Wednesday, September 01, 2010

The Great Jorge Zaffino



One of my favorite artists. The closer I look, the more of his work I see,the more impressive his work becomes. His art had a sense of power that very few artists have achieved. He and a few of the Italian comic masters have really made me pick up the nib again. Pick up IDW's awesome reprint of Winterworld to see Zaffino in his pure black and white glory. I was really fortunate to get these wonderful original recently, the images are from my own scans of the actual art.
I wish I had time to do a longer more thoughtful write up, but Zaffino was like no other and is an influence and inspiration to some of the best comic artists out there. His work is definitely best viewed in the raw black and white form.

16 comments:

Vic Malhotra said...

Congrats on getting these originals Paul! You're one lucky dude!

What nib do you think Zaffino used?

Gianmaria Caschetto said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gianmaria Caschetto said...

WOW,

I would have gone a big distance to get those pages..

can I ask you how did you purchase these and how could I get some original Zaffino artwork? It seems pretty rare and those who get their hands on it never want to sell!

8:05 AM

Vic Malhotra said...

Gianmaria - Someone at Comicartfans is selling a few pages right now... correction, he has put the sale of them on hold while he delivers the ones he has sold. Not sure of when they'll be back to selling pages or the prices.

Here's the gallery to the ones on sale (some of them are sold already)
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?GSub=101427

Paul Harmon said...

hey guys,
yeah I got the top piece from comicartfans, it's really a great site talk with people who have art from artists you like or are looking for and get some tips. The other pieces I got from ebay.
I'm not sure what Zaffino used in terms of nibs on the comicartfans They mention crowquill

Gianmaria Caschetto said...

would you mind contacting me to give me an idea of the price you paid?

Paul Harmon said...

If you contact the CAF gallery with the Zaffino pages I'm sure they will give you an idea of what they are looking for for each page, even though they are on hold. From the pages I've seen sold recently most all of which are from winterworld ranged from about 400 at the lowest to around 1000, and you can kind of tell where each page would fall within that range. But yeah I think most of the people with Zaffino pages happen to be artist and want to hold on to the pages, I'm new to the original art game and wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get a good Zaffino sample then suddenly I got these pieces al within a short amount of time. But I go on daily image hunts for all my favorite artists just to see new original work or pieces I wasn't aware they worked on etc. hope that helps.

Vic Malhotra said...

Cool, thanks for the info Paul. I can see the crowquill lines. I see alot of brush in there (control and looseness of a master) and i think a gillott 303 for the thicker nib lines.

This reminds me of that post you had a long time ago trying to figure out what JP Leon uses. I narrowed it down to the Gillott 303 or Hunt22B. Testing that 22B on pages today matter of fact!

Paul Harmon said...

I just got a few Gillot nibs, one of which is the hyper flexible 1290
that one is gonna take some getting used to. I'm not sure if I specifically have a crow quill but i've got a TON of different nibs now so I think there is some overlap in the nib capabilities. I really like some of the stiff nibs that even have a fastener to keep essentially a dead line. The older Zebra "G" pen nib is fantastic in it's range of thick to thin, I may do a post on that because the newer Zebra's are not quite the same. The old ones have a more pronounced, raised "G". I have a big variety of Brause nibs and I really just try and force myself to find something useful for each type.

Vic Malhotra said...

Oh yea those really flexible ones are difficult to use. I`ve never seen the ones with fasteners. Sounds like they`d be fun to use though. Those Zebra G pens are supposed to be awesome for sketching. Heard alot about them.

I`ve got a bunch of different nibs, but stick to using 2 or 3 of them. Some where bought for thick straight lines or panel borders, but just ended up being a pain to use instead of a marker in some cases.

What kind of paper are those Zaffino pages on? Smooth or rough?

Paul Harmon said...

here's the brause nibs the ones with the fasteners i guess are for ornamental writing, they're fun mostly stiff but slightly flexible if you want to vary the line
http://www.exaclairinc.com/catalogs/brands_brause.pdf
the zaffino stuff is on durex schoeller and its fairly thin and smooth but must be pretty tough because some of the pages he really carved into the blacks with a razor. i can't seem to find that paper in the states, at least not online

Vic Malhotra said...

Thanks for the information Paul! I won't go as far as ordering that paper in from Europe or South America though hehe. Good to know what type of paper it was and I had a feeling he razored the shit out of that, cross hatching back into the ink.

Phroilan said...

I picked up the collected Winterworld a year ago randomly because i'm a sucker for anything post apocalyptic. Couldn't help but notice how good the pencils were. Where did this guy go?

Gianmaria Caschetto said...

Unfortunately Jorge Zaffino passed away prematurely in 2002.

MARCELO BASILE COMIC said...

hola, soy dibujante de comic, de argentina, y fui colaborador de Jorge Zaffino (trbajé con el Punisher, para Marvel). El usaba una pluma llamada "conté" (made in france). gracias por el recuerdo al maestro ZAFFINO.

MARCELO BASILE COMIC said...

another cuestion: Zaffino no era Italiano, el era Argentino, Bye!