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Time & Perspective Quote by Frank Frazetta

"By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that's what I wanted to do"

About this Quote

There’s a bracing lack of mythmaking in Frazetta’s origin story: no lightning bolt of inspiration, no tortured search for identity, just a clean admission of aptitude and appetite. “Born draftsman” is doing heavy lifting. It’s partly confidence, partly a refusal to romanticize craft as suffering. Draftsmanship is the unglamorous backbone of figurative art; by centering it, Frazetta signals that his imagination was always tethered to anatomy, weight, and motion. You can feel the studio mindset behind the swagger: talent is real, but it cashes out in line, not vibes.

The teenage timestamp matters, too. Coming of age in mid-century America, Frazetta was entering a world where “artist” could mean fine art prestige, commercial illustration, comic books, pulp covers, or animation. His phrasing collapses those hierarchies: “all forms of art” reads like a quiet rejection of gatekeeping. That’s not an abstract statement; it maps onto his career, where he moved between comics, magazine illustration, and the fantasy paperback covers that would later define entire genres’ visual grammar.

The subtext is ambition without apology. He “just knew,” but that certainty isn’t naive; it’s strategic. For an artist whose images became synonymous with kinetic power and mythic excess, the self-description is almost minimalist. It frames the legend not as destiny bestowed, but as a decision made early and reinforced by relentless skill. In a culture that loves genius narratives, Frazetta offers something more useful: clarity, capacity, and work.

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TopicArt
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Frazetta, Frank. (2026, January 17). By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that's what I wanted to do. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/by-the-time-i-was-a-teenager-i-knew-i-wanted-to-60342/

Chicago Style
Frazetta, Frank. "By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that's what I wanted to do." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/by-the-time-i-was-a-teenager-i-knew-i-wanted-to-60342/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that's what I wanted to do." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/by-the-time-i-was-a-teenager-i-knew-i-wanted-to-60342/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Frank Add to List
Frank Frazetta on Draftsmanship and Artistic Certainty
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About the Author

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Frank Frazetta (February 9, 1928 - May 10, 2010) was a Artist from USA.

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