Today's Inspiration

Shannon Stirnweis, Part 4: Paperback Cover Art

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 18:16:00 +0000

My conversation with Shannon Stirnweis continues... ~ Leif Peng

Leif Peng: I'm guessing around this time in the mid-1960s you started to do paperback covers, is that correct?

Shannon Stirnweis: That came along almost from the beginning. Paperbacks were really the ... 'hiding place' of illustrators who couldn't get magazine [assignments] anymore. And the less-great publishers were the ones I went to to show my stuff to. That was like Ace and... and Ballantine bought me fairly quickly too.

(Above, two paperback covers illustrated by Shannon Stirnweis, L: Ace Books, 1960, R: Ballantine Books, 1969)
LP: Oh, really?

SS: Yeah, Bob Blanchard was the name of the art director there and he was a nice guy.

(Original art from a wrap-around paperback cover, "The Hell-Fire Club," Illustrated by Shannon Stirnweis, Ballantine Books, 1969)
LP: Now did you go there on your own to get paperback work?

SS: Yeah. I just cold called them. In those days it was quite possible to just call up an art director and go see him the same day with your portfolio. Which is no longer true.

LP: No. So when you started doing paperback work, what sort of stuff were you able to get at the beginning? What sort of genres?

SS: Oh, detective stuff and so on. There were a lot of strata in paperbacks. The stuff I was doing early on was like, $250 a cover and was usually a gal - sometimes a big-boobed gal (we chuckle) - and a guy, a detective or a shoot-out or something.

(A Shannon Stirnweis paperback cover for Ballentine Books, 1967)
LP: Hah. Yeah... I came across one you did called "The Berlin Wall Affair" by Troy Conway, and that one's from Paperback Library, from 1967. And it's very much the sort of scenario you'd see on a Robert McGinnis spy or detective type of cover. Does that ring a bell at all?

SS: It doesn't absolutely ring a bell, no. Well, that's after I moved up a ways. Those American Library guys, they'd pay, oh, a thousand bucks or so.

LP: Wow, yeah, that's moving up for sure! Would that have been sort of the top end for paperback art back then?

SS: Uhh... yeah. It gradually got higher and higher.

LP: Let me ask you this, Shannon... did these guys tend to hang onto the artwork or did you usually get your original art back?

SS: I don't remember exactly when, but they started around some time there was going to be some litigation or some taxes around the art. Up to that time, you never saw it again.

LP: I see. And how did you feel about that at the time, that you weren't getting your artwork back. Did it matter to you?

SS: Well, it mattered, but it was just the way business was done. (he chuckles)

(original art by Shannon Stirnweis from a Paperback Library cover, 1966)
LP: So you just accepted that. And when you started to get your artwork back, did you just hang onto it or give it away to friends and family?

SS: About half and half. Some of it I gave away... some of it I dumped! (he chuckles) Yeah, I gave it away to people and I've got a huge closet full of it here.

(original art by Shannon Stirnweis from a Paperback Library cover, 1966)
LP: The reason I ask is - you know a guy named Stan Galli?

SS: Yeah - I never met Stan Galli but he was also a west coast artist.

LP: Well, I read an article with him where he said every time the Saturday Evening Post or whoever sent back one of his originals, he'd take it out back to the barbeque and burn it. (Shannon lets out a huge laugh)

SS: Well, there was a time when your estate got taxed for everything they possessed and then they took the value of the art when the company bought it and they'd assess your heirs for that! (We both laugh)

LP: That's pretty clever of them! (chuckles) Now, you were saying when you first began doing paperback covers for Ace and so on and then you worked your way up through various genres... I found a blog where this fellow said you also painted a lot of romance covers for Harlequin. Is that right?

(Shannon Stirnweis cover for Harlequin Romance, 1990)
SS: That was not until the '90s. I did romance covers for Harlequin for about four years. One wrap-around cover a month for four years. And they paid decently even for the time, like thirty-five hundred for a wrap-around cover. So it gave you a base income. I was doing those and stuff for Unicover, the stamp people. You know about them?

LP: I do because I shared a studio in Toronto with a fellow named Tom McNeely and he did a lot of work for Unicover.

SS: Yeah, so I had Unicover and Harlequin and I was doing westerns for Bantam Books (about one a month). And I was feeling pretty good - three decent, steady clients - and all of a sudden all three of them gave out.

LP: You're kidding.

SS: Nope. (he chuckles)

LP: That's the way it goes when you're a freelancer, unfortunately.

SS: Yes, right.

Continued tomorrow...

Read Part 1 of the Shannon Stirnweis interview here

Read Part 2 of the Shannon Stirnweis interview here

Read Part 3 of the Shannon Stirnweis interview here

Shannon Stirnweis, Part 3: Children's Book Illustrator

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 18:14:00 +0000

Shannon Stirnweis and I continue our conversation about his illustration career... ~ Leif Peng

Leif Peng: Around the same time you were doing work for the men's adventure magazines you were beginning your relationship with Helen Wholberg as a representative, and she was representing you to the book publishers, is that right?

Shannon Stirnweis: Yes.

(Two books illustrated by Shannon Stirnweis in the 1960s)
LP: Ok, when you say the book publishers, are you talking about paperback book publishers?

SS: No.

LP: Ok, you're talking about children's book publishers. I read you'd done thirty or thirty five children's books. Was one of the publishers Helen wholberg connected you with Whitman Publishing?

SS: Yeah, that's right.

(Shannon Stirnweis cover and, below, interior illustration for Whitman Publishing, 1964)
LP: I've found several examples of that work. Can you give me a general idea of how big a time commitment that was, to do a painted cover and a series of interior illustrations for a typical Whitman's children's book?

SS: Oh, it depended a lot on the book. Some of them were pretty loose, but others - I did a book on dogs called "Dogs of the World" - I had to figure out how to spec type on that one so I could lay the thing out.

LP: So they really handed you the whole project - not just the illustrations.

SS: Yeah, the whole project. I managed to design it fairly well... I think. It started out I was only going to do certain kinds of illustration for that one and then it worked into being the whole book. But in terms of time, I think I had to do a spread and a half every day. It was real tight by the time we got the thing done.

LP: Wow! I've seen some pages from your book of dogs and they were full paintings.

SS: Yeah. Well, they were illustrations in acrylic as opposed to painting in depth.

LP: Did you have to find live dog models for that or did you mostly use photo reference.

SS: I went to a lot of dog shows!

LP: So you did the book on dogs and I know you also did a book on cats, and then for Grumbacher you did a book on "How To Paint Dogs" and one on "How To Paint Cats."

SS: Yeah, and another one on "How to Paint the Wild West."

LP: Right. Did those "How To" books come about because you'd done the early books on dogs and cats?

SS: I don't think so. I might have mentioned to somebody that I could paint dogs and cats but it was Lester Rossin, who was a rep and he knew me and I knew him a little bit. He just said, 'Can you do a book on dogs for me' and I said 'yeah.' He was another one of these characters from those extravagant days... I went to his house in Stamford Connecticut and it was just a bonanza of artwork by illustrators who'd worked for him. Who never got their work back.

LP: Wow.

