Thoughts on collecting Greg Land OA? 0

[Blastaar]

Throw rocks at me if you want......but I like his art. Picked this up the other day, was a big fan of Original Sin and liked this art of Ulana the Watcher's wife.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 27, 2018 by Blastaar

[Bird]

I think that I know his "rep/helper" if you want me to put you in touch. At least he used to assist him at shows and handle things.

[comix4fun]

Like any other artist, there's potential for good and not so good pieces. I've been critic of Land's pieces where he's missed the mark or used shortcuts I didn't appreciate. 

That said, I recently found a piece of his artwork that I liked and was able to add to my collection. So I get where you're coming from. 

[mister_not_so_nice]

1 hour ago, Blastaar said:

Throw rocks at me if you want......

 

 

 (regardless of which art you collect)

 

 

 

 

[SquareChaos]

25 minutes ago, mister_not_so_nice said:

 (regardless of which art you collect)

 

 

 

 

I mean, we can certainly tell which parts were 'sourced' elsewhere on that one 

 

[PhilipB2k17]

1 hour ago, comix4fun said:

Like any other artist, there's potential for good and not so good pieces. I've been critic of Land's pieces where he's missed the mark or used shortcuts I didn't appreciate. 

That said, I recently found a piece of his artwork that I liked and was able to add to my collection. So I get where you're coming from. 

I have a great DPS by Land. 

[mister_not_so_nice]

1 minute ago, SquareChaos said:

I mean, we can certainly tell which parts were 'sourced' elsewhere on that one 

 

Still looking for the source material, but it is taking FOREVER. 

Talk about going down the proverbial rabbit hole 

[mister_not_so_nice]

1 minute ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

I have a great DPS by Land/LEISTEN 

Nice DPS.   Fixed the description for you.   Leisten's contributions should not be overlooked. 

[PhilipB2k17]

4 minutes ago, mister_not_so_nice said:

Still looking for the source material, but it is taking FOREVER. 

Talk about going down the proverbial rabbit hole 

I actually looked at photos of hurdlers to see if I could find the source of Land’s Spidey pose in my DPS. Not nearly as...er...interesting as trying to find the female sources though. 

Edited November 27, 2018 by PhilipB2k17

[PhilipB2k17]

1 minute ago, mister_not_so_nice said:

Nice DPS.   Fixed the description for you.   Leisten's contributions should not be overlooked. 

Oh I know. He’s a fantastic inker, and you can see his work. I asked him if he worked over Greg’s pencils, and he said he did and erased them. You can see a few pencil indentations on the piece. 

[PhilipB2k17]

2 hours ago, Bird said:

I think that I know his "rep/helper" if you want me to put you in touch. At least he used to assist him at shows and handle things.

Tom Fleming at Fanfare Art. 

http://www.fanfare-se.com/ArtistGalleryTitles.asp?ArtistId=120&Ti=Greg_Land

[mtlevy1]

I especially like Ryan inks over Land pencils

[Panelfan1]

I have a couple early pieces by Land, inked by Stelfreeze. So yeah I like some of his art too. The porn photo reference art (ultimate FF?) Not as good.

Here is a current for sale piece on Ebay that may be too expensive - but still fun to look at 

(No - I am not the seller).

This is the Stelfreeze/Land Art HERE.

[Bird]

6 hours ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

Tom Fleming at Fanfare Art. 

http://www.fanfare-se.com/ArtistGalleryTitles.asp?ArtistId=120&Ti=Greg_Land

I was referring to Mike (Off) White, who is local to me and has worked Greg's table at many shows.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Bird

[Blastaar]

It seems that his career has outlived the negative reception which started a good 10 years ago. How do you think he will be remembered in time when looking at the top 100 or so artists? Like baseball players having an asterisk next to their name for using steroids to break records I see the same thing happening to Land, never appearing in a list of current great artist even though he probably deserves the praise.  

