Customer Reviews

RGK THE ART OF ROY G KRENKEL PB

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For those of you looking to find a comprehensive look at Roy Krenkel's art, you will have to wait. Included are lots of blurry prelim paintings, and tons of b&w doodles, but the book is lacking when it comes to full color paintings. Don't get me wrong, there are several nice reproductions, (hence the 3 stars), but those few just point out the problem with this book.
Someone, some day needs to do a thorough job with Krenkel. You can find half a dozen decent books of Frazetta's work, (and yes I understand that Frazetta is much more popular than Krenkel) - but not a single one of Krenkel's work? Give this guy a break!

The work of master doodler Roy Krenkel deserves master treatment and too often those tasked with representing his career for review have been timid about diving in head first. This volume is at least a colorful, but brief, immersion. There is a lot of promise in this volume but not a lot of commitment. It features a nice, broad array of Roy Krenkel's delightful drawings, sketches, color sketches, paintings, commercial art designs and glorious doodles of everything from cavewomen in various forms, and little or no attire, to science fiction rendering of other worlds. Commentary by Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta are also welcome and revealing as they were both professional peers, but also Roy Krenkel's fast friends and fellow madmen.
The problem is very simple. This book is not enough. The examples used in this volume are like a teasing morsel to a starving person. We know there is treasure trove of phenomenal paintings, drawings, sketches and character studies that are being kept from sight. A three hundred page volume could not contain this man's collection. Perhaps three volumes would go a long way to revealing the genius we're all aware of.
This is beautiful hint at the legacy that is the artwork created by Roy Kenkel.

This book doesn't work well as a reference work. None of the pictures have information on size or the medium used, most are not titled, and few have details about usage (book cover, comic, book illustration, etc).

In comparison to the books on Frazetta and other artists that are available, I don't think that the editors did Krenkel justice.

By coincidence, just as I started reading this book, I was also reading one Burroughs pulp novel with a Krenkel cover (Pirates of Venus), and had just finished another (A Fighting Man of Mars). It's fair to ask how much these dramatic and colorful covers added to Burroughs's popularity around the early 1960s, and how much Burroughs added to Krenkel's - even if they never met each other, and worked decades apart from each other.

More of a memorial than a retrospective, artists including Frazetta, Michael Kaluta, and Al Williamson offer their written tribute to this remarkable man. Artworks in this book cover a wide range, from pencil sketches and pen drawings or comic pages, on through finished paintings. For better or worse, many finished works appear as book cover reproductions, complete with titles, taglines, logos, and printed prices (wow, did paperbacks really cost $0.40 back then?). That adds nostalgia and context, but also adds a layer of imprecision in reproducing the art - blurring and printing flaws on those decades-old covers don't add to the images' value. Better the marred reproduction than none at all, though.

Krenkel favored curves in his female figures, and sometimes got quite carried away with breadth of hip and softness of form - nudity-negative readers should just stop here. Other women, like those in the cover art, come across as powerfully built, but don't get anywhere near the rondure of his "plumpets." That brings me to my one annoyance about this book. It's not a catalogue raisonné, and doesn't try to be. That's fine. But I want to know more about the work that does appear here, especially those lush little pencil drawings that decorate so many of the pages. Oh well, provenance for the major works is reasonably consistent, and reproduction appears to be as good as the available sources allow. Fans of fantasy art will welcome this book to their collection, and fans of fantasy fiction will find a fine complement to the beloved stories of the early to mid twentieth century.

-- wiredweird

I was unaware of Roy Krenkel until I became a fan of the work of Frank Frazetta; I then read obliquely about him in the Arnie and Cathy Fenner collections of Frazetta's art and eventually discovered that a book - this book - had been produced. I decided to pick it up - and am very glad I did.

It is made clear early on in RGK: The Art of Roy G. Krenkel that this book represents only the merest fraction of Krenkel's output, much of which was aparently sketches he constantly did for his own benefit. The bulk of RGK is indeed black and white pencil artwork, and this is where Krenkel truly shines. His pencil work and lines are expressive, and his imagination is lively. Here you will find fantasy and science-fantasy illustration of all kinds, including many drawings in the Edgar Rice Burroughs vein filled with a great deal of life and vibrant creativity.

The commentary and biographical sketches provided by the authors and by those who knew Krenkel paint him as a sort of eccentric genius, which adds a fascinating mystique to his illustrations. Those who are fans of the work of Frank Frazetta, fantasy art, or simply illustration generally would be sorely remiss to let this book slip through their fingers. Enjoy!

As I've grown older my appreciation for the art of early illustrators like Hal Foster, Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel has grown as well. It's easy to see where some of my favorite comic artists of the 60's and 70's got their influence. Vanguard Productions steps up to once again produce an outstanding book, this time collecting the art of Roy Krenkel with commentary by Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta and J. David Spurlock. We learn about Krenkel's life and works both from his peers like Williamson, Angelo Torres and Frazetta and from those he influenced like Mike Kaluta. Amazingly Krenkel found himself at the Burne Hogarth School after WWII along with Williamson and Frazetta and it was Krenkel who was responsible for getting Frazetta his start in doing paperback covers for Ace Books editor Donald Wolheim. Krenkel's busy schedule prevented him from doing the work and he convinced Wolheim to give Frazetta a chance...the rest, as they say, is history.

The book lists every Ace title which featured a cover by Krenkel, a must-have for collectors! One of my favorites was "Port of Peril" showing Grandon of Venus battling a giant, spider-like creature. Grandon of Venus was a creation of writer Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline was a Burroughs knock-off who is perhaps best known as the literary agent for Conan creator Robert E. Howard. Krenkel would later join both Williamson and Frazetta in working for Jim Warren's line of horror magazines including Creepy & Eerie. The book provides a bibliography of his work at Warren as well as sample pages of Roy's art.

In all there is 136 pages virtually loaded with Krenkel sketches, pen & ink work, and full color paintings. Virtually hundreds of examples of his stunning art! Though earlier Krenkel collections (over 20 years ago) were primarily sketches, Vanguard has assembled the most finished Krenkel paintings ever collected as well as reprinting 24 of Krenkel's book cover illustrations. The comments by his peers are quite touching as all note Roy as a strong influence on their own work. The book is available in a soft cover edition, a deluxe hard cover edition that includes a bonus portfolio, and a limited, ULTRA deluxe hard cover edition that comes with gold gilded pages, suede slipcase, an official stamp of the Krenkel estate and an original Krenkel sketch. This is an outstanding book no matter which edition you get.

"I have been a lifelong admirer of Roy Krenkel's work and this book is a welcome holiday of his talent."
- HARLAN ELLISON

Reviewed by Tim Janson

If you love Frank Frazetta or Al Williamson or J. Allen St.John or Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard, this is the missing link. A quality collection like this on Roy Krenkel was long overdue. This book was nominated for Book of the Year at the Will Eisner Awards and was also nominated for a Hugo Award. All the included quotes from his friends and colleagues help to reveal the man and his lasting impact. I like the finished paintings in this book too. Most of the earlier Krenkel books were nice but are long out of print and were just sketches.

I was introduced to Roy G. Krenkel in my early teen years while reading novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Roy was able to bring to life the worlds that Burroughs wrote about. Rip roaring good adventure populated with courageous and honorable men and women. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in fantasy adventure art.