(Interior spread from "The Art of Painting Dogs," Shannon Stirnweis, 1975)

SS: In his day he was high on the echelon of art representatives. He would bring in Christmas baskets of champagne and cookies and Christmas hams to every art director of a lot of these big agencies.

LP: That's how you do it, I guess... you gotta get their attention... win their affection.

SS: Yup.

(Lester Rossin Associates trade ad from the back pages of the 1957 NYAD Annual)
LP: So during this time as you were gradually becoming a full-time freelancer, did you socialize with a lot of other illustrators?
Were you sharing studio space with anyone?

SS: Yeah, I moved in with [Charles] McVicar and [Gerry] McConnell into a studio in the city because most of the studios that gave you the quickie stuff that really paid the bills wanted to know that you were local. So you didn't want to work out of your house out of town, you wanted to appear to be very local.

(Shannon Stirnweis cover for Grossett & Dunlap Inc., 1965)
SS: Later we were in the 50s someplace... I can't remember. Then we moved down to 34th Street between Lex and Third. It was near Grand Central, where I also shared space with Barney Plotkin. You probably never heard of him.

LP: I don't think so, no.

(Original paperback cover art by Barney Plotkin, 1986, found at ha.com)
SS: There I took the space that Gerry McConnell had had. He'd been an apprentice to Dean Cornwell way back, so I got one of Dean Cornwell's old drawing tables.

LP: Wow, that's amazing! That is absolutely incredible!

SS: (Shannon chuckles) It was exactly like anybody else's drawing table.

(Shannon Stirnweis cover for Whitman Publishing, 1963)
LP: (laughing) Well, yeah... I suppose...

SS: And none of the talent brushed off. (He chuckles some more)

Continued tomorrow...

Read Part 1 of the Shannon Stirnweis interview here

Read Part 2 of the Shannon Stirnweis interview here

Shannon Stirnweis, Part 2: The (Men's) Adventure Begins

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 18:12:00 +0000

Continuing my conversation with Shannon Stirnweis, we begin discussing his professional career... ~ Leif Peng

Leif Peng: So after the army and after art college, did you try looking for work in a commercial art studio on the West Coast?

Shannon Stirnweis: No. There was virtually nothing out west. The two hotspots at the time were Detroit and New York. So I picked New York because I didn't want to have to do cars all the time. It was the middle of the Eisenhower recession and I'd take my portfolio around to some of these greats like Bob McCall... but they weren't working full time either, so there was very little chance they'd take me on as an apprentice or do anything with me. So after two or three months of walking the streets I got a job as an apprentice at Norcross, the greeting card company.

(Norcross Greeting Cards ad, artist unknown, 1958)

LP: No kidding! That's very interesting. If I'm not mistaken that's where Murray Tinkelman started out as well!

SS: Huh. Well, my position at Norcross was not a professional job. I spent about two months in their apprentice program and then I went to Compton Advertising on Madison Avenue as a sketch man in their studio. I had a good friend from Art Center named Bill Kiazawa who was at that point an art director at Compton's and he recommended me for the job.

(Compton Advertising trade ad, artist unknown, 1940)
LP: Now were you married at the time or... ?

SS: No, but that position gave me the confidence to even think about it. It was double my previous salary and sort of the direction I had wanted to go into.

LP: So what kind of work did a sketch man do at Compton's?

SS: Largely storyboards and comps. The art director gives you a scribble and you sketch the picture up so it's good enough for an illustrator or photographer to do the final version for the ad.

LP: Did they already use markers for that type of work when you started as a sketch man?

SS: Chalks!

(Though not by Stirnweis, these examples from a 1959 ad campaign are typical of the kind of work done by an agency "sketch man.")

LP: Right! I thought that might be the case. Was that a new experience for you, working with chalks?

SS: Actually at Art Center I started out as an advertising designer for the first year. I didn't know the difference, I just wanted to be a commercial artist. The jobs were already beginning to disappear for illustrators so they pushed me that way and I liked it... but after the first year it was kind of a tumultuous decision... was this really what I wanted to do or did I want to do illustrations. So I made a list for both sides and advertising design came out way ahead... and I decided to be an illustrator anyway. (we both chuckle) Because there were a bunch of guys who had gone to Art Center who went on to do illustration and I figured, if they can do it, why not me.

LP: So of that group, did most of them go to the East as well?

SS: Most of them did but I don't think any of them made it. Even though Art Center has a big reputation for getting jobs for everybody, it was not so in their cases. A lot of them went into associated fields like technical illustration and so on.

LP: Ok, let's get back to you working at Compton's as a sketch artist. Your bio says you began to freelance for adventure pulps. I'm very curious to hear how you made that transition from working on staff at the agency to getting your first freelance gigs for adventure pulps.

SS: Well, that was kinda 'extracurricular.' I did the paintings on weekends because I was still fully employed at the agency. So it wouldn't be fair to use their time to do that kind of work. How that started was I had lunch with Chuck McVicar, another Art Center guy, and a friend of his named Gerry McConnell. I was saying I wish there was some way I could get into doing illustration work and McConnell said well, if you want to do black and white or two-colour men's magazine art, just go see Larry Graber at Magazine Management. And he said, "Don't try to do better than what they're doing - just do exactly what they're doing." (We both laugh)

(Above left: photo of Gerry McConnell, year unknown, R: original art by McConnell and printed cover, Peril magazine,March 1958)
SS: So I did a couple of samples and went up there and walked out with a bunch of spots, did them, brought them back and got a painting to do.

LP: So when you got those initial spots, do you remember what they paid for those.

SS: I don't remember... seems there were four or five of them and I got around... $500 or $750 for the bunch of them.

(Four of Shannon's men's adventure illustrations, year and publication(s) unknown)
LP: Now did that seem like a pretty good paycheque to you at the time?

SS: Oh yeah! Because my paycheque at Compton's was a hundred dollars a week, which was decent pay at the time... and double what I was getting at Norcross.

LP: So going from Norcross to Compton's to making five hundred bucks for a handful of black and white spots.. that must have been pretty nice!

SS: Oh yeah.

LP: How did your first painting for them come about, do you remember?

(A men's adventure interior illustration by Shannon Stirnweis, date and publication unknown)
SS: Oh, since I proved myself by doing those spots they immediately moved me up to spreads. It was all spelled out for you: they'd give you a paper with the scene they wanted done and anything that was pertinent. That was it! I went home and did some sketches and they okayed one.

LP: Once they okayed a sketch, was it up to you to go and find models?

SS: Oh sure.

LP: And what was that like for you initially... was that a big expense or did you use friends as models?

SS: Yeah, pretty much friends, although models were not expensive at the time... fifteen or twenty-five dollars for a session.

LP: So it was well within the budget on an illustration job.

SS: Yeah, because if I recall for their middle grade book they paid... oh, $175 for a spread. So, like I said, getting a hundred dollars a week at Compton's... well, within about two years I could quit the agency and my main source of revenue was the pulp magazines - and I'd doubled my income.

LP: When they required you to do a period piece, were they very fussy about costuming and weaponry and that sort of stuff? Did you have to do a lot of historical research?

