Accurately Illustrating the Midnight Ride

Our picture of history changes as our research improves—here’s how that impacted One April in Boston and The Midnight Ride Artwork Project

by Cortney Skinner  | 02.19.21

When Ben Edwards commissioned me to create 20 pen and ink illustrations for his children’s book One April in Boston in 1999, the challenge was to make these illustrations as historically accurate as possible. Back then, the internet was in its infancy. My research was done the old-fashioned way, using my own reference library as well as the local town library. At the time, I lived in Arlington, Massachusetts, mere yards from the route that the British retreat took as they fought their way back to Boston after the fight at Lexington and Concord. Having been born in Cambridge in the midst of so many historic sites of the Revolution, and having been involved in living history for decades, I looked forward to this assignment and a chance to employ my illustration work for such a fascinating story.

Ben Edwards and the staff at the Paul Revere Memorial Association helped greatly with the research they had available, but much was left up to my own interpretation in some of the scenes to be illustrated. One such scene was Paul Revere’s escape from the British patrol in Charlestown on the evening of April 18, 1775. At the time, about the only primary reference available for this scene was Paul Revere’s own 1775 deposition about this event. In his own words he wrote:

“I had got almost over Charlestown Common towards Cambridge when I saw two officers on horse back standing under the shade of a Tree, In a narrow part of the Road. I got near enough to see their holsters & Cockades.”

Aside from not knowing the landscape in which this event occurred, I had also mistakenly interpreted Revere’s word, “shade” as meaning that there were leaves on the trees. I should have known better, living a block away from where Revere passed 224 years earlier, and being familiar with the local foliage in April. But to me back then, “shade” meant leaves. You can see the illustration I produced for the first edition of the book (published in 2000) here. Revere is on his horse wearing his familiar surtout with two British officers in the background, one brandishing a flintlock pistol under a tree lush with… foliage. Oops.

Flash forward almost 20 years to 2018 when Ben Edwards commissioned me to create ten full color paintings illustrating Paul Revere’s ride as accurately as possible for his “Midnight Ride Artwork Project.” This heavily researched series, that took over two years to complete, included a painting of Paul Revere eluding capture by two British officers in Charlestown. At this point, the internet had matured and not only offered a doorway into historic archives around the country, but also connections to experts and historians on the subject of 18th-century Revolutionary history.

In preparing to do this painting, I discovered a goldmine in the form of a 1775 map by Henry Pelham showing Charlestown at the time of Revere’s escape from the British patrol. This map supplied me with a basic idea of the buildings and landscape around the area where Revere had eluded the patrol… but where exactly was the spot where it occurred? There was a stone marker in Somerville (then part of Charlestown) locating the alleged spot, but that couldn’t inform me of how it looked in 1775. Though this Pelham map had been well-known for a long time, I discovered a tiny detail that may have been overlooked for over two centuries since Pelham had the map engraved. This was the key to my quest, for it precisely identified the spot where Revere had spotted the patrol and reversed his course.

On this map, on the road to Cambridge at the western corner of the Charlestown Common is a tiny upside down “L” no larger than an eighth of an inch. Without any context, it’s easily overlooked. It’s just a tiny dark mark on an otherwise richly detailed and descriptive map. However, it was Paul Revere himself who seemed to reach out over the centuries to give me the context I needed to pinpoint where he was almost captured. From his 1798 deposition on his midnight ride:

“After I had passed Charlestown Neck, & got nearly opposite where Mark was hung in chains, I saw two men on Horse back, under a Tree. When I got near them, I discovered they were British officer. One tryed to git a head of Me, & the other to take me. I turned my Horse very quick, & Galloped towards Charlestown neck, and then pushed for the Medford Road. The one who chased me, endeavoring to Cut me off, got into a Clay pond, near where the new Tavern is now built. I got clear of him…”

For the new drawing, a vertical composition was required rather than the horizontal one of the painting. However, this time, with the research previously done for the painting, I could illustrate the clay pond, the mud, the gibbet, one of the buildings on Pelham’s map and the woods where the British officers stood in wait to intercept any patriot couriers.

The first attempt at this new pen and ink illustration required a do-over. Paul’s face was hidden under his hat, and I was dissatisfied with the composition and how the night sky was delineated. The one that appears in the 20th anniversary edition of One April in Boston illustrates a better connection between the nearer British Officer and Revere, as Revere glanced back, spurring his horse forward as he splashed though the mud in the road. The starry night sky is seen through the branches of the bare tree (look, no leaves!) which bring the viewer’s eye down to Revere.

Revere’s adventure was quite an adventure for me as well, encountering new research and connecting two historical sources to create a new, improved and more accurate portrayal of Revere’s momentous evening.

Honoring My Ancestors in Stone

Replacing the marker for the Edwards family tomb at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground with the aid of the John Stevens Shop of Newport, Rhode Island

by Ben Edwards  | 02.13.20

Established in 1659, Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in Boston’s North End is the city’s second-oldest burying ground. Originally called North Burying Ground, it is named after 17th-century shoemaker William Copp, the property’s original owner. It is estimated that over 10,000 people are buried here, including thousands of artisans and tradesmen as well as more than 1,000 free blacks and slaves. In colonial Boston, Copp’s Hill was much taller, reaching a height of about 50 feet. Standing atop this hill, which was quite bare, one could view several of the town’s shipyards and wharves, and see Charlestown just across the Charles River. From this location, in June 1775, British troops bombarded Charlestown during the Battle of Bunker Hill. In 1807, the upper section of Copp’s Hill was removed and used as landfill for Mill Pond.

According to The Graveyards of Boston, First Volume, Copp’s Hill Epitaphs prepared for publication by William H. Whitmore in 1878, on June 27, 1717, liberty was granted to Benjamin Edwards to erect a tomb “in the line or range of tombs now begun at the southerly side of North Burying Place, provided that he carry up the brick wall thereof next the H. way so as to be a sufficient fence.” Later in that same volume it notes, “The lists now preserved in the office of the Board of Health are as follows: The words and figures in brackets have been added on the authority of the stones themselves, or on information presumed to be of equal value.” The names listed next to the numeral 5 are B. Edwards, Alexr Edwards, and Jedediah Lincoln. This would be Captain Benjamin Edwards, his son Alexander Edwards, and one of Alexander’s close friends.

In my previous blog post, I mentioned that the marker of Captain Benjamin Edwards at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground was discovered by my father’s aunt Mary Elizabeth Edwards. She located it around 1925. This photograph, taken about 1919, shows the view from the burying ground looking down Hull Street toward the Old North Church. The Edwards marker is located to the right of the Hull Street entrance, a short distance along the fence line. If you read my earlier post, the photo below on the left will look familiar. It shows my father and me next to the Edwards marker at Copp’s Hill in 1964. You can see the marker had begun to crack. The photo on the right, taken by a family member in the late 1970s, shows that only three pieces of the original marker were left at that time.

By the spring of 1998, just two pieces of the nearly 250-year-old Edwards marker remained, as seen in the photo below on the left. The family decided to look into the possibility of having the marker replaced. In March I reached out to Kathryn Coggeshall, Project Manager of the Historic Burying Grounds Initiative, Parks and Recreation Department, City of Boston. I supplied her with all the documentation the family had about the tomb as well as photographs taken over the years. We received permission to have the marker replaced with the stipulation that it had to be done using materials and methods available at the time it was first produced.

