In Heavy Metal #305, Frank Frazetta Jr. goes in-depth with Joshua Sky about his father Frank Frazetta's illustrious art career, and CBR can exclusively reveal several excerpts and images from the new issue.
"Art and Hollywood were never his sole focus," Frazetta Jr. said of his father. "It was always family first. He was a private individual, deeply dedicated to his wife and children. He wasn’t into flash, nor fame or fortune. He could’ve had anything in the world. We were offered 92 million dollars for all the art in the museum and I told them it’s not for sale. Comic-Con offered him tens of thousands of dollars every year just to sit in a booth. I’d beg him to go, but he wouldn’t. He was very selective with what he wanted to do."
Frazetta is widely known for his work on Conan the Barbarian, among other properties. Frazetta Jr. said his father would labor on some Conan paintings "for two days straight," adding that his father quite literally threw himself into his work. "[If] you look closely at the Frazetta portraits used for Conan covers, his face is my father’s. His body is my father’s, when he was young."
Regarding the Frazetta Museum, Frazetta Jr. explained, "We’ve got a really exciting project coming up. We are going to display my father’s works in chronological order from when he was three years old, all the way up to his elder years and there is plenty we have that no one has ever seen."
"It all came straight from his imagination," Frazetta Jr. said when discussing how his father came up with his compositions. "He just had a gift at such a high level it can’t be acquired or learned. You have to have it at birth. He worked really hard to master what he does. His drawings are second to none. He’s a better illustrator than he was a painter. No one could compare to him, that’s what he told me. In five minutes he could do the most beautiful sketch you ever saw. The image could come from any subject matter; an airplane, a rabbit, a cat. He had a photographic memory. He could draw anything at any time. I used to hold my belly from laughing, it seemed so impossible. He could bang out an amazing scene or portrait in a matter of seconds or minutes."
Heavy Metal #305 is now on sale.
Source: Heavy Metal