SS: Not an awful lot because it was usually the Nazis or headhunters or something you could be pretty liberal in interpreting. Minimal research. Not a whole lot.

(A men's adventure interior illustration by Shannon Stirnweis, possibly for Sportsman magazine, date unknown, found at comicartfans.com)
LP: So you didn't have to go out and rent a lot of costumes or whatever.

SS: No, you could usually figure out something that looked pretty close. I used my wife for a model now and then... posed for a few of them myself. Whatever it took to get the job done.

LP: Ok, let me ask you about a specific cover I found on the internet... for "Real" magazine. It's from October 1962 and there's a blonde-haired gal and she's wearing a pith helmet and she's wearing shorts and a sort of halter top and -

(Cover by Shannon Stirnweis for Real magazine, October 1962 - image courtesy of MensPulpMags.com)
SS: And she's pointing a gun right at you. Yeah... uh, "Real" was not part of Magazine Management. That would have been somebody else that contacted me. I did a fair number of covers for them and some of them were just... you know, millions of people, like the battle of Iwo Jima (Shannon chuckles) just hundreds of these little bitty figures! But, you know, they all paid money.

LP: What did they pay for a cover? Do you remember?

SS: Uhh... it seems like it was $450 or $500...

(Cover by Shannon Stirnweis for Adventure magazine, April 1966)
LP: The reason I ask is because you arrived on the magazine illustration scene around the time when a lot of that seemed to be ending. You know, Collier's was already gone, the Saturday Evening Post was cutting back on the amount of illustration it was using, Cosmopolitan had a miniscule art budget compared to the previous years. So for you to get a fair amount of work from the men's adventure magazines is great, but did you also try showing your portfolio to some of those 'mainstream' magazines like the Post and Good Housekeeping and so on?

SS: I did sort of arrive as those magazines were on their last gasp. Yeah, those two years in the army really cost me some precious time in that regard. It really made the timing bad for me. On the other hand, I got a lot of memories and met a lot of people I never would have met so... I dunno who came out ahead.

(Interior spread by Shannon Stirnweis for Argosy magazine, December 1966 - image courtesy of Dave Groff)
LP: Yeah, well, I mean for me as someone who looks back at those timelines and has heard or read about a lot of different people's careers, you're arriving on the scene at a very interesting time because, you have, for instance, the guys who were at the Cooper studio during the '50s - Coby Whitmore, Joe DeMers, Joe Bowler and so on - they were all starting to think about moving away because the Cooper studio was a shadow of its former self by then.

SS: Yup.

LP: And meanwhile, here you are, young and eager and ready to get going...

SS: Right! (chuckling) R.G. Harris, I think it was... you ever hear of him?

LP: Absolutely.

SS: Yeah, well, I don't know if this is absolutely true but... Joe DeMers had just moved into town. This must have been a while before (I think the story was related by DeMers) but he went to see Harris to buy his house... and Harris had a five-car garage! All with these relatively spectacular cars in it!

LP: Wow...

SS: (chuckling) Yeah. And DeMers was fresh from the west coast and he thought, wow, you can really make a living here!

(Interior illustration by R.G. Harris for McCall's magazine, 1952)
LP: Yeah, well from talking to some of the guys who were there in the '50s, they were getting say, fifteen hundred to two thousand for a spread in the Post, for example. So you know, that was a very lucrative time for all those guys to be making a living in illustration.

SS: As far as lucrative goes, there's a history of that in illustration. For instance, John LaGatta, in one of his talks to us at Art Center - that was the main value of Lagatta, some of the things he said - told us about one time he was having a barbeque in the back yard and he had to excuse himself because he had a job to finish - or rather to start and finish - for the next day... and it was only a two thousand dollar job.

LP: Hah! "Only!"

SS: And that was in the middle of the depression - like, '32 or so! (he laughs)

LP: Absolutely incredible.

SS: Yeah. So... yes, there was a big difference when I came along.

Continued tomorrow...

Read Part 1 of the Shannon Stirnweis interview here

Shannon Stirnweis: "I wanted to be an artist when I grew up."

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 18:09:00 +0000

Each time I think I've seen it all, learned all the important names, discovered everything there is to discover about mid-20th century illustration, up pops another remarkable talent that was completely unknown to me. In this case I found a striking visual on the front of an old record jacket at a flea market; my first example of Shannon Stirnweis' art. That chance discovery cost me all of one dollar. So began the digging. Pretty soon I found other examples and even better, the artist's website with contact information. A correspondence ensued and not long after, a phone interview was arranged. Shannon generously shared the details of a long and prosperous career and helped fill in yet more pieces in the puzzle that is the history of the illustration business during the mid-20th century. Join me now for Part One of our conversation... ~ Leif Peng

Leif Peng: So I see on your website that you were born in Portland, Oregon in 1931 and you already had your ambitions fixed on becoming an artist while you were in grade school.

Shannon Stirnweis: Well, actually... it was kind of a military time, you know, being the beginning of WWII and I kind of couldn't decide between trying to go to Westpoint and trying to be an artist (or as they would say back then a 'commercial artist'). Then about the seventh or eighth grade I found out that I didn't have 20/20 vision which knocked me out of being an army officer. So I went the other way.

(Shannon Stirnweis, Whitman Publishing, 1962)
LP: Where were you seeing visual material that spurred your interest in drawing when you were a kid? Stuff like comic books, for example?

SS: Comic books hardly existed in my day. I can remember this kid down the street showing me these tremendous drawings he'd discovered... it was the first issue of Superman comics. Of course Hal Foster was doing drawings in the newspaper [comics], which we looked at. But no, I think I drew not trying to emulate anybody in particular, but I was encouraged by my family because they'd give me a couple of cents - or even a nickel or a dime - and I'd turn out the drawings. (Shannon chuckles)

SS: It was encouraged in the schools too... I remember in the seventh or eighth grade they had a competition to attend summer classes with the head of the education department at that time. I submitted my portfolio and got in and got to spend time with a lot of the other talented kids from the other schools, so my interest in drawing just sort of developed. Portland was relatively speaking sort of a backwater in the art world in those days, but I'd got an adult library card early and read all the books in the art section of the central library so by the time I was looking for an art college to attend, I'd developed a background of sorts.

LP: So you'd be looking at the lessons in these art books from the library and doing drawings based on that?

SS: Yeah, George Bridgman and so on. A lot of it was sort of obsolete, but still... probably the most pivotal book for me was Andrew Loomis' "Creative Illustration." And "Forty Illustrators and How They Work."

LP: You said your family encouraged you to draw, but do you think they had a sense that you might be able to make a living drawing when you grew up?

SS: Well, I remember this conversation I had with my grandmother when I was about fourteen. I told her that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up and she said, "There's a lot of good jobs in printing you know." (we both laugh)

LP: Grandmothers are very practical that way.

SS: Yes.

LP: So they were encouraging but they didn't necessarily think this was going to be something Shannon's going to make a good living at.

SS: Well, I was always a good student. I was sixth in my class of five hundred in high school. So my mother and my aunt insisted that I go to the University of Oregon for a year. So I did that... for a year. But I then immediately switched to Art Center College.

LP: So when you arrived at Art Center and suddenly you're completely immersed in an environment with other talented students... how did you feel?