From the very short list of vendors provided, we elected to work with Nick Benson of The John Stevens Shop in Newport, Rhode Island. The company has been hand-carving markers since 1705. Nick selected a piece of dark grey slate from a quarry in Buckingham County, Virginia, for the job. He supplied a proof of the hand-lettering and, once it was approved, did the brushwork for a full-scale layout on brown paper. He then transferred that preliminary brush layout onto the stone, painting the letters yet again onto the stone with a broad-edged brush. The marker contains 52 characters and Nick carved about 2 characters per hour, so it took 26 hours to hand-carve the marker. Nick also delivered the marker to Boston and installed it at Copp’s Hill under the watchful eye of Kathryn Coggeshall and staff. The photo below on the right shows the marker shortly after it was installed in the fall of 1998.

Years after carving the Edwards marker, Nick Benson designed the lettering and carved the inscriptions for two high-profile projects on the National Mall in Washington, DC: the WWII Memorial that opened in 2004, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial that opened in 2011. Decades earlier, his father John had done the lettering and carving for JFK’s gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery. You can learn more about The John Stevens Shop by watching “Carved in Stone”—the excellent CBS Sunday Morning segment on the company that appears at the end of this post. For information on The John Stevens Shop and their services, Nick Benson can be reached by email at info@johnstevensshop.com.

The photo below shows the Edwards marker today—22 years after it was carved by The John Stevens Shop.

Who is buried in the Edwards tomb? It turns out members of the Edwards, Revere, and Lincoln families

In One April in Boston, family members visit the Edwards marker at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in 1775 and 1909. On August 21, 1909, Philip Edwards and his grandfather Ben take the train to Boston. During their trip, Grandpa Ben points out the family tomb and says, “The sea captain is here, and so is Uncle Alex, Ben the cooper, his sister Sally, and his cousin Betsey. Members of the Revere and Lincoln families who are related to the Edwards family through marriage also rest here. They include Paul Revere Jr. and Jedediah Lincoln.” But how do we know this is true?

The 1708 Edwards family Bible mentions family members being buried in a “tumbe in ye North End of Boston” or “at ye North Burying Place” including Captain Benjamin Edwards’ mother Sarah (no date given), his first wife Hannah Harrod in 1728, their three infant children, his second wife Bathsheba Evans in 1738, and their seventh child Hannah who died in infancy the following year. I recently contacted Kelly Thomas, Director of the Historic Burying Grounds Initiative, Parks and Recreation Department, City of Boston, to ask her a question about the Part 2 section of their map of Copp’s Hill Burying Ground that identifies tomb locations along the Hull Street side. I was confused by the two reference numbers “[7] 5” that appeared next to the Edwards tomb. Could tombs 5 and 7 be in the same spot? I learned the answer was “yes.” Kelly informed me that, “In 1987, when they made the most recent version of this map, they changed the numbering system, creating sections in the site designated by letters, and numbered graves within those sections. There have been several numbering schemes over the centuries. So, the two tombs you are referring to are the same tomb. Currently that tomb is officially tomb CH-W-5, but at some point, it was tomb #7. For all tombs that have two numbers, the old tomb number is in brackets.” This would mean that the old tomb number would be 7 and more recent number would be 5.

A search of Massachusetts Town and Vital Records via Ancestry shows that Paul Revere Jr. (1760-1813), firstborn son of the patriot Paul Revere and husband of Sally Edwards (1761-1808), is buried in 7 Copp’s Hill; Jedediah Lincoln (1760-1820), who married first to Betsey Edwards (1765-1796) and second to Mary Revere (1770-1853), daughter of Paul Revere, is buried in 7 Copp’s Hill; and Amos Lincoln (1753-1829), a participant in the Boston Tea Party, who married first to Deborah Revere (1758-1797), daughter of Paul Revere, and second to her sister Elizabeth Revere (1770-1805), is buried in 7 Copp’s Hill. Sally and Betsey Edwards are certainly buried here, and Deborah and Elizabeth Revere are either in Granary Burying Ground or here. Mary Revere is buried in Hingham Cemetery in Hingham, Massachusetts. Ancestry tells us that Joseph Bragdon Edwards (1799-1852), my great-great-great-grandfather, is buried in 5 Copp’s Hill. This would be the same location but with the new tomb number.

Besides Captain Benjamin Edwards (1685-1751), other family members surely buried in the tomb that bears the sea captain’s name include three of his sons: Robert Edwards (1732-1770), a tailor; Dolling Edwards (1737-1773), a mastmaker; and Alexander Edwards (1733-1798), a cabinetmaker and member of the Sons of Liberty; as well as his grandson Benjamin Edwards (1765-1808), a cooper, the younger brother of Sally Edwards, and the main character in my children’s book One April in Boston.

Making Pictures with Tiny Lines

Drawing in pen and ink is a matter of creating an illusion—it’s a collaboration between artist and viewer

by Cortney Skinner  | 02.06.20

In my previous blog post on pen and ink, I covered the basics of the tools an artist uses. In this post, I’ll be talking about how lines are used to create the illusion of reality in a picture. I use the word “illusion” because that’s precisely what a pen and ink drawing is. Put plainly, pen and ink is a type of artwork where lines are drawn on a surface in such a way that the viewer sees shapes, objects, and a three-dimensional space. Though the artist creates the drawing, the “reality” of the scene is created by the mind of the viewer. It’s a collaboration between artist and viewer. Quite literally, the “art is in the eye of the beholder.”

Using line in artwork has a rich history of thousands of years, but my purpose in this blog post is to give a brief look at how lines work to create a picture.

The image below contains two examples. For the Paul Revere engraved bookplate (shown on the left) the artist drew lines to show the hairs in the lion’s mane but also used them to create gray areas in his family crest. In Revere’s time, in order to reproduce drawings, linework had to be hand-engraved on type-metal (an alloy of lead, antimony, and tin) or copper then inked and printed on paper. Daniel Vierge’s drawing of the man next to the carriage (seen on the right) shows how the artist left certain areas up to the imagination of the viewer. Though the wheels of the carriage are only partially drawn, we know that there’s an entire wheel there, not just a fragment. Only a few lines and dots tell us that the road is a dirt road, and, though nothing at all is drawn at the top of the picture, we know that’s the sky. We’re completing the drawing in our minds. The gray tones of the shadows created by parallel lines tell us that it’s a day with bright sun. In Vierge’s time (the 1890s) a photographer could take pictures of the original ink drawings and a printer could make plates containing those photos. The resulting prints in the book looked just like the original pen and ink drawings.

Drawing Style

Each of us can draw to some extent and each of us has our own style. Just what is drawing style? Training can determine that to a degree, but, as with handwriting, each artist has an individual style. Each of us has a unique range of movements in our arms, hands, and wrists which translate to an individual style in how we draw. Our personal preferences and how our minds work also contribute to our drawing style. Do we like detail? Do we fuss over tiny aspects of the drawing? Are we free and broad in our strokes or do we prefer control?           

Planning the Picture           

Since pen and ink is an unforgiving medium, and corrections are done only with difficulty, it pays to plan out how the picture will be done.

In the image below, you can see my master pencil drawing on the left and the resulting pen and ink drawing on the right. Before the pencil drawing was done, many small, rough pencil sketches (called thumbnails) were done, until a satisfying composition was arrived at. The soldier, Private Philip Edwards, was the focal point in the drawing, so I put him closest to the viewer. I wanted both the bleakness of the battlefield and the depth of the trench to show, so I chose a viewpoint that was high enough to reveal those two aspects.

