Portal

Yes a wonderful scene, and music. Cobb's artworks for this film are superb. Nice to see it and some other new things up on CAF.

Owner:

Chris P.

Beautiful piece, congrats! I like Wrightson's take on Frankenstein as it was far more like the image conjured up by Mary Shelley and drawn by Theodor von Holst who did the first book image for the 3rd edition back in 1831. You can see the engraving in my CAF collection.

Owner:

Thanks. Is this artwork in Cities & Scenes book?

By the way went to your CAF page and what an incredible selection of Krenkel work. I had liked already, but liked a few more. 

Owner:

Chris P.

Great piece! Krenkel's drawings are just wonderful. I have a few myself including the Colossus of Rhodes artwork which is my favourite. 

Owner:

Yes he does, pretty much the British version of Felix the Cat in the 1920s and beyond.

Owner:

Peter de Seve

Yes beautiful fantasy and fairy art, and probably not as well known as other victorian fantasy artists. Maybe he just didn't produce as much work as he could have. Seemingly according to wiki he was tough to work with and late for many deadlines. Also nice to see your Dore drawing. It is nice viewing your art.

Owner:

Peter de Seve

You have got a great collection of artworks. Very nice Dickie Doyle piece.

Owner:

Yes a great present, thanks. That is very interesting regarding another alternate, if you come across this image or whereabouts I'd like to see it to add the info to my booklet. 

By the way, you have a wonderful collection of Frankenstein artworks by Wrightson. Have you seen my Theodor von Holst engraving of Frankenstein's monster for the 1831 3rd edition of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus?

Owner:

Yes fine art it is, luckily he was influenced by the great Fortunino Matania. 

Owner:

Thank you. Yes the composition shows normal life and the spectacle of a wonder of the world. The statue only stood for 54 years until an earthquake in 226BC. 

Owner:

Tristram Portal

Great artwork!! As Marcus said a lot to pack into this film. I've not seen it before.

Owner:

Thank you. Yes his craftsmanship is superb, he just builds brilliant scenes at will it seems. No wonder he influenced so many artists.

Owner:

Thanks. Yeah it's a nice piece, sorry the photo is not great. Took it in the frame and it's tuned out a bit light. 

Owner:

Thank you! Glad you liked the image, I also have another Calamai uploaded on CAF. I have many older artworks alongside Conan and more modern stuff. If you look in my galleries you will see 18th century works with the oldest around 1700. These artists were illustrators alongside being painters etc in their times, and no doubt would have done comic's if they had existed. You can also view the first published image of Frankenstein in a book. Anyway thank you.

Owner:

Thanks. Sorry the photo is not clear, the artwork is under frosted glass in a frame when I purchased it. I've also got another image from the book which I'll put up later. 

Owner:

Thanks. Yes well said about the horses, but many people also die with no real understanding of the politics behind the scene.

Owner:

Thank you! 

I have another battle scene by Calamai and I will put that up next week. The front line is a place none of us would want to be. This image captures the fatalities alongside the victors taking centre ground.

Owner:

Thanks. Yes it is going on our office area where our kids do their art, etc. The image looks like a tudor period piece, and times was definitely different for children, wether poor or rich.

Owner:

Yeah Norem always manages to catch the raw story and image straight away with his prelim drawings. I got told he worked quite quickly at this stage.

Owner:

Thanks. Yeah she's great, and this was a great suprise, so even better.

Yes Princess Chabela is perfect, and the story has Nzinga having Conan as a stud, and the humiliation of Chabela.

Owner:

I'd say BWS certainly liked Pre Raphaelite, and Neoclassicism. Along with Romanticism these movements gave powerful images and stories full of wonderful characters. These area I gravitate to in any museum or gallery. This is the illustrated art of their times, and are going to have an impression on artists that follow. Without Matania, then Krenkel may not have been who he was, and of course he was an influence for many that follower from Frazetta to Wrightson.

Owner:

Thanks, yes Matania in composition, which made me go and view and like your beautiful collection of Matania's!