SS: I felt like I was in the right place. But I didn't know how long I would last. At the time Art Center was filled almost entirely with WWII vets... and they were all so good, they scared the heck out of me! (we chuckle) One other kid had high school art and I had one year of college, but that didn't really mean much there. But I'll tell you, it was a very formative experience.

LP: I assume you had some excellent instructors at Art Center.

SS: Oh yeah. There was Stanley Reckless who was a drawing instructor and I think he owned part of the school.

(Stanley Reckless in his home studio, year unknown)
SS: I had Reynold Brown, who was a very capable guy. I got to know him quite well. We used to eat lunch together. He was a very good painter. And I took some classes at the Chouinard Art Institute which was nearby, and I had Pruett Carter there.

LP: Wow!

(Pruett Carter, Ladies Home Journal, July 1948)

SS: So I graduated in 1954 but I was immediately drafted. So I spent two years in the army in Germany, then when I came back they gave me the G.I. Bill so I figured I might as well get a little brush up. So I went back for two semesters and I had John LaGatta. He was a big name, but he was a terrible instructor. You'd put one line down and he'd come by and tell you it was wrong. (we both laugh) He never said why it was wrong or how to fix it... oh, he was not much fun that one semester.

(John LaGatta, Ladies Home Journal, December 1937)
SS: And I had Joseph Henninger, and I think that was about it for the name instructors.

LP: Oh yeah, Joe Henninger shared a studio with Ren Wicks, didn't he?

SS: Ren Wicks, yeah. I showed my portfolio to both of them when I left school.

(An ad co-illustrated by Ren Wicks and Joe Henninger, Life magazine, July 1952)
LP: And what did they say?

SS: Oh, haha... Henninger said, "You never changed that head the way I told you to." (we laugh) It was a pretty girl and I thought it was one of the best heads I ever painted! Ren Wicks was very flattering and very nice.

LP: Well, that's great! Wow, how amazing that you came in contact with some of the huge names in the illustration business.

SS: Oh, and Neil Boyle was in one of my starting classes, but then he went away and went to Chouinard and he really shone there. He was not particularly a star at Art Center before he left. He was a Canadian too, did you know that?

LP: You know I may have known that - I've done some writing on Boyle but I can't recall at the moment if I knew that.

(Neil Boyle, Saturday Evening Post, January 1963)
SS: Yeah, he went back home for, I think, just the summer semester and then he came back and they gave him a lot of flack, which they did sometimes at Art Center. So he decided the heck with this and he went to Chouinard and came out great!

LP: Now, backing up a bit to when you were drafted and went to Germany, did the army take advantage of your artistic abilities or did they have you peeling potatoes and standing guard and stuff like that?

SS: Well I had my portfolio with me when I went over, just a little four by five booklet, and I'd show it and they'd just lost a guy who painted the signs and so on. So I naturally wanted the job and they gave it to me. I was an ammunitions supply specialist, but they had me paint signs and so on and in my spare time I'd paint portraits of the officers and enlisted men for about fifty dollars a head. I think I painted thirty-five or forty portraits.

LP: Your bio says that you had the opportunity to visit a lot of art museums while you were there. What was that like?

SS: I'd never really been exposed to that much art before. I'd been stationed in the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in my training and got up to New York and to the Museum of Modern Art, so I'd seen a little bit of that stuff. But on my last leave in Germany I had twenty one days and I went by myself by train from Zweibrücken to Heidelberg to Switzerland, down to Rome and back up to Venice, up to Copenhagen and down to Paris and then back to Zweibrücken. So in twenty-one days I think I saw almost that many museums.

LP: I can imagine that must have been overwhelming.

SS: Yeah, it was staggering. It was too much. On the other hand, I had no alternative. I wasn't going to be there forever and that was my chance.

Continued tomorrow...

Ed Graham's Advice To Aspiring Cartoonists of the 1930's: "Get out of the business."

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Ed Graham began his career as a professional cartoonist in the 1920s when he moved from his home state of Indiana to New York City. There he enjoyed some admirable successes: Graham's work soon began appearing on covers and interiors of many major magazines including Life, Ballyhoo, College Humor, Collier's and Judge.

Graham was the subject of an article in the March 16, 1935 issue of the Columbia Daily Spectator. By then he'd had ten years experience in the cartooning business but struck a cynical tone when addressing his audience at a presentation at Columbia University: "Mr. Graham thoroughly denounced any rumor that would indicate that a cartoonist's life was easy and without hard luck and discouragements," wrote the article's author, Howard Hammer.

Graham allowed that the most determined newcomer might enjoy a modicum of success if he possessed the many virtues of "resourcefulness, hard work, careful attention to detail, and intellectual honesty."

(An Ed Graham gag from the "Annual Nudist Number" of Ballyhoo magazine, October, 1936)

As for that core skill of the cartoonist - the ability to come up with funny ideas - Graham suggested one consider the scenario of "the wolf at the door" to help motivate one's creative funny bone. "Then," quipped Graham, "the gags will be numerous." In other words, "Be funny or die."

"Those seeking to achieve fame and success in cartoon work without doing the necessary "ground-work" are doomed to disappointment and would do better to change immediately to some other vocation," Graham warned his audience, emphasizing that "nothing but discouragements will be encountered in the [cartooning] profession." The tenor of Graham's 1935 speech at Columbia certainly suggests he felt wounded by his years in cartooning. While he didn't entirely give up freelancing, that year it became a sideline.

Graham took a staff position with an advertising agency, a business he stuck with for the next three decades, eventually becoming vice-president and creative director at Outdoor Advertising Inc. in 1963. Graham also served as president of the New York Art Director's Club in 1962-3.

Cartooning may not have been Ed Graham's true calling, but at least one fellow cartoonist, E. Simms Campbell, who enjoyed a long and successful career in the gag panel racket, gave Graham credit for launching his career.

"My break came when I ran into Ed Graham," wrote Campbell. "There aren't many fellows like Ed. He and I had worked on the Phoenix at the same time back at the University of Chicago. Well, Ed Graham had come on to New York ahead of me, and he had already broken into the humorous magazines and made a name for himself. He had his knocks, but he was over the hump. He knew the editors, and they knew him. I showed him some of my drawings and gags and right off the bat he said, 'I'll take you around. This is stuff is good.' "*

*Quote by E. Simms Campbell from Ariel S. Winter's blog post on the artist.

Alan E. Cober: "Students, read this message!"

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 18:26:00 +0000

"When asked what I do for a living, I say I am a drawer. What do I draw? Pictures!"

(Detail from the cover of "How" magazine, Nov/Dec 1985)
"What kind of pictures? Anything interesting or challenging or not so interesting and a few that are boring."

"Oh," they say "for whom?" For myself, for magazines and myself, galleries and myself, books and myself, museums, advertising, posters, etc. I am a drawer!" They say, "Oh, you mean you are a commercial artist." My answer is no, because I'm only that when I collect my checks from the mailbox, [just like] Picasso. At all other times I am just an artist."

"Since when is being paid for interpreting and executing a picture uniquely and personally with expression, feeling and craft, called commercial?"