Of course, research was an important part of this drawing. Every bit of the drawing had to be referenced: the battlefields and construction of trenches of WWI France, the uniforms and equipment of a U.S. soldier in the Great War—even the equipment of the German soldier was researched, since a few pieces of their equipage are seen in the trench: a gas-mask canister at the lower left and a broken Mauser rifle at lower right at the edge of the trench. I wanted the composition of the drawing to start at Phil receiving a cup of hot coffee from this fellow soldier, then lead the eyes up through the zigzag trench to the horizon where an unknown structure is burning. 

The Drawing Workspace

Once the master pencil drawing was finalized and approved by Ben Edwards, I placed it on an LED tracing light pad seen in the photo below. This is the recent incarnation of a light table or light box. Those older versions had either incandescent or florescent bulbs in them with a translucent glass top. The pencil drawing is placed on the surface of the pad, which is lit from below, and then paper placed on top of the pencil drawing. The pencil drawing underneath acts as a guide for my pen and ink drawing on top. In the photo below, you can see the arrangement on my drawing board for doing the pen and ink drawing.

Creating the Pen and Ink Drawing

There are many techniques for creating a pen and ink drawing. My personal preference is a fairly detailed style. In the paragraph below is the finished drawing of the Liberty Tree lighting in 1766 Boston. This illustration did not appear in One April in Boston but was produced for another project I worked on with Ben. You can see that thicker outlines are used to make the man underneath the tree more distinct and stand out from the busy background. Thinner lines are used to show tones of gray up in the tree branches and the sky, and to create textures in the tree trunk and branches. My personal preference is to use very little crosshatching—a crisscrossing of ink lines. Some artists can use it in a masterful way, but yours truly isn’t very fond of my own crosshatching technique, so I stay away from it.

As I mentioned previously, the white of the paper can do some of the work in a pen and ink drawing, and the viewer completes the image. Take a look at the woman at lower left who has her right hand on the back of her husband. Even though I drew just four short lines, you know that it’s her hand and fingers there, not four black sticks. Further to the left of that couple, the crowd recedes into the distance, but even though the linework there is rudimentary, there’s no question that they’re people, not just abstract lines.

In some cases, an interesting texture can suggest details. Though not a single leaf is drawn in detail, using an almost decorative pattern suggests the grouping of leaves on the branches and boughs of Liberty Tree. Broken lines are another ink technique to create interest and to place an element into the background, as with the Bostonians in the back of the drawing. Had I drawn them with continuous, unbroken lines, they wouldn’t have receded into the background visually.

Not every detail needs to be delineated as can be seen in the background houses. Just suggesting the windows and walls is enough. The viewer completes the rest in their mind’s eye. The artist can use a detail to attract the viewer’s eye to a specific spot, as with the man giving the speech under the tree. “Open” pen work with plenty of white spaces can create an interesting, scintillating effect as evident around each glowing lantern hanging from the tree. Those radiating lines are a sort of shorthand understood by the viewer as glowing light. Using a brush, the black sky was filled in, leaving small open areas for the stars.

Though a laborious, intense process, a good pen and ink drawing can communicate a large amount of information using only black lines scratched on a piece of paper.

Family Tales of a Connection to Paul Revere

Stories I heard as a child sparked an interest in genealogy and inspired me to write One April In Boston

by Ben Edwards  | 01.31.20

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a passion for history. I grew up in a small town in Connecticut and in grade school collected stamps and coins. Anything with a connection to the past fascinated me. Antiques certainly fit into that category. In the early 1970s, I can recall occasional weekend trips to the town of Woodbury—the “Antiques Capital of Connecticut”—to visit the ‘Tique Mart, the state’s first weekly, open-air antique show. Founded in 1966, the antique show operated through 1989 in an open field off Route 6. In the 1970s, there was an A&W Root Beer stand adjacent to the field. Burgers, hot dogs, root beer floats—they had it all—and the waitresses came right out to the car! I can still see the tray attached to the window. Mom drove my brother and me on these trips and sometimes we picked up a special passenger on route: my father’s aunt Mary Elizabeth Edwards, the family genealogist. We called her “Aunt Biz.”

Aunt Biz was born in Naugatuck, Connecticut, in 1888. To me, then a 10-year-old child, that fact alone was amazing. She had spent a lot of time researching the Edwards family history in an effort to find an ancestor who had fought in the American Revolution so she could become a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). On those weekends at the ‘Tique Mart in Woodbury, after an initial pass checking out all the vendors—especially the coin dealers—there was the much-anticipated lunch break at A&W. We wouldn’t always eat in the car as the picnic tables on the side of the root beer stand were Aunt Biz’s preferred option. During these lunch breaks, I would listen in on my Mom’s conversations with my dad’s aunt. I don’t remember much, but I did eventually learn that Aunt Biz’s early research led her to Boston where she discovered the marker for a Captain Benjamin Edwards in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. I was told that he was a relative, but I knew little else about him. On a trip to Boston in the summer of 1964, on what amounted to my first walk along the Freedom Trail at the age of 2 1/2, the family made a point to visit Copp’s Hill. Remarkably, I have vague memories of that day and the fuss the family made about taking one particular photo that seemed pretty inconsequential at the time to a toddler. My uncle Pete took the black and white picture shown here of my father and me next to the marker for Captain Edwards. The words “Capt. Benjamin Edwards Tomb” were carved into the slate, which had already begun to crack, and no dates of birth or death were visible.

During the research Aunt Biz performed, she also uncovered some sort of family connection to Paul Revere. I became aware of this growing up, and my dad had learned about it from his aunt when he was a child. He even mentioned the Revere link to his friends one day in grade school and recalls being teased about it. Not believing his claim, the other children replied, “if you’re related to Paul Revere, it’s probably through his horse!” Whether it was through his horse or by some other means, the family lore of a connection to the patriot and midnight rider intrigued me. I began to write books in grade school including one that mentioned both Paul Revere and the Boston Tea Party. Thankfully, my mom saved much of my early writing and I can share a bit of it below. Paul Revere’s famous ride was on my mind, even though the history conveyed by my 10-year-old self was far from accurate! I can recall being quite proud at the time of my illustration of the Boston Tea Party. In hindsight, it is early evidence of the need to hire a professional illustrator like Cortney Skinner in the future, as my own skills in pen and ink advanced very little from this early rendering.

A few years before Aunt Biz passed away in the bicentennial year of 1976, she fulfilled a request to put in writing her recollections of the Edwards family history. I have that sheet of paper next to me as I write this blog post, admiring her very legible cursive writing in red ink. There is no mention of a family tie to Paul Revere but she does note that her father, Joseph Bragdon Edwards, was born in New York City on February 8, 1861; her grandfather was Benjamin Edwards, born in Boston; her great- grandfather was either Joseph Bragdon or Benjamin from Boston; and her great-great-grandfather again was either Joseph Bragdon or Benjamin. Aunt Biz may have gotten some of her initial genealogical clues from an Edwards Family Bible in the possession of her father (see photos below). It was printed in 1812. The family record section listed the births, marriages, and deaths of numerous members of the Edwards family. Tradition says it was passed down from eldest son to eldest son, and when I grew up my father kept it in a closet in our home. I began reading the family records when I was 10. The earliest birth records were for four siblings, including a Benjamin Edwards born in 1793 and a Joseph Bragdon Edwards born in 1799. The earliest death record was for a Benjamin Edwards who “died June 9, 1808 age 43 years.” As a 10-year-old, this entry intrigued me the most. Born in 1765, this Benjamin Edwards would have been my age when Paul Revere made his Midnight Ride and the American Revolution began. Was he the Captain Edwards buried at Copp’s Hill and—if not—how was he related? The recollections of Aunt Biz and the records in the 1812 Edwards Family Bible are all the clues I had to begin my genealogical journey.