[delekkerste]

1 hour ago, Blastaar said:

It seems that his career has outlived the negative reception which started a good 10 years ago. How do you think he will be remembered in time when looking at the top 100 or so artists? Like baseball players having an asterisk next to their name for using steroids to break records I see the same thing happening to Land, never appearing in a list of current great artist even though he probably deserves the praise.  

I guess infamy is better than apathy as far as careers go...  

I was a huge fan of many CrossGen titles when they launched in the early 2000s, especially Sojourn, being a big sword & sorcery genre fan.  I ended up buying some of the best pieces from the series (by Land/Geraci and Land/Leisten), but, over time, Land's art just rubbed me the wrong way.  Even if you couldn't place where a particular image had been photo-referenced from, the stiff, awkward poses and facial expressions left no doubt that they obviously were.

I ended up selling every last Land piece I had a few years ago.  Though, I did relent and buy one nice representative (but inexpensive) Sojourn piece with all of the principal characters earlier this year, just to have one example, because of my fond memories of the series (the writing/characters more than the art).  

I tried to convince myself that, regardless of his process, the art is functional and doesn't offend my sensibilities like so much of the bad stylized art that dominates comics these days. And, we know that almost every artist uses/used photo-reference to some extent.  But, I can't name another artist who uses it as blatantly as Land does, to the point where it just becomes a grating distraction.  I think he is going to be remembered less like Jose Canseco or Rafael Palmeiro are remembered in baseball, and more like how Milli Vanilli is remembered in music.  

Edited November 27, 2018 by delekkerste

[Timely]

I've got this DPS with Wolverine & the X-Men by Greg Land.  I think it's a very AWESOME piece.  That being said, I suppose the right offer would pull it from my collection.

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1401404

Edited November 27, 2018 by Timely

[comix4fun]

This is the only one I own. It had none of the slightly off facial expressions or references that turned me off to his art. Also, the character of Maestro is a favorite and I own a few of the covers by other artists from this series. 

No scan on my work computer so I'll just post the published piece...

 

[PhilipB2k17]

29 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

I guess infamy is better than apathy as far as careers go...  

I was a huge fan of many CrossGen titles when they launched in the early 2000s, especially Sojourn, being a big sword & sorcery genre fan.  I ended up buying some of the best pieces from the series (by Land/Geraci and Land/Leisten), but, over time, Land's art just rubbed me the wrong way.  Even if you couldn't place where a particular image had been photo-referenced from, the stiff, awkward poses and facial expressions left no doubt that they obviously were.

I ended up selling every last Land piece I had a few years ago.  Though, I did relent and buy one nice representative (but inexpensive) Sojourn piece with all of the principal characters earlier this year, just to have one example, because of my fond memories of the series (the writing/characters more than the art).  

I tried to convince myself that, regardless of his process, the art is functional and doesn't offend my sensibilities like so much of the bad stylized art that dominates comics these days. And, we know that almost every artist uses/used photo-reference to some extent.  But, I can't name another artist who uses it as blatantly as Land does, to the point where it just becomes a grating distraction.  I think he is going to be remembered less like Jose Canseco or Rafael Palmeiro are remembered in baseball, and more like how Milli Vanilli is remembered in music.  

I doubt it. I think his stuff will go up in estimation down the road. I mean, there are some highly collectable bronze age artists (*cough* Rich Buckler *cough*) who had a reputation for really blatant swiping back in the day, who nobody thinks twice about now. And many comic book artists based their character drawings on real people. This isn't new. 

I like my Land/Lestein piece because it's more traditional art, not stiff-posed magazine lightbox swipes. You can kind of tell the difference between his lightbox swipes, and his more free hand art. I think he's doing a lot more of the latter lately, precisely because of the criticism.

[PhilipB2k17]

23 minutes ago, comix4fun said:

This is the only one I own. It had none of the slightly off facial expressions or references that turned me off to his art. Also, the character of Maestro is a favorite and I own a few of the covers by other artists from this series. 

No scan on my work computer so I'll just post the published piece...

 

Still a few Maestro pages out there. http://www.fanfare-se.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=18700&ArtistId=120&Details=0&From=TDetail&Mag=Future+Imperfect