"The dictionary defines --

Commercial - adj. prepared merely for sale. I do not think I prepare anything just for sale nor do most of my cohorts.

Fine Arts - those arts which seek expression through beautiful or significant modes."

"I think that fits today's best illustrator-artist. More and more fit this category and more and more schools are bringing the student back to the fundamentals, where he is taught the most important elements are thinking, drawing, design and colour."

"Each of these is individually important at some stage of every picture. Where he will find the very most important elements are opening your eyes to see and opening your ears to listen."

"Many of you commercial artists should return to school. Photography did not put you out of business - you did, when you closed your eyes and opened your lens and shutter speeds."

Alan E. Cober, from "The Award Winners Speak," Eleventh Annual of American Illustration, 1969 - 70

Joe Cleary: "... inventive use of design, outstanding draftsmanship, and cool elegance."

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 16:34:00 +0000

Here's a photo of young Joe Cleary, from the December 1953 issue of Art Director & Studio News. Cleary was 27 at the time and being showcased in AD&SN as the "Upcoming Artist" of that issue. But Cleary had been demonstrating great artistic prowess for many years before that.

When he was just six years old, everyone in Joe Cleary's grammar school class had to design a Christmas tree. Cleary's design was chosen as the best and the class built a full-size version under his supervision. Recalling that incident years later, Cleary would joke that it was his first experience as an art director.

At the conclusion of high school Cleary earned a scholarship to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Unfortunately his father was the sort of manly man who didn't think art was an appropriately masculine pursuit, so Clearly had to take his classes on the sly.

(Detail from a spread in Boys' Life magazine, April 1967)

Ultimately his studies were interrupted by a three-year stint in the Merchant Marines during WWII.

(Saturday Evening Post, 1965)

Thanks to a chance discovery of some canvas scraps while serving onboard a Maritimes vessel, Cleary decided to take advantage of his artistic abilities to make a little pocket money. Using a box of Crayola crayons and these canvas scraps, Cleary would sketch nudie girls in whatever poses were requested by the other sailors. Who knew there were so many patrons of the arts in the Merchant Marines?

(Harold's Club Reno pinup calendar page,December 1965)
This foray into commissioned work earned Cleary a tidy sum, and upon being discharged he returned to CCAC with renewed fervour. One this second go he won first prizes in both a student painting competition and at the California State Fair. He was also awarded another scholarship for further study, but before he could finish school he was picked up by the Logan & Cox agency in San Francisco. By the time he was featured in AD&SN as an "Upcoming Artist," Cleary had completed professional work for an impressive list of clients: Standard Oil, Knob Hill Coffee, Rainier Beer and many others.

Cleary's career chugged along nicely for the rest of the '50s. He had established himself as a top-rate West Coast commercial artist - but then came a call even this now-seasoned professional wasn't expecting. The Saturday Evening Post had taken notice of his work and was offering a story assignment. Thinking the call was surely a prank being played by one of his colleagues, Cleary turned down the job. "Well, maybe we'll try you again later," said the caller. Only after hanging up the phone did Cleary realize the call had been real. Happily, the Post did call back, and soon others were calling as well. Like a handful of West Coast artists before him - Fred Ludekens, Stan Galli, Bruce Bomberger and a few others - Cleary had made the leap to the national stage.

(Ladies Home Journal, 1964)

(Saturday Evening Post, 1965)

(Good Housekeeping, 1968)

During these years Cleary continued to keep busy with advertising work as well. He was now associated with the Patterson & Hall studio in San Francisco. Fellow P&H artist Charlie Allen recalled, "I 'directed' this shot for a booze ad in the P&H photo studio of my friend, Joe Cleary, (one heck of an artist and sculptor). Joe posed for the guy with guitar."

(Charlie Allen artwork featuring Joe Cleary as the model w/ the guitar)

Cleary's work always presented an intriguing mix of realism and expressionism, evidence of the artist's life-long passion for creative exploration and artistic expression. The mood and the materials of the 1960s encouraged experimentation, and Cleary, like many others, did not shirk from the opportunity to place one foot in the camp of fine art while keeping the other in the commercial.

(Painting by Joe Cleary, year unknown)

Years later, when Cleary had returned to his alma mater, the California College of Arts and Crafts - now as an instructor - he would share his fascinating experimental techniques with his students. Famed comic book painter/illustrator Dan Brereton studied with Cleary and recalls,"He had this wonderful technique... he would do a painting in Doc Martin watercolor dyes, then cover it with a layer of white glue. It created this wonderful soft and vibrant texture. [Joe] was very thoughtful and positive, low key. His work was so damn gorgeous. He was a big influence on me then."

(Argosy magazine, 1965)

Renowned illustrator Greg Manchess was also one of Cleary's students and wrote about him on his blog muddycolors.com: "Joe laid down a loose wash of colorful and rich dyes, then poured on a layer of Elmer’s glue. The glue made a strange and soft blur of the first washes, running them together. He would wait for it to dry into a glassy layer, then painted the shapes and lines in acrylic strokes on top of it. More dye washes, Elmer’s, and acrylics repeated until sometimes the illustration board was a quarter inch thick of glue and paint. It was luminous and seemed otherworldly on it’s own."

(Saturday Evening Post, 1963)

Over time, like so many other mid-century illustrators chasing fewer and fewer assignments, Cleary began to pursue other creative avenues. I suspect that he felt encouraged to do so by assignments like this one for the 1969 General Electric calendar.

Cleary's credit box on the back cover of the calendar even hints at the path that lay ahead for the artist...

Chuck Pyle, director of the Illustration Program at the Academy of Art University, told me, "[Joe Cleary is a] fellow Bohemian Club member and I have always admired his inventive use of design, outstanding draftsmanship, and cool elegance."

Chuck Pyle continues, "Joe has turned his love of the female form from brilliant illustration work in such diverse mediums as glue and acrylics (glue before the acrylics) to bronze sculpture, where he creates beautiful evocations of the women around him."

(Sculpture by Joe Cleary, "Young Dancer," year unknown)
One of the most impressive pieces I was able to locate is the "Mother River Memorial," which Cleary created in 2001. It stands on the Mississippi river front in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana and miraculously survived the ravages of Hurricane Katrina.

(Mother River Memorial, New Orleans, 2001 by Joe Cleary)
We'll leave the last word on Joe Cleary to Chuck Pyle: "Behind his sculpture work, which like Bruce Wolfe, is Joe's great strength, is his almost impish sense of humor. Joe always has a twinkle in his eye,in tandem with his gentlemanly manner, and his sculpted walking stick of his own design. Joe is worthy of more acclaim - I'm a fan!"

* It can be challenging finding many examples of Joe Cleary's illustration work online, but thanks to the generosity of several Today's Inspiration Facebook Group members; David Clemons, Lawrence Levine & Dave Groff I was able to present a substantial selection today.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi, Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 13:46:00 +0000

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

Even as Ramponi’s career transitioned more toward teaching, in 1978 he was hired to produce concept art for the low-budget film Starcrash that hoped to capitalize on Star Wars’ recent popularity.

It could probably go without saying that Ramponi’s drawings were ultimately far more interesting than the resultant movie.