Through high school, my interest in the family history never waned entirely. You might say that it was simply put on the back burner. It was reignited for a short time when two of my favorite mini-series aired on ABC: Roots in January 1977 and Roots: The Next Generations in February 1979. Whenever I did reconnect with the Edwards genealogy, there was always that nagging, unanswered question: was there really a family connection to Paul Revere? I needed to answer that question once and for all. Yet, even with that added motivation, little progress was made through my college years at Bryant University (where I majored in marketing) and, after that, my work left little free time. Finally, as if part of a larger plan, something remarkable happened at a family reunion in 1994. Ruth Edwards, a relative who shared my interest in genealogy, gave me a copy of an old newsletter called The Edwards Journal. The issue included extensive information from Jeannie Edwards Cook, a woman in Cody, Wyoming who claimed to have a Bible from 1708 belonging to her ancestor Captain Benjamin Edwards of Boston! The article listed all the family entries from the Bible and gave other information. That information included a reference to the Captain’s granddaughter, Sally Edwards, and noted that she had married Paul Revere Jr. It also listed her siblings, including a brother named Benjamin Edwards.

I sent Jeannie a letter and we began to correspond. Research she possessed noted the baptism date of Sally’s brother, Benjamin, as April 14, 1765. Other entries in our family Bibles served to confirm the relationship. I learned that Benjamin Edwards was my direct ancestor (fourth-great-grandfather). As an adult, he worked as a cooper in Boston. Ben and his sister Sally were the children of Captain Edwards’ son Dolling. Jeannie was related to the Captain’s firstborn son, Benjamin 2nd. A photo of the earliest entries in the 1708 Edwards Family Bible appears below.

Jeannie began telling me stories passed down in her family about the Sons of Liberty and how family members were involved in this organization. Research conducted later at the Massachusetts Historical Society confirmed that one of Captain Edwards’ sons, Alexander, was indeed a member. She spoke about the family tomb at Copp’s Hill and stories of how it had been scarred by British musket balls. I told her that I was familiar with the Edwards marker over the tomb, and she was quite surprised when I was able to describe its exact location. I promised to send her a copy of the photo of my father and me next to the marker. Jeannie even connected me with relatives in Plymouth, Massachusetts who had a painting of Captain Benjamin Edwards and other family treasures. That painting can be seen in the PDF to which I’ve provided a link at the end of this post.

After that big break in 1994, I hired a researcher at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston to help me learn more details about the Edwards family. Research continued on and off through the end of the decade when I came up with the idea to write a children’s book called One April in Boston based on what I had learned about my Boston ancestors and their connection to Paul Revere. The main character would be my fourth-great-grandfather, Benjamin Edwards. A 10-year-old orphan in April 1775, he and his siblings live with their aunt and uncle, Sarah and Alexander Edwards, right down the street from Christ Church (Old North Church) in the North End. The idea for the story would grow beyond the American Revolution to include connections to the Civil War and World War I. One April in Boston also teaches children the value of goal setting.  I’ll save those elements for a future blog post.

Learn more about my Edwards ancestors in this 12-page PDF including how old they were when certain key events occurred in Boston.

The Challenges of Pen and Ink Illustration

Creating the illustrations for the first edition of One April in Boston

by Cortney Skinner  | 01.28.20

Before Ben Edwards approached me in 1999 with the project of doing pen and ink illustrations for One April in Boston, most of my commissioned illustrations had been paintings. I had created some pen and ink drawings for a science fiction book on dinosaurs, but delineating historic personages in linework called for a much different approach than drawing lumbering, scaly Stegosauruses.

Drawing in pen and ink is like walking a tightrope. Each step needs to be a mindful one. Once a line is on the paper, there’s no going back. You are committed. Corrections can be made but not without compromising the surface of the paper with either white correction paint or scraping the line off with a blade. Of course, when I began these drawings in 1999, there was no ability to digitally correct any mistakes.

Over time, I’ve used all the available tools for pen and ink drawing: a natural goose quill, a steel nib pen, a technical pen, and a graphic marker. Each has its advantages and drawbacks. You can see these drawing tools in the photo below. Using a goose quill—No. 1 would be a suitable historic choice, but it’s a high maintenance tool, requiring hardening the point with careful application of heat and keeping the point sharp with a blade.

Like a quill (without getting too much into the complexities), using a steel nib pen requires controlling exactly how much pressure to use in each stroke—which is a talent in coordination itself. Imagine having to be aware of how much pressure to use with each step of your feet when walking, and you’ll get an idea of some of the challenges of drawing with one of these tools. No. 2 is a steel nib pen used by my father about 75 years ago in his trade as an advertising artist. He was a very skilled penman. No. 3 is a steel nib pen that I’ve used in some of my illustrations.

Having to dip the pen in an ink bottle in order to reload it can create some interesting adventures in trying to keep one’s calm. No. 4 is a bottle of black, waterproof ink safely ensconced in a heavy metal collar (also used by my father) to prevent an accidental overturn and a flow of ink, artist tears, and expletives. Even with a spill-proof ink bottle, every pen and ink artist has had to deal with a renegade drop of ink leaving an over-dipped pen point and hitting the drawing at the worst possible place.

My choice has usually been the technical pen—No. 5. It allows control of the width of the line because every line width requires a different pen and point size. With technical pens, there are no spilling ink bottles; no wayward drips. I’ll hold four or five pens of various point sizes in my left hand in reserve as I draw with my right. However, these are high maintenance tools and preparing for a session of pen and ink drawing with these has sometimes required almost an hour of cleaning dried ink from the hollow tubes of the pen points in order to ready them for use. 

The more recently developed technical graphic markers of different point sizes with archival ink are used by pro illustrators everywhere. No. 6 is just one brand of these. No cleaning. No maintenance. Just draw with them until the ink is used up. Those may be my next choice whenever the next pen and ink job comes up. Having a spill-proof tool that is ready to use without hours of cleaning a dried up, ink-clogged technical pen will save time and lower blood pressure.

I don’t pretend to be a virtuoso in pen and ink. It’s a difficult medium to employ even just adequately, and once one gets past the challenges of handling the tool, there is then the matter of deciding exactly where to place the lines in order to get the effect one wants. Each artist has his or her own style, much like their own personal handwriting. An artist’s style is dictated not only by their disposition and character and those second-by-second choices of pen strokes, but also by how their hand and wrist naturally move. It’s a totally Zen experience. The best pen artists glide through a drawing effortlessly (or make it look so). The others, like me, may labor through each stroke and try hard not to drive the pen into their heart in frustration.

None of my preliminary pencil sketches for the drawings in the first edition of the book have survived the twenty years and four relocations across and up and down the country, so I’ll display some sketches and get into that particular process in an upcoming blog post when I show examples from the second edition of the book. When drawing the characters in the book, I had no models with the exception of photographs of Mark Schmidt, serving as a model for Ben, and his sister Lynelle, who was my model for Betsey. Their photos at my elbow helped to keep their likenesses consistent. The two illustrations above feature Mark as young Ben. The first shows 10-year-old Ben at a small desk in his room putting his goals for the future into writing.  The second depicts Ben with his uncles Alex and Ben admiring a desk that Uncle Alex, a cabinetmaker, recently completed.

