The Arthur Adams Virtual Museum Main Menu

Arthur Adams Early Artwork 1980 1981 1982

1980 Ink & Watercolor

The earliest known portfolio art by Arthur Adams. 8-19-1980 watercolor & ink, nude woman riding a fantasy beast.

Hero Illustrated #8 Page 77 (February, 1994) "When I realized I wasn't going to be a paleontologist, I then decided I wanted to be Frank Frazetta, so I used to try painting and drawing like Frazetta, and you're bound to learn something looking at somebody that good."

Comic Book Artist #17 Page 25 (January, 2002) "Before I started going to conventions, I was doing drawings for people at school to get money to buy comics. I had a couple of the Frazetta books, and I'd get Xeroxes of the black-&-white drawings, and I'd paint them... I didn't know what I was doing with any of the stuff! I wanted it to look like the oil paintings, but I had no idea how to do that, so I was just using watercolor, putting it on as thick as possible! [laughs] If you bent the pages, the paint would just crack off! [laughter] I ended up using it in really odd ways, but I would sell those for a couple of bucks to kids at lunchtime, and I'd take that money to buy comics. Then, I started going to conventions when I was about 17, and I met Bob Shreck at a Creation Convention, and asked if I could set up at a table, too. I had brought my portfolio and showed it to him, and he said, "Sure! Grab a table!"

This was made when he was only 17 years and 4 months old and then it was sold at one of the first conventions he attended in California. It stayed in one man's original art collection until it was auctioned off decades later in Michigan. A few years after that, 'The Arthur Adams Virtual Museum' acquired it from the auction winner.

His early artwork is especially rare, due to the decision by Arthur Adams to throw away all of it when he moved out of his parents house and into his first apartment. His Dad was upset when he found out they were all gone, because he had been secretly selling some of his son's artwork to co-workers.

The art features many of Arthur's typical qualities - detailed, sexy, has a distinctive style, & light-hearted with that typical Adams smile. It's easy to tell that even back then he was very skilled artistically, having drawn since he was very young.

He was still using the same signature when he began working at Marvel. Check out the cover of Marvel Fanfare #13 and compare.

Joyce Chin had this to say about the artwork after showing it to Arthur Adams - "He says he has no memory of doing this, but that he did do pieces like this when he was around 17 or 18."