Owner:

Yes I like that too, gives great depth to the painting. They both have a different view on each other after drinking the love potion. 

Owner:

Thanks, yes it is, very fine work. Also when you consider the small size 23 x 36cm of the artwork.

Owner:

Yes he does, and I'll upload more of his ideas from his sketchbook in time. Shame this project never came to fruition. 

Owner:

Nice to see you find the production cover as well!

Owner:

Thanks! Imagine Blake, Fuseli or Holst  illustrating books, comics, or storyboarding films in the period between mid 20th century to now, it would be something.

Owner:

Yes real horror on the face of Victor Frankenstein!

Owner:

Cheers. I've sorted the typo out. Many thanks again for dropping by.

Owner:

Absolutely, so many in fact. No he didn't, these ideas are lucky to have been kept and handed through appreciative hands. I've just pitched a Norem Conan cover/artworks book idea to Titan so fingers crossed!

Owner:

Yes epic and crazy, but hopefully not doing a full on Captain Ahab and being dragged underneath to his death. 

Owner:

Yes, sometime after this prelim the publisher or even Earl decided that they wanted to hone in more on Conan and also take out the inuit in the foreground. I own the alternate image and will put that up soon. I have not located the small colour prelim or the large prelim yet, so don't know when the artwork changed before the final painting. But obviously the woman is still in the final image tied to the mast even though she's not in the story. 

Owner:

R Berman

Always great to see Matania artworks here on CAF! 

Owner:

Yes Octobriana looks quite a unit!

Owner:

I got in touch with the artist Pete Lyon about a couple of pieces of his art I acquired and he was very pleased to see them again. He said "I have a fair copy of the Bob Shaw cartoon, and you are right about its provenance, its a pleasure to see that these works are still around and of some worth. So I am pleased to be able to add that to my archive."

Owner:

Glad you liked the image and the info that I could put together. I also have an interior page too, with both these characters in. I will upload this next week. I also have another interior by Bryan Talbot called "G-Man", which I liked the look of. It was an unpublished strip created by Pat Mills with artist Bryan Talbot in 1986, but later published in November 1988, in a British Fanzine called ARK.

Owner:

Yes a very long list of proper actors have wanted to get their teeth into Shakespeare on the stage. But also many great artists, and in particular some favourite artists of mine like William Blake and Henry Fuseli, have painted these scenes. And of course now these stories have even made it into comic format. 

Owner:

Thanks Marcus, yes it does. If anyone knows the story it is illustrating please let me know.

Owner:

Yes the cathedral in Birmingham is in great shape and is used a lot. The actual stained glass windows have recently been renovated. I think the slight shift to a brighter red is probably the result of the final step in the process, the actual window makers. The prelim drawing to this had very little colour, and so Bowman brings the colour together from EBJ's drawings and design. Thanks for coming in to view as usual.

Owner:

Marcus, thanks for still popping by to see these old illustrated works. I have other stuff here, and am always searching auctions around the world, and I do sell as well. This was the only John Leech work I kept as I liked it, the other 10 more lucrative pieces I sold. There are great and interesting artworks to find, you just have to keep learning more about the areas you like! 

Owner:

Yes he must have loved his times in Italy as he was there a lot between 1837 and the 1840s. Goats actually feature in a few of his landscapes. This may be a reduced image that was published in the 1841 Views in Rome and its Environs book, but I have not viewed this book interiors yet.

Owner:

Brian Norton

Thank you. Yeah very pleased with the two classical pieces I have, especially the boat battle in the colloseum. When I was young I remember reading a book about the gladitorial goings on by Daniel Mannix, "For those about to Die". A great book, and the cover always impressed me and stuck with me for decades, then later I found out it was Matania. A few years ago I was lucky to view this original piece in the studio of a famous artist who I had gone to visit. He told me Matania was a big inspiration to him.

Owner:

Brian Norton

Congrats on this lovely piece. I have a couple of Matania pieces myself and the detail is always awesome.