I think that my pen technique evolved and improved in the 15 years between the first and second editions of the book as I got more comfortable with the medium. There was one instance where the updated historical narrative required a new drawing be made of a particular scene. Below, on the left, you can see the original drawing from the first edition of the book, showing Robert Newman holding the two lanterns aloft in the northwest window of Christ Church (Old North Church) to signal the movement of the British troops to patriots across the river in Charlestown. When the second edition of the book was planned, Ben Edwards wanted to give credit to Captain John Pulling Jr., for assisting Robert Newman in the task of displaying the signal, as that had become the accepted version of events. A new drawing was commissioned to illustrate that. By then, digital tools were also available. So I was able to make a separate drawing of the background and add that to the drawing of the figures of the two men so I could see if it was indeed a good choice for that background. The background was scanned and added to the foreground using Photoshop. That illustration appears below, on the right.

Ben Edwards faced another challenge when the Robert Newman narrative was changed. The audio book version of One April in Boston that was produced in 2001 also needed to be modified. Fortunately, award-winning narrator Phil Rosenthal, who had done the original reading 14 years earlier, was still available and remarkably his voice sounded virtually the same. Listen to the audio recording below to hear where the segment on Robert Newman and Captain John Pulling Jr. was edited in.

In my additional blog post, coming soon, on the basics of pen and ink drawing for One April in Boston, I’ll get a little more into the process of making a drawing, the choices made for the linework, and some of the techniques. The second edition of the book required more detailed research and illustrations of subjects from the 19th and 20th centuries as well. Most of those drawings were set in a small Connecticut town and in France during World War I. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to create more illustrations of Philip Edwards, who has his ancestor’s spyglass in the second half of the story. The first edition only had 3 illustrations of Phil, while the second edition added 16 more.

No Artist is an Island

We are all artists of our own lives, we are all connected, and we all collaborate in this existence

by Cortney Skinner  | 01.22.20

Folks working in the arts never work alone. Though they may solo at the easel, keyboard, notepad, etc., from the moment they pick up that first instrument or tool, they’re working in conjunction and collaboration with their environment, other people, and their surroundings—whether they know it or not. No matter their chosen medium, genre, or tradition, artists require inspiration, encouragement, and feedback to grow and improve their work.

My wife, writer Elizabeth Massie, told me of her first “published” work. She was four years old when she made up a story about squirrels that she told her dad one night. He then went down to the local newspaper (he was the president of the Waynesboro News-Virginian), typed out the story as he remembered it, added some clip art of a squirrel, and bound it in a cardboard cover. He presented it to her the next morning. That could have been the inspirational starter pistol that sent her on a career that now includes 27 books and over 100 short stories.

The seeds for my own career as an illustrator might have been planted and inspired by all the illustrated books and magazines at home. My little eyeballs pored over the illustrated storybooks as well as the magazines that my father subscribed to, which were illustrated by Norman Rockwell and other major illustrators of the time. My father was an artist in his two-man advertising firm in Boston, and he’d bring home reams of paper with test printings of the ads he designed on one side, with the blank sides becoming my drawing paper supply. After my older sister taught me how to draw Donald Duck, I happily repeated that minor feat in my kindergarten class whereupon my teacher paraded me and my duck drawing from classroom to classroom to the applause of all the older classmates. Applause for drawing a cartoon duck? Maybe my life as an artist was launched at that moment. Thank you, dad, sister Sheri, and kindergarten teacher Mrs. Sheridan—all of whom were my artist collaborators.

Friends can have a strong influence in life’s pathways. My best boyhood pal, Geary Gravel, and I created our own superhero comics in ink and colored pencil. He also introduced me to science fiction and fantasy. He was an avid reader of those stories, while I was more attracted to the wonderfully illustrated covers. Geary pursued a writer’s life, eventually becoming a published author in those genres, which encouraged my own pursuit of illustrating those subjects. We attended many science fiction and fantasy conventions, which brought us both into contact with professional writers and illustrators. This gave us a picture of the course these professions can take. The photo of me shown here with one of my paintings was taken at a science fiction art show in Boston in the 1990s.

My pursuit of science fiction and fantasy illustration was to create still another connection. As mentioned in a previous blog post, my art school experience was not inspirational nor very productive, career-wise. However, by attending many science fiction and fantasy conventions and selling my paintings at their art shows, I met a publisher who gave me my first professional assignment. I also met some very talented and inspiring artists. One such illustrator was Tom Kidd, one of the top artists in his field and now a good friend. He was a major influence in my pursuit of illustration work in science fiction and fantasy, and we eventually collaborated on several book covers in his Connecticut studio. This was a learning experience for me. There’s nothing quite like working with another artist and seeing how they lay out the colors on their palette, approach brushwork, and plan the painting on their canvas. It was much like the illustrator studios of Howard Pyle’s era, where artists would inspire and learn from each other.

One afternoon, Tom surprised me by telling me that we, with master pastel artist and illustrator, Joel Spector, would drive out to the hills of upstate New York. There, we would visit the studio and home of the renowned illustrator and western artist, Don Spaulding. Spaulding was one of the few students taught by Norman Rockwell. We were warmly greeted by Don and his wife Colette and given a tour of his painting studio. Don’s experience with Rockwell infused him with a passion for historical authenticity that has stayed with him throughout his career as an illustrator and as one of the foremost western artists in the country. In the photo below, from the left, are Don, Joel, Tom, and I during that visit.

Don showed us his amazing costume and historical clothing collection worn by his models when they posed for his period paintings. He also had a fascinating assortment of 19th-century items used as props for his western paintings. It’s difficult to put into words the “vibes” and inspiration that we felt visiting Don. Tom, Joel, and I spent hours looking at Don’s work and peppering him with question after question, hoping that we weren’t overstaying our welcome.

On another visit, I mustered up the hubris to show Don some of the illustrations I was painting for a collectible card game. I still remember the suggestions and tips he gave me that afternoon and which I continue to employ today. This was another instance of an inheritance of sorts being handed down through generations. From Rockwell and his teachers to Don and then to me.

Tom generously included me in another very memorable and inspirational experience. Now and then, in a cozy Connecticut Italian restaurant, there would be a gathering of some of the major talents and voices in American illustration. See photograph above. This was a multi-generational group of past and current masters of the art—a group of artists with amazing careers and stories who have produced some of the most well-known work for major books, magazines, and movie posters over many generations. Though I felt like a rank beginner, I was made to feel as welcome as were the virtuosos who were attending.

As the sumptuous Italian meal was enjoyed, many stories were told including some about weird illustration assignments, crazed art directors, and vintage illustration masterpieces being rescued from dumpsters. Perhaps the most memorable tale was told by one particular well-known artist. While in Italy, illustrating as a WWII combat artist for Yank Magazine, he and a fellow artist tore through the narrow, winding mountainside roads in a Jeep, through an area which had not yet been completely cleared of German forces. Taking a wrong turn, the vehicle flipped off the cliffside, but its fall was broken by the fortuitous intervention of a pine tree which caught the Jeep and lowered it right side up and gently to the road below. With vehicle and passengers none the worse for wear, they continued on with their evening drive. Sometimes illustrators’ lives can be as dramatic as the scenes they illustrate.

Though some of the collaborators in my life and art have since passed from the scene, they are still here with me, as I continue my work. There are present-day collaborators working with me now, and as surely as I am sitting here, there will be new, wonderful, unexpected meetings and connections in the future. I look forward to them all.

