"Virgil Finlay is widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest illustrators of science fiction and fantasy. Born on July 23, 1914 in Rochester, New York, Finlay took to art early in life, selling his first illustration at the age of 21 to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright for the magazine’s December 1935 issue. Over the next 35 years he completed more than 2,500 drawings and paintings, an achievement made even more impressive by the time required to execute his painstaking and labor-intensive pieces. To give his black and white drawings a photorealistic look, Finlay developed a unique style that combined stippling with scratchboard techniques (scratchboard being a type of art board manufactured with a white clay coating that accepts ink and can be cut away, allowing artists to “scratch” white lines into black areas). The result was an image so detailed that pulp editors were initially hesitant to accept his work, fearing that the tiny dots would not reproduce on their coarse paper stock. Fortunately they did, and the mesmerizing visions that Finlay brought to the page proved to be tremendously popular with readers across the decades, from the heyday of the pulps in the late 1930s to the opening of the Space Age. Working to the end, Finlay died of cancer in January of 1971, just before Donald M. Grant published Virgil Finlay, the first of many books celebrating his unique talent." - quote source
An excellent six page article on Virgil Finlay from a June 1978 issue of Starlog magazine can be found here.
Some of the above Finlay artworks were found at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.
Virgil Finlay was originally posted on Monster Brains in 2006.
14 comments:
Thanks so much for so many posts like this! Theres a lot of Finlay stuff here I have not seen before; his work is always such a pleasure to look at.
You have outdone yourself! I've never seen some of these images before, many thanks!
hi, i love this blog, and i just wanted to show these cards that i discovered called dinosaur attack cards. you probably already know about them, but just in case, maybe you could do a post about them: http://www.i-mockery.com/halloween/bag/pics/dinosaurs-attack3.jpg
I think I love you quite a bit. :)
Thank you for these, I also had not seen some of them. Virgil Finlay is a pleasure that I haven't indulged in for a long time. I found your blog while looking for some Toho Godzilla pix, and stayed for a banquet of monster pleasure.
Limpey - There's a lot of Finlay art here I've been meaning to share on Monster Brains for years, I'm glad to have shown work not familiar to you.
Greg - Thank you.
Paul - Thanks for the suggestion, funny that you bring this up as I was thinking about putting these on Monster Brains just the other week. I'm a great fan of the cards, I have a few opened packages around somewhere. Did you know Tim Burton had plans to make a film version of them but did Mars Attacks instead? Another card series you can expect to see here is The Outer Limits, along with a lot of other interesting Outer Limits imagery.
Suzanne - Always a welcome comment from an attractive woman with Suehiro Maruo tattoos.
Anon - if you came looking for monsters, you'll find them here.
Gorgeous stuff, thanks! I really wish Erik Mona would bring us another Finlay illustrated book in the Planet Stories line.
Aeron, you've once again blown my mind... thanks!
the 3rd image down was modified for a skateboard graphic. pretty cool! http://webringjustice.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/grosso01.jpg
-jeremiah
Thanks for posting all these. Finley's art is horrifying yet beautiful at the same time.
holy cow. this guy knows how to use a pen.
I can't believe Finlay's name was new to me - I recognize some of the work. What a treasure trove! Thanks for your work.
I was looking around on the net the other day and I noticed some artwork that caught my attention, The style looked familiar but it really got my brain working as to where I had seen this style before, and then it hit me, as a child spending time at my grandparents house I used to love reading old copies of Weird Tales that they had a collection of, aong with various other comics and such from the 40's and early 50's But as a child what I really loved about these books was the fantastic cover art done by Virgil Finlay, I remember pleasant sunday afternoons full of daydreams of space adventures and evil creatures and ghost stories all inspired by the wonderful art of Virgil Finlay. Thank you so much for posting these, They bring back alot of great memories.
Thank you for all of this!
This blog is one of the best sources of inspiration/entertainment and studiying techniques for people like us. I hope one day my work is good enough to be posted here.
J.P.A.
Post a Comment