Ramponi even kept his hand in poster design throughout the 1980s, with the organizers of the international Holiday on Ice shows commissioning him to create their official posters several years in a row. Ramponi eventually retired in 1992 after having served many years as the head of the Roberto Rossellini Institute for Cinematography and Television’s animation department. The artist delighted readers in his day and continues to garner new admirers.

Ramponi the man also seems to have been admired and cherished by those who knew him, including several of his former students who have reached out to me in response to these new Lost Art Books collections. Mario Verger, who writes a lengthy introduction to Volume 1 of Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi (the basis for much of what I know about Ramponi), has been a vocal champion of both the man and the artist.

(Above: an image from Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi before and after being restored for publication)
Verger recounts in affectionate detail how as an animation student in the mid-1980s he had the good fortune to cross paths with and eventually be befriended by Federico Fellini, who in turn introduced the young aspirant to Ramponi. Verger has carried the torch for the rest of us ever since, beckoning us to pay attention to this unjustly forgotten master artist’s work.

To quote Verger’s introduction, “Ramponi loved art, especially Francisco Goya and Leonardo da Vinci...when he worked, he continuously listened to classical music: Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn were his preferred composers....He subscribed to a saying dear to Romans of his generation: ‘ Ma che me frega,’ that is, ‘ What do I care?’ reflecting a spirit of independence unencumbered by societal expectations.”

And there’s something telling about a daughter’s love. Anna Maria Ramponi, Niso’s oldest child, couldn’t have been more enthusiastic and encouraging about our plan to honor her father’s legacy in our Lost Art Books series. An ocean and a language may have separated us, but a shared affection for her father and his work transcended any barriers to understanding.

(Niso Ramponi, c. 1958)
When Ramponi’s wife died in 2000, he moved from his beloved Rome to live out his last days with their daughter Anna Maria in the tranquil town of Bozzolo in the province of Mantova before eventually passing away himself in 2002 at age 78.

(Niso Ramponi, c. 1990)
Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.

KREMOS: Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1+2 from Joseph Procopio on Vimeo.

A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career.

Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi, Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 01:10:00 +0000

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

Ramponi’s pen name, Kremos, was born of necessity: Like many of his generation, after the war Ramponi was conscripted into the Italian army for a year of service. Loath to abandon his budding cartooning and illustration career but barred by military regulations from working as a freelancer, Ramponi conspired with a friend named Sandro Cremo, who acted as his intermediary to secure and deliver freelance art assignments on Ramponi’s behalf. To maintain the ruse, Ramponi signed his work Kremos, a pseudonym that stuck even after his discharge from military duty.

In the mid-1950s, however, after a dispute with another artist who tried to lay legal claim to the name Kremos, Ramponi abandoned the handle and began to sign his work simply by his first name, Niso.

Keen-eyed U.S. collectors of 1950s men’s magazines such as Jest, Gaze, or Gee-Whiz will find the occasional Kremos or Niso-signed cartoon within those pages.

For the most part, though, Ramponi’s work — while every bit as accomplished if not superior to his U.S. counterparts — was rarely seen outside of his homeland until the publication of the two Lost Art Books devoted to preserving his work.

By the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Ramponi’s popularity had reached a point where he was now also creating most of the covers for Il Travaso, which allowed him to stretch into other media, painting with a sensuous verve that sacrificed none of the fun of his ink drawings.

Yet on top of those assignments, Ramponi kept working on animated features. But the workload must have swamped even Ramponi’s seemingly Herculean capacities when he accepted an offer in 1962 to teach animation at the Scuola della Vasca Navale. In short order, Ramponi’s appearances in Il Travaso became infrequent and eventually stopped altogether in 1963.

But Ramponi certainly didn’t stop producing work. In addition to his teaching, he worked for the next couple of decades in television on a wide variety of projects, winning top industry awards for his animation on some of Italy’s most popular TV programs, such as Carosello in 1972.

(Above: a scene from a Ramponi-animated Carosello commercial cartoon, c.1960s)
Concluded tomorrow...

Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.

A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career. Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi , Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 22:37:00 +0000

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

In 1948 Ramponi found the perfect venue for his talents at the weekly satirical magazine Il Travaso (roughly The Overflow) and its equally irreverent sibling Il Travasissimo.

It was in these sometimes-confiscated periodicals that Ramponi made his name drawing some of the world’s best “good girl” art for 15 years, and where he was bequeathed a variety of nicknames.

His editors dubbed him The Scarlet Pimpernel born from a frustration of never knowing where Ramponi could be found, especially when deadlines loomed.

His fellow staff artists dubbed him Sovrano di Donnine, or King of the Little Ladies, for the curvaceous comic beauties he excelled at drawing in nearly every issue. Below is a video of Ramponi and his cartoonist colleagues at Il Travaso in the 1950s promoting a reader's poll to choose which staff artist's drawing of feminine beauty should be crowned "Miss Travaso."

As contemporary cartoonist Jerry Carr describes in the foreword to Volume 2 of Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, “Kremos’ s work reminds us of the layouts of Hank Ketcham, the polish of Bill Ward, the humor of Dan DeCarlo, and the grace of Jack Cole—while exemplifying something entirely original."

It was in these early years at Il Travaso that Ramponi met his wife, married in 1950, and started a family shortly thereafter.

Throughout the 1950s, Ramponi not only supplied a steady stream of weekly gag panels to Il Travaso, but he also occasionally contributed pin-up drawings to other periodicals, such as SignorinaOtto, accepted assignments for more movie poster work, and worked as an animator on numerous Italian productions, including I Picchiatelli (1952) and Attanasio Cavallo Vanesio (1953).

Continued tomorrow...

Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.

A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career. Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi , Part2

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 22:40:00 +0000

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

The Allies liberated Italy, but not before bombing the animation facilities in which Ramponi worked, leaving the young Roman artist without a steady job.

It wasn’t long, however, before he found himself collaborating with another young cartoonist looking for a way to ply their shared trade in the upended capital city. For a couple of years Ramponi had been chumming around with fellow cartoonist Federico Fellini (seen below), and when the future filmmaker hatched a plan to open the Funny Face Shop to sell caricatures to the occupying U.S. soldiers, Ramponi was happy to take part in the enterprise.

Not too long after, Fellini’s friendship with Roberto Rossellini started opening doors for the aspiring filmmaker. In 1945, Fellini pitched the idea for an animated short that would accompany Rossellini’s latest production, Rome Open City. When the producers approved the idea, Fellini immediately pulled in Ramponi and their mutual friend Luigi Giobe to head up the animation team that would work on a short titled, Hello Jeep!

After months of work, new producers took over the financing of the Rossellini film, and unfortunately they immediately halted production on the nearly finished cartoon.

But if one opportunity was trampled mid-bloom, others quickly sprung up from the rubble of post-war Rome for the young Ramponi. Besides finding other animation jobs, Ramponi tried his hand at various syndicated newspaper comic strips (Le Prodezze di Hamedin, Ivo il Primitivo, etc.).

By the late 1940s, Ramponi also found himself in high demand as a movie poster and lobby card artist for both Italian productions...

... as well as the likes of Walt Disney, who was only then able to start releasing many of his studio’s movies in Italy.