The Two Nautical Instruments in North Square

Recently installed public art gives visitors a glimpse of Boston’s past and draws inspiration from the children’s book One April in Boston

by Ben Edwards  | 01.17.20

In colonial Boston, the North End was home to mariners and sea captains, one of whom was my sixth-great-grandfather, Captain Benjamin Edwards. Born in England in 1685, he came to Boston with his mother Sarah when he was a teenager and began to work aboard sailing ships. Benjamin was married on December 10, 1706, just five days short of his 21st birthday, by Doctor Cotton Mather at the Second Church in North Square. It was his first of three marriages. He served as captain of his own vessel as early as 1713. Captain Edwards had ten children; four died in infancy. His ninth child, Dolling Edwards, worked as a mastmaker at a shipyard in the North End. His son Ben, the main character in my children’s book One April in Boston, inherits his grandfather’s spyglass in the story and uses it to glimpse the future. In the opening scene, 10-year-old Ben Edwards, with spyglass in hand, strides through North Square, past the Second Church, and toward Paul Revere’s silver shop near Hancock’s Wharf.

I spend a lot of time in the North End and especially in North Square, having served on the Board of Directors of the Paul Revere Memorial Association (which owns and operates the Paul Revere House) for 20 years, thanks to a decision one of my ancestors made over 200 years ago to marry into the Revere family. Spoiler alert for the book: Ben’s sister Sally Edwards married silversmith Paul Revere Jr. on July 25, 1782.

As a private tour guide in Boston for the past 16 years, I was excited to learn that a renovation of North Square would begin in 2017. That year, a $350,000 redesign of Rachel Revere Park across the street from the Paul Revere House was completed. A renovation of the square itself, a $2.5 million project, began with a groundbreaking ceremony in October 2017. Work included resetting all the granite paving stones, making it more accessible for people with physical challenges, aligning the street grades, reinstalling the nautical chains that border the triangular square, and adding four pieces of public art. The commission for the art was awarded in April 2017 to Ann Hirsch and Jeremy Angier of A+J Art+Design. When the ideas for their North Square Stories art project were released, I was particularly intrigued by one of the sculptures initially described as “An Interactive Maritime Instrument—An imaginative nautical device enables viewers to peer through a scope at a North Square scene from another era.”

I reached out to Ann and Jeremy by email congratulating them on their commission, noting my interest in their project, and mentioning my family’s connection to the North End and its maritime history. I also brought up the spyglass in One April in Boston and sent them a copy of the book. We were able to connect and I learned that while the spyglass in my book enabled young Ben to see into the future, their nautical device would allow viewers to glimpse the past. They received and were very complimentary of the book and its illustrations, and I had the chance to spend some time with them in the North End visiting Copp’s Hill Burying Ground to point out the markers for Captain Edwards and the Mather family, including Increase, his son Cotton, and grandson Samuel. I was pleased to be asked to serve as a member of the Advisory Panel for the North Square Stories project, where I offered suggestions at various stages and visited the A+J Art+Design studio in Somerville to view the sculptures in process.

The ribbon cutting to celebrate the renovation of North Square took place on September 23, 2019. The newly unveiled public art was a big hit with those in attendance. The four bronze sculptures include:

• “1798 North Square View”—a relief with labels showing and identifying which buildings were visible from that spot in 1798
• “North End Story Map”—a three-dimensional birds-eye view of the North End as it exists today
• “What We Brought With Us”—a suitcase containing scenes that focus on the North End’s immigrants and cultural traditions
• “Fantastical Historical Nautical Instrument”—a sculpture that floats on sculpted water, supported by three figureheads. It contains five scopes through which viewers can see images of people and scenes tied in to the North End and the sea. Photos of this instrument appear below.

Ann and Jeremy describe the Fantastical Historical Nautical Instrument in this fashion: “An assemblage of scopes offering imaginary views. Each scope aims towards what appears to be an abstract pattern, but when the viewer peers through the scope’s eyepiece a coherent image is revealed. The abstract patterns are a form of visual distortion called oblique anamorphism. An anamorphic image appears correct only when seen from a specific oblique angle, to which the scopes are appropriately set. The scopes also have explanatory text, and they point in the actual direction of the sites represented in or associated with the anamorphic scenes.” Through the scopes the viewer sees the following images: Onesimus, an African born man held as slave by Cotton Mather, who introduced an African inoculation process used in smallpox-stricken Boston; Sarah Josepha Hale, Founder of Seaman’s Aid Society; Rev. Edward Taylor of Seamen’s Bethel; John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and Rose F. Kennedy who was born on Garden Court just steps from North Square; and the SS Andrea Doria, an Italian ocean liner wrecked off Nantucket in 1956.

The explanatory text on each of the five scopes is shown here:

Onesimus – Late 1600s-1700s – African Born Man – Held as Slave by Cotton Mather, Pastor of North Square’s Second Church

Sarah Josepha Hale – 1788-1879 – Author – Preservationist – Editor – Founder of Seaman’s Aid Society Which Opened North Square’s Mariners House   

Rev. Edward T. Taylor – 1793-1871 – North Square’s Seamen’s Bethel – Now Sacred Heart Church – Beloved Preacher of the Nautical and the Biblical

John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and Rose F. Kennedy – 1863-1950 and 1890-1995 – Grandfather and Mother to Pres. John Fitzgerald Kennedy – Residents of Nearby Garden Court

SS Andrea Doria – Italian Ocean Liner – Sank off Nantucket After Colliding with MS Stockholm – July 25, 1956 – One of the Worst Maritime Disasters in U.S. History

In the headline for this post, I mentioned “Two Nautical Instruments in North Square.” One is fantastical, as noted above, but what about the second? It is a little more difficult to spot and, on first inspection, might be overlooked. In December 2018, Ann and Jeremy notified me that they elected to add something to their sculptural relief of a panoramic view of North Square in 1798 before turning it into bronze for perpetuity. The spyglass Ben carried in One April in Boston and the Edwards family’s journey the book conveys had provided inspiration for their work and, as such, they had decided to add to the street scene in the center of the relief: a young boy looking through a spyglass at Paul and Rachel Revere standing in the doorway of their home. I was so happy to learn this news.  An adult stands next to the child. In my imagination, this might be Ben, age 33 in 1798, working as a cooper in the North End, and sharing his “gift of the spyglass” with the next generation of children from the neighborhood. See photos above and below.

As we stand in front of “1798 North Square View,” we see Boston as a bustling seaport town of more than 24,000 inhabitants just as it appeared when the Massachusetts State House opened on Beacon Hill. Looking up from the relief and to the left, we view buildings in a modern city with a population of nearly 700,000—something my ancestors would hardly recognize. Glancing ahead, we are reconnected with Boston’s colonial past as we see the Paul Revere House (ca. 1680) and Pierce/Hichborn House (ca. 1711). One can only wonder what this view will look like 100 years from now, but it is heartening to know that a young boy and his spyglass inspired by a children’s book will still be there to greet visitors in North Square.

The Story of North Square Stories

Learn more about North Square Stories at the A+J Art+Design website.

Seeing the Future—A Gift We All Possess

Setting goals can help turn our visions for the future into reality—but only if we have the courage to take action each day and never quit

by Ben Edwards and Cortney Skinner | 01.14.20

Can we see into the future? Each of us has a concern for what lies ahead. We work hard in the present to bring about a better future, and many of us long to know what might be coming in the times ahead. Is there a device or some method to actually help us see into those times yet to happen? At least in some way, a spyglass can enable us to look into the future since it can visually bring much closer those faraway places and things towards which we’re heading. Visualization / the power of imagination is the first step in any goal setting process. Beyond that, action and persistence are what create our destiny. But can we get a glimpse of what that destiny will be? That is the question posed in One April in Boston.

