Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark movie poster
Richard Amsel Illustration
The Indiana Jones film series has had a great history of movie posters, including impressive work by Drew Struzan. The best poster from the series remains the very first release poster for Raiders of the Lost Ark by artist Richard Amsel.
Raiders movie poster art
As a student at the Philadelphia College of Art, Richard Amsel won a nationwide Hello Dolly movie poster contest sponsored by 20th Century Fox. He later went on to create artwork for several movie posters and magazines, including over 40 notable illustrated covers for TV Guide.
The Raiders of the Lost Ark movie poster illustration by Richard Amsel employs a signature “crisp” style, a hallmark of that era of film one-sheet illustration. This was achieved by a combination of color pencil with watercolor and acrylic paints. You can see the fine detail pencil work in the Indiana Jones poster right down to Harrison Ford’s whiskers. What’s impressive about the illustration is how the spot-on likeness of Ford offsets the lesser quality of the scenes depicted on the bottom of the poster.
Buy Raiders of the Lost Ark movie posters at: AllPosters, eBay, MoviePosterShop.com, Amazon
Tagged big heads, harrison ford, illustrators, indiana jones, richard amsel
Richard Amsel « Posterwire.com « the movie poster weblogFebruary 14, 2008 at 4:20 PM
[…] everyone to a new online article about artist Richard Amsel, who illustrated two of the original Raiders of the Lost Ark movie posters. From the author of the new Richard Amsel article, Adam […]
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull | Posterwire.comNovember 17, 2011 at 10:27 AM
[…] Famed movie poster illustrator Drew Struzan returns to the warm embrace of his long-time client Lucasfilm with the release of the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull teaser poster. Struzan last illustrated the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith movie poster for Lucas, and this marks his return to illustrating many of the one-sheets in the Indiana Jones series. (Although the first and perhaps best Indiana Jones movie poster illustration credit goes to artist Richard Amsel.) […]
Mary VancuraApril 5, 2012 at 3:09 PM
I have a Raiders of the Lost Ark poster marked 1981 Lucas Film (LFL) 22 x 26 and a Star Wars Poster (Hildebrandt) by Factors etc., Inc., Bear, Del USA Image Factory Inc, Hollytwood 1977 20th Century Fox Film 20 x 28 (approx.) Could you please give me info re a contact to estimate a value on these. Thank you.