Continued tomorrow...

Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.

A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career. Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi , Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 23:18:00 +0000

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

Although Niso Ramponi (1924–2002) worked under numerous names - Kremos, Niso, Nys O’ Ramp - he occupies a singular space as Italy’s premiere pin-up cartoonist.

From the mid-1940s through the early 1960s, Ramponi’s work could be found everywhere from newspaper comic strips to movie posters to the covers of weekly magazines.

Born in Rome in 1924, it was not long before Ramponi’s drawing gifts began to emerge and be recognized by his parents and teachers. As a child he won first place in a national drawing contest, and in grade school his teacher would often request for Ramponi to stay after school to draw large backdrops on the blackboard of various settings relevant to the next day’s lessons.

When it came time for high school, Ramponi was accepted into an art preparatory school at Via Ripetta in Rome, where he studied under Walter Lazzaro of the highly influential Lazzaro family of artists. Lazzaro was known to be a reserved and severe instructor, but he immediately recognized the young Ramponi’s exceptional talent, and a lifelong friendship eventually formed between pupil and instructor.

Although Ramponi is better known today for his beautiful cartoons and magazine covers, he actually spent much of his life working in animation.

Niso Ramponi, 1955
During World War II, Ramponi’s uncle, a documentary filmmaker, secured the teenager a job in the animation department of the Italian newsreel agency, INCOM. The young Ramponi left art school to seize the opportunity, and he quickly found himself acquiring increasing amounts of responsibility, including helming several animated shorts as director.

Continued tomorrow...

Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’ s work anywhere in the world.

A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career. Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Tom Bjarnason: "Do what you do best and hope to hell you make a living at it"

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 22:28:00 +0000

When Gerry Lazare recently shared his recollections of being an illustrator in Canada during the mid-20th century, he dedicated his entry to Tom Bjarnason. Just the other day, while working on the text of the "Art of Will Davies" book, I came across a brochure from the 1970s featuring the work of several prominent Toronto illustrators - including Tom Bjarnason. Suddenly I realized how remiss I've been to have never yet featured Tom's work on Today's Inspiration. Tom was a fabulous, creative artist - and a helluva nice guy. I feel so fortunate to have known him. So here goes...

Tom Bjarnason was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His mother was an artist and he had seven siblings, of which he was the youngest. Tom attended the Winnipeg School of Art and later, In Detroit, Michigan, the Meinzingers Art School, where he studied for three years. His first job was at a Windsor, Ontario art studio called Greenhow & Webster, but by the mid-'50s he was in Toronto at TDF, one of Canada's premier art studios, creating advertising and editorial art alongside his friend, Will Davies.

(Will & Tom modelling for reference photos for an illustration assignment, 1963)

In the '60s Tom moved to London, England and produced art for publications in the UK, Scandinavia and Germany. "I arrived in London, wanted to stay - but ran out of money," Tom recalled. "So I looked around to see if I could get work. An art director at Good Housekeeping suggested I get a good agent and gave me the name of one. The agent promised to show my work around and it wasn't long before he called and said, "I've got a story to illustrate. Want to do it?"

(A 1965 illustration for the British magazine, "Woman" from the Flickr collection of totallymystified)

Returning to Toronto in 1970, Tom began creating stamp designs, both for Canada Post and Unicover Corp. in Wyoming. "I meant for it to be temporary... but I ended up staying." (And he was still here when I first met him at 63 A Yorkville Ave. in Toronto in the late 1990s).

(Four of a series of Canadian stamps Tom designed in 1978)

Along with assignments for magazines like Canadian and Weekend...

... Tom created artwork for corporate clients such as Canadian Pacific, Royal Trust, Toyota, DeHavilland Aircraft and many others.

(Above & below: Department of National Defence, Canada, early 1980s)

Tom talked about his influences, saying he certainly had some when he was younger, and how art directors would mention big name US illustrators when handing out assignments. "If you wanted to make a living you had to reproduce that style," he said. But, "when you come right down to it, you do what you do best and hope to hell you make a living at it, because you'll never get to the top if you're too busy looking over your shoulder at someone else."

By the time I became aware of his work in the late 1980s, Tom was well into a period of creating beautiful, huge, semi-abstract works - sometimes for clients but often just for his own pleasure.

"I'm always interested in composition," said Tom, "and I think that's what I like most about my work. I do a lot of it by instinct. I take a very personal approach to composition."

When I met Tom, he had mostly retired from what could be called "illustration." He still painted representational work, mostly aviation art, some of which would be printed in Canadian Legion magazine, but mostly for gallery display or private collections. Nine of Tom's paintings are in the collection of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

He had moved on to building three-dimensional abstract installation pieces, and whenever he visited, if someone was throwing out, say, a broken fax machine, he'd take it. You knew it was going to be dismantled and some part of the guts would likely become an element in one of Tom's sculptures.

Tom was a soft spoken, thoughtful person with a gentle sense of humour. When he spoke with you, you got the sense that he was genuinely interested in hearing what you had to say on whatever subject was being discussed. He used to say, "I don't really know where I'm headed. I just want to continue doing what I'm doing. It's the doing that's the fun.I never worry about getting awards, I just like doing what I like to do and if somebody else likes it, well, that's even better."

Tom Bjarnason passed away in August 2009. He was 84 years old.

Postscript: From Illustrator to Painter (The Final Step - Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 17:30:00 +0000

By Gerald Lazare

As an illustrator, I loved doing anything with a foreign setting. My ancestors had come from France. In 1979, I made another trip to Europe, starting in Paris to sketch and paint and produce a show. In 1981, I had an exhibition ant the Prince Arthur Galleries hosted by the French and Italian embassies in Toronto. A catalogue was produced in French, English and Italian called Lazare in Europe.

Chien du Café

Pont Neuf

Rue de Siene

Venetian Masks

Venetian Market

People in the city, often the protagonists in the fiction I illustrated, were all around me, the girls at Murray’s restaurant at the Park Plaza hotel where I had breakfast near my studio and Country Style Donuts where I had coffee. The nearby popcorn man at ROM, people on the subway, teenagers in the mall, they all became my subject matter. What fun! I remember it all with such pleasure! I wish I was back there again. With my pictures I tried to stop it, to capture it in a frame to look at and have forever.

The Girls at Murray’s

Coffee Style Donuts

Popcorn Man

St. George

Mall Rats

Nude on a Mattress

In the Ottawa Citizen newspaper Cathy Scafter wrote, “His painting of a passenger on a bus, a waitress, musicians in a mall, opens our eyes to the most ordinary marvels. He feels enough empathy for people in the city to depict them with perfect candor." I’ve been painting now for over 35 years, had many shows and awards both here and in the United States. But each new picture is a challenge, an adventure and I still feel that I’m learning.

I’d like to thank Ivan Kocmarek and Leif Peng who still care and remember without their help, generosity and expertise I couldn’t have produced this story.

Gerald Lazare.

Text and images to this series are © Gerald Lazare

* Read Ivan Kocmarek's articles on Gerald Lazare's early career in Canadian comic books here and here.