When Cortney illustrated One April in Boston, a spyglass played an important part in young Ben Edwards’ motivation to make plans and create goals for his own future. In the story, 10-year-old Ben, who lives in 18th-century Boston, can actually glimpse images of the future through his spyglass, and that particular instrument is passed on to future generations of his family who likewise can see a hint of the coming times through its lens. The illustration below at left shows Ben in April 1775 standing on a barrel glancing out across the harbor through his spyglass. The illustration at right shows 10-year-old Philip Edwards (Ben’s great-great-grandson) in 1905 getting a vision of his own future through his ancestor’s spyglass.

The Revolutionary War era in which young Ben Edwards lived was one of great change. It has been dubbed the “Age of Enlightenment” because of the intellectual, philosophical, and scientific developments that dominated the world during the 17th to 19th century. Among these new ideas and advancements were great strides in optical inventions, and 18th-century America had eager customers for any new instruments that could enhance the understanding of the world in which they lived. This 18th-century English trade card, a sort of advertisement of the period, shows the many scientific instruments available to the American colonists via importation from England. At the upper left is a spyglass. Ordinarily, the word telescope is used for a celestial instrument, and a spyglass denotes a terrestrial device. Along with being an important tool used by mariners and landlubbers alike, a spyglass was an oft-used pictorial device in paintings of the period, as shown in the two portraits below: Charles Stoppelaer’s portrait of Admiral Sir Walter Stirling and a young girl painted by Pietro Antonio.

In this painting, “General George Washington at Trenton,” by John Trumbull, Washington is holding a spyglass in his right hand. The painting was created after the Revolutionary War in 1792, and Trumbull, having been an aide-de-camp to Washington, was very familiar with the general’s military equipage as well as artistic symbolism used in portraiture. He included the spyglass (see the detail in the inset) in order to symbolize Washington’s role as a leader who could foresee and guide the destiny of the country for which he fought so tenaciously. Trumbull painted the spyglass so accurately that it has been recognized as one made by John Dolland of London, a famous and important maker of spyglasses, telescopes, and other optical instruments. Washington owned a number of spyglasses during his lifetime. He certainly used one during his early life as a surveyor, during which time he roamed all around the mountains, hills, valleys, and rivers of Virginia. For a surveyor, a spyglass would be instrumental in seeing the lay of the land, allowing the user to choose the best direction of travel, avoiding perilous pathways, and discovering safer routes. Of course, for a military officer, a spyglass would be crucial to spot enemy troop formations, artillery positions, and fortifications.

Young Ben Edwards’ spyglass was handed down to him from his namesake and grandfather, Boston Sea Captain, Benjamin Edwards. Although not known at the time One April in Boston was written, subsequent historical research tells us about the encounter Captain Edwards had with the infamous pirate, George Lowther, in the Caribbean on January 10, 1722. A spyglass was a life-saving tool to mariners and pirates alike, enabling them to pick out details of and hopefully identify distant ships that might prove dangerous or even deadly. Undoubtedly, Captain Edwards used his spyglass to spot and identify Lowther’s ship. Luckily, Captain Edwards survived the encounter and lived to tell the tale of his adventure and fight with the pirate. There was enough detail in a description of the attack, which first appeared in A General History of Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson in 1724, so that Cortney was able to approximate what the scene may have looked like when the two ships traded cannon fire. In the painting below, which he produced in 2016, Lowther’s ship, the “Happy Delivery,” is at left, and Captain Edwards ship, the “Greyhound,” is at right.

Philip Edwards’ life in 1905 was far different from that of his great-great-grandfather Ben. Compared to the troubled times of 1775 Boston, there was relative calm in the country and especially in the Millville section of Naugatuck, Connecticut, where Phil lived with his family and friends. His father worked at the burgeoning Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company, which was the main employer for the area. Young Phil enjoyed fishing with his friends at Long Meadow Pond and, as a teenager, made even more friends as he’d deliver groceries for a local market, making his rounds in a horse-drawn wagon. In One April in Boston, Phil shared his encouraging thoughts about setting goals and never giving up on them with the local children as he gave them rides in his delivery wagon. In the story, Phil’s spyglass allowed him to perceive something of the future for both him and his friends, as seen in the illustration.

Every second we live creates a small step into our future. Whether it’s a figurative spyglass in the form of a basic goal or virtual spyglass that takes the shape of a plan that guides us into the future, we can each access our imagination and set goals to illuminate our path in life, much as young Ben and his great-great-grandson Phil did in One April in Boston. The key to the process, the story teaches us, is taking consistent action and never giving up. The book takes readers along on Ben’s and Phil’s journeys and inspires them to begin their own.

Image credits:

James Simons trade card, London Tradesmen’s Cards of the XVIII Century, 1925

Portrait of Admiral Sir Walter Stirling of Faskine, Charles Stoppelaer (active in London circa 1738-1755)

Girl Looking through a Telescope, Pietro Antonio Rotari (1707-1762) Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden

General George Washington at Trenton by John Trumbull, 1791, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

My Journey—Student to Working Illustrator

A career with twists and turns that always circled back to a fascination with and a love for history

by Cortney Skinner | 01.06.20

Completing the illustration course at the Art Institute of Boston did not endow me with a degree of any kind, but it did give me the basics in commercial art production. Looking about for work where those basics might be employed, I found a job offer from a very small Boston advertising agency. When I was given a tour by the boss, I was more than a bit dismayed to see a long, dark, narrow room with an aisle dividing two rows of drawing boards with about a dozen Bob Cratchits bent over their work silently scratching with their pens at their assignments, their hands kept from freezing by fingerless gloves, and the room’s dank chill kept at bay by ragged scarfs wrapped around their necks.

Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. However, if you recall the Roman galley scene from Ben Hur, then that’ll zero in on how I felt about this first commercial art employment offer. Needless to say, I wasn’t keen on being chained to a drawing board. So—although I was supposed to begin the following Monday—I did not go back.

As with most fledgling artists and illustrators fresh out of art school, I took on various part- and full- time jobs to support myself while I worked on my painting and drawing skills in my spare time. Science fiction was an interest of mine. There were a number of local New England science fiction conventions, so I entered their art shows, selling a few pieces now and then. Pen and ink and acrylic paints were my mediums of choice. Acrylic paints dried rapidly and allowed instant overpainting of layers. This was important for being able to adjust and tweak a painting.

In the late 1970s, a part-time job at the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston led to my first regular professional illustration assignment for the science fiction magazine, Galileo, which was published by Vincent McCaffery, the bookstore’s owner and a fine art director. The story was “Samaritan” by Connie Willis and my illustration was painted in acrylic. The story concerned an episode in the future when a church employed an orangutan to clean a valuable stained glass window. The ape’s long arms and brachiating abilities allowed him to do the simple job without using ladders or scaffolding which could endanger the window. Without my synopsis being too much of a spoiler, the orangutan (who had a pet cat) requested that he be baptized, using sign language to make that request. The conundrum for the minister was whether an ape, even though apparently sentient, could be baptized.

The above details about this assignment are mentioned because the most important part of an illustration job is careful interpretation of the scene to be illustrated. This is a skill that can be taught, but it’s also a skill that can and should grow with experience and observation of other artists’ work.

Research can be one of the most interesting parts of the job for illustrators. Maybe research should be called “focused daydreaming,”—casting open the mind to gather as many diverse and numerous images and information of the subjects to be illustrated. What is now done chiefly by Googling was done back then by trips to museums, libraries, archives, and (hopefully) a coffee shop or two for sustenance. It was no easy matter back then to find reference for an orangutan… or, for that matter, any of the elements in that painting. I was lucky to find a neighborhood cat to pose for my reference.

