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(Images courtesy of Frank Cho)
Some Frank Cho fans at Baltimore Comic-Con wanted Brandy and Dean sketches. For Cho, though, a high point was doing his oil painting.
"I finished the painting at the show," Cho tells Comic Riffs. "It was Zatanna summoning a hell bunny." The canvas, which is 36 by 48 inches, was among the guest-artist works sold at Baltimore Comic-Con's second annual auction.
"The painting was one of the highlights," Cho tells 'Riffs of the auction, which he says benefits the convention. "It sold for more than $10,000 to a well-known art collector by phone.
"He's a very private man and wishes to remain anonymous," Cho continues. "He has bought other art from me in the past. His comic art collection is pretty impressive and he doesn't like people to know which pieces he has."
(A Baltimore Comic-Con representative said the event generally does not discuss financial figures from the auction.)
Cho says he hopes to devote more time to fine-art painting in the coming years. "I've been going back to Western art in the last several years, which a lot of people don't know that I do," he tells 'Riffs.
"I like Mian Situ and Z.S. Liang -- those two contemporary Western art guys are great," Cho continues. "I like Frederic Remington. And Carl Rungius -- his stuff is incredible. And the landscape painter Thomas Moran -- the first time I saw a huge Yellowstone painting of his at the American Art Museum, that was a big tipping point."
The transition from comics to fine-art painting "is kind of hard," Cho acknowledges. "To go from drawing busty naked ladies to studying color and light and composition. ... It was a hard yet fun transition, like running a marathon."
"I could just sit on my ass and draw comic books all day -- it pays well enough -- but you do get discouraged if you don't evolve" artistically, Cho continues. "You ask yourself: 'What is my next challenge?' It's like God or nature, for whatever reason, has blessed me with this gift, and philosophically, we're here on this Earth for a very short time, so I want to [create] as much art as possible."
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