Postscript: From Illustrator to Painter (The Final Step, Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 17:47:00 +0000

By Gerald Lazare

The story of Artists who both illustrate and paint has a long history. Many illustrators painted and many painters illustrated. One of the 20th Century’s most famous painters, Claude Monet, was a cartoonist and illustrator before The Water Lillies and our own Jack Bush illustrated for decades before he turned to abstraction. Edward Hopper, The great American realist, was an illustrator much of his working life. There are obvious differences between the two disciplines. As an illustrator, you create images that enhance stories by writers for publishers or ads for the business world that promote companies usually, in both cases, working with art directors.

As a painter, you tell your own story. You make pictures of what you love and what matters in your life and imagination and you do this alone, without direction from anyone else. For some artists this can be problematic. As an illustrator you are secure in a system that asks you to work for them and pays you well to do so. As a painter, you are vulnerable on your own, showing your work, hoping someone will be attracted and moved enough to want your picture.

When I was a teenager, I discovered the work of the master painters, especially the ones who drew well: Rubens, Watteau, Ingres, Degas, Sargent and many others. They became my hallmark, my school and inspiration. When I was 25, in 1953, I went to Europe for over a year’s study of their work in the museums and earned my living there as an illustrator. When I returned and continued my freelance life as an illustrator, I dreamt of someday being a painter, painting my own pictures and subjects. When I left illustrating to paint in 1974, I was in my 40s and realized, if I didn’t begin to paint then, it would be too late.

I had more illustration assignments than ever from both the Canadian and American markets and was winning awards in the U.S. I had no idea the future would bring a decline in illustration with the exodus of many magazines and their fiction and the rise of photography and computer technology. With the best wishes of my clients and agent in New York, I changed my course and changed my drawing board for an easel. Within two years I had my first one-man show at the Nancy Poole Gallery in Toronto.

Gallery Show Invitation: “Coffee Break”

It nearly sold out and caught the attention of the critics.

Gallery Show review, Toronto Star, 1976

My years of illustrating added much to my success as a painter. I had learned to compose a picture. I had learned to draw well. I had an understanding of value and colour. I had disciplined myself to work hard. The main change was subject matter… but even there, it carried over to some extent.

I had always enjoyed doing faces and portraits and art directors would often comment on that ability. I was advised more than once to consider portrait painting as a career. I enjoyed painting the public, but I soon discovered painting your family and friends was more enjoyable.

Portrait of George

Portrait of Dawn (Commissioned)

Hair (Portrait of artist’s son)

Portrait of the artist

Portrait of Setsuko (the artist’s wife)

A lot of my paintings include cityscapes. The old Junction where I grew up is still etched in my soul. My parents were storekeepers and my walks to school and back passing the shops and movie theatres and what I later called “street furniture” became my early themes and awakened in me a love of architecture I hadn’t known. In 1992, The City of Toronto gave me a retrospective titled “Painting the City” and quoted me:

"Born and raised in Toronto, I have always been a lover of cities and find the human comedy is played out in infinite variety on a city stage. The way we work, play and build our shelters and giant towers to commerce presents an inexhaustible opportunity for the artistic imagination. I’m drawn to a personal view of the city… the soul of it, rather than historical documentation."

Cat’s Paw

Hollywood Jobbers

Winchester Hotel

The Canary Restaurant

When I was in public school, I discovered the big bands and Jazz. When I was a teenager doing the comics I created Drummy Young, a crime busting band leader. As an illustrator, I did LP and CD covers for Jazz musicians.

Art Hodes CD

Frank Rosolino LP cover

In 1974, for my first show, I painted “Take the A train,” my homage to Duke Ellington, the famous composer and band leader who died that year. It was accepted by the Ontario Society of Artists Exhibition in 1975 and later a print was made and sold to fans and musicians all over the world. Ellington’s sophisticated music has influenced my work and like most musicians, painters are improvisers and composers too.

Take the A Train

Washington Square Rag

Live music is especially rejuvenating and I’ve spent many hours sketching in Toronto jazz clubs like The Montreal Bistro and Café du Copins ... long gone now.

John Lewis sketch at Café des Copains

Concluded tomorrow.

An Illustrator’s Story – Magazines and Newspapers (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 20:37:00 +0000

By Gerald Lazare

Canadian Homes Magazine had features like travel and gardening still popular features for magazines. Its art director was Art Guest, a lovely gentle man who always had time to chat. They featured a travel spread I enjoyed illustrating and here are two examples:

Canadian Homes Magazine was full of ideas for the family. “Backyard Fun for Youngsters,” (1961) was a do-it-yourself article on inexpensive things for kids to play on. Drawing children was a constant requirement for illustrators.

"Sewer pipe is great for crawling."

The corporate world needed illustration to embellish brochures, ads, and annual reports, to create a climate of confidence in companies of all kinds. Trade magazines had articles helping industries tackle marketing and employee concerns.

An article on growing produce, processing, packaging, and delivery to supermarkets in one illustration for Executive Magazine by Charles G. O’Neill (1961).

“Why so Many Executives Flop,” by Tony McVeigh, Executive Magazine (1960).

Layout for Noranda on building houses (1960’s)

From a brochure soliciting people to work as agents for the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States.

My cartooning ability was still an asset as an illustrator. Magazines often used cartoons to illustrate humorous articles and for companies to promote their products.

A 1950s Chateau Gai magazine ad done while as an illustrator working at Bomac Engravers.

Television graphics for children’s programs were ubiquitous as well. I did numerous assignments for “The Polka Dot Door” TVO Ontario’s award winning children’s show 1971-73.

"The King's Butter," The Polka Dot Door, TVO Ontario (c. early '70s)

4 Favourites

An artist always has a few favourite illustrations that, for some reason or other, pleased him more than others he may have done. This is very subjective and is no reflection on the rest of his work or professional competence. Four I liked especially and why.

In the McClelland and Stewart book Johnny in the Klondike, two boys watch the villain strangle a chicken. The text reads “Taut with excitement, they watched in horror as the man took the chicken deftly by the neck and gave a quick twist.” This was a bit of a problem. Never having seen anyone actually do this, I had to visualize it. I had a friend act it out minus the bird, which I added later. The arch of his back hid the poor chicken with one leg and tail feathers telling the story and solving a difficult problem. The tree places the boys and reader the right distance from the act.

Johnny in the Klondike, McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1964

When you’re given a story like My Fair Lady to illustrate, you tend to be a little more focused. The likes of Lerner and Loewe and their adaption from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion challenges you to do your best. Edwardian fashions and the elegance of the plot and charm of the two lead characters Eliza and Professor Higgins are irresistible for any illustrator worth his salt.

My Fair Lady, Four Winds Press, 1967

The final illustration in the book with Eliza and Higgins’ mother plotting to bring him around involved a row with Higgins at the top of a winding staircase shouting down on the two below. By putting Eliza and the mother at the bottom of the left page and Higgins at the top of the right, shouting down across the two pages, I created a feeling of the actual space described in the text.

Another assignment from Scott Foresman and Co. was a story called “The Squealer.” It was about a young boy accused of squealing on a very tough gang member who is looking for him to administer revenge. He is approached by the very angry boy in front of his high school and has to plead innocence and convince his adversary. It is the pivotal illustration in