As was mentioned in my previous blog post, history has always been a fascinating subject for me, and with one of my illustrations for another SF publication, Aboriginal Science Fiction Magazine, I was able to combine my love for history with science fiction. The cover story, “Three if by Norton” by Ralph Roberts, concerned a time-traveler riding a Norton motorcycle carrying a time machine that transported him back to 1775 Boston. This biker then had to take the place of the indisposed patriot Paul Revere on his ride to Lexington. The fun for me was my reference for the painting: posing three uniformed living history enthusiasts who not only came authentically clothed and armed, but also helped to make sure the details were correct for the period. Eric and Dave (as British soldiers) as well as Julia (seen at the top in the window) were wonderful models. I didn’t mind when one of their bayonets on the end of their more-than-five-foot long muskets made a gouge in the living room ceiling as I took the reference photos. I wonder if it’s still there in that Arlington, Massachusetts house—evidence of modern-day British reenactors in a house located only yards away from where the actual British troops had made their bloody retreat after the battles of Lexington and Concord?

For the second illustration for that story, my research took me up to the actual historic house where Revere culminated his mission: the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington. I researched the rooms, the wallpaper, and the furnishings where a climactic scene in this wacky science-fiction story took place. Though a comic and quirky tale, I wanted the illustrations to be informed by accurate historical research. In this tale of science-fictional skewed history, John Hancock is launched across the room, wigs and flintlock pistols flying. All these items were researched and illustrated as accurately as possible even though the story was more unhinged than historical.

Little did I know that, decades later, after my move to Virginia, I’d be working with author Ben Edwards in researching and painting some of the same locales, buildings and details for his book One April in Boston and ensuing historical projects. In successful historical illustration, research is a collaborative enterprise, especially if the illustrator lives far from where the documented sources for the illustrations reside. Ben’s intimate familiarity with the history and landmarks of the greater Boston area and his connections to historic sites have been invaluable resources for my research of the Revolutionary period.

Since the bayonetted ceiling episode, my interest in history illustration has grown exponentially, and though I have enjoyed illustrating all manner of science-fiction subjects, hobbits, monsters, Star Wars characters, educational books, and a few jobs for films, historical subjects seem to resonate the most for me. My fortuitous meeting with Ben in 1998 at the Paul Revere House in Boston and his One April in Boston book allowed me to hone my pen and ink skills in historical illustration. The recent commission of a series illustrating Paul Revere’s ride made it possible for me to strengthen my skills using digital paint but in a traditional, painterly style. More about those methods in a later blog post.

Though the mediums and materials for creating historical illustrations have changed drastically over the past decades, the approach has always been the same: to make an historically accurate and hopefully interesting and compelling picture.

Howard Pyle Was My Great-Grand Teacher

The art of Illustration is a skill passed down directly or indirectly from illustrators of the past

by Cortney Skinner | 01.03.20

Illustrators are pictorial storytellers. In order to do their work, they also have to be highly imaginative, observant, and absorbent human beings who take in all sorts of influences around them: the natural world, the world of the arts, and the lessons taught them by other illustrators and artists, either in print or in person. Though accused of daydreaming by my grade school teachers, I prefer to think of it as being very observant of the world around me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

My father, Walter Skinner, pictured here, illustrated for his small Boston advertising firm founded in the late 1940s. It was a tough job, and I suspect that the challenges of raising a family of five kids on that salary might have been why he never encouraged me to enter the art field as a career. He’d spend long hours at his Boston office as well as up in his attic home studio at the end of the day, working at his drawing board on pressing deadlines for various ad campaigns. Downstairs, our living room bookshelves and tables were filled with dozens of my father’s books and magazines that carried covers and stories with pictures by amazing artists. Those pictures were all I needed for encouragement to be an illustrator. I’d pore over those publications and spend hours drawing—which is something I began at about age two, I’ve been told, but I’m sure I began my daydreaming in the womb.

In the 1950s, to hone his own artistic talents, my father took the celebrated Famous Artists School correspondence course on illustration founded and taught by members of the New York Society of Illustrators, including Norman Rockwell. I still have his large 11” X 14″ binders of the FAS courses. These lessons were to have an unexpected impact on my own illustration education.

In American illustration, Howard Pyle and his circle are often seen as the creators of the “Golden Age” of illustration. It’s hard to find a modern illustrator not somehow influenced by Pyle’s work and approach to the craft. Rockwell was heavily influenced by Pyle’s teachings as well and, indeed, filmmakers have been inspired by Pyle’s vision. The short video at the end of this post, entitled “Howard Pyle and the Illustrated Story,” relates only a little about Pyle’s importance and his wide-ranging work in pictures and in prose.

It can be difficult to untangle or unravel all of the influences that an illustrator might have on their work. We illustrators are absorbing (and daydreaming) much of the time. Inspiration and life’s pathways can also vary over time, as can stylistic trends and industry standards. Though I admire and am inspired by many illustrators past and present, Howard Pyle’s approach to illustration might be the overwhelming influence to my own.

Though I was largely self-taught, my brief formal illustration instruction began after high school. Our next-door neighbor, Tom O’Hara, was an artist for NASA and he helped me to assemble my portfolio for applying at the School of Practical Art just outside of Kendall Square in Boston. It was a small, affordable three-year art school not offering any degrees but rather “practical art” instruction as the name suggested. The school was struggling at the time and in the fall, when my enrollment began, I was surprised to find that the school had changed its name to “The Art Institute of Boston.” It had also retooled its entire curriculum, discontinuing its cartooning program—which was the reason I had enrolled at the school in the first place. The only remaining course of instruction that interested me was illustration with Norman Baer who both taught and chaired the illustration department.

Naturally, in the 1960s, all art was done by hand. I won’t go into the details of our art instruction but suffice it to say that there was no digital technology and the techniques and methods of commercial illustration hadn’t changed much since Howard Pyle’s days. Norman Baer frequently invoked the name of Howard Pyle and his students, and with good reason. He had taken instruction from Harvey Dunn, one of Pyle’s students and an amazing illustrator in his own right. I guess that makes me a third-generation student of Pyle’s in a way—see the Illustrator Family Tree above. Norman Rockwell’s illustration methods were also taught in Baer’s class and (quite a few years later) a meeting with one of Rockwell’s students would pass on more inspiration and instruction. I’ll talk more about that in a future blog post.

Baer’s teaching method was a bear. There was no daydreaming in his classes. Highly dissatisfied with the illustration scene in New York City, he had left the business to teach at The School of Practical Art in 1962. He was able to communicate the difficulties and intricacies of illustration, but he was unable to convey much love for the art form, perhaps due to his own sad experiences. When the population of his classes dropped from two divisions of about 30 students each to one division of a dozen, the school administration made changes to ensure that the remaining students would elect to stay. Though his instruction was not very inspiring, at least he taught the basics of good illustration and with that knowledge, we each became the great-grand students of Howard Pyle. Interestingly enough, it turned out that much of the playbook that Baer was using came directly from the Famous Artists School. In fact, I found that my father and I had been given the exact same illustration assignment from the Famous Artists School course about 15 years apart—my father’s via the FAS and mine by Norman Baer via the FAS. I still have my father’s and my illustrations from the same assignment, see photo above.

My career as an illustrator began as a hobby that evolved into a part-time endeavor while working other jobs, eventually becoming a more than full-time vocation. Meeting other illustrators who became good friends ensured that skills and inspiration continued to grow and evolve. Education and the influences that inspire me continue right up to the present day… as does my daydreaming. More about all that in my next blog post. I have to go stare out the window.