Movie Poster Illustrator Retires to Paint What He Likes

by Mike Kravinsky

When he enrolled in art college forty-five years ago, Drew Struzan had a choice. He could be a painter and paint what he wanted; or be an illustrator and get paid for his work. For a young man of meager means, the decision was easy. "I'll be an illustrator. I need to eat," he thought. For the past four decades, Struzan has carved out a niche for himself as one of the great pop culture illustrators.

Talking with Drew Struzan is a very mellowing experience. He is a man who seems to have accomplished all his goals: building a successful illustration career, marrying and raising a family, and retiring to be a painter.

In his youth, Struzan was considered to be a prodigy artist. After college, he landed a job with a firm that specialized in the music business, lending his distinctive airbrushed acrylic style to album covers for a long list of musical acts. The Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, Black Sabbath, Earth Wind and Fire, and Alice Cooper are on the short list. In those early days, he earned $150 to $250 for each album cover.

By the mid 1970's, he started to design B-movie posters, which caught the eye of George Lucas. Lucas was finishing the first Star Wars film and wanted a unique poster style for his ground breaking movie. Struzan drew the human characters in that first poster. That original poster became a fan favorite and started Struzan's long association with Lucas' many film projects.

Struzan once asked Lucas why he chose to use illustration instead of photography like everybody else. "He expressed it very succinctly," Stuzan remembers, "He thought it was more fanciful, more fantastic, more beautiful than just a photograph." Struzan says he completely understands Lucas, because Lucas himself wanted to be an illustrator when he was a young man.

After creating the posters for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg asked him to paint a poster for his movie E.T.  When asked if he enjoyed working with Spielberg and Lucas, Struzan laughs, "You betcha!" He praises the filmmakers as artists in their own field. He enjoyed having conversations with Spielberg. "We can talk on a different level - as artists," he adds. He describes both Spielberg and Lucas are very real, truthful, down to earth, loyal people.

Although there was a lot of pressure involved in making film posters, Struzan enjoyed the ride. "Can you imagine having to paint a picture to represent years labor by directors, writers and actors; along with who knows how many millions of dollars invested; and you're responsible to do the advertising? People were very uptight about it," he says, "You have tremendous deadlines, and you have to be creative under those deadlines." Struzan had a strong reputation for turning around great illustrations very quickly. On the pressure of creating film posters, he remarks, "In the midst of all that, I had a really good time…I got to know some really grand people."

Part of his decision to retire comes from changes in the entertainment industry itself. "Most people are experiencing what I'm finding - that the world is changing around them," he says, "What I did, what I built up, what I became famous for is no longer desired. It was changed by the computer. It was changed from a world of art to a world of business. I was the last of the poster artists. Now I want to do what I wanted to do before I was eighteen, which is to be a painter."

Although he's been an illustrator for over forty years, Struzan defines himself as as an artist rather than as an illustrator. "Illustration is just an affectation of the life I've lived, " he declares. He doesn't see retiring as leaving his art; he sees it as not having the clients, the twenty-four hour days, the deadlines. "I retired from making a living so I don't have that pressure of saying I gotta make a dollar today," he says, "That's the joy of it. I don't have that ever present pressure of making a living. That's the beauty of retirement. I can do my heart's desire."

Struzan believes the purpose of life is not to work, but to be happy.  He concludes, "Art has always given me something to do and a reason to be here."

Here's the trailer from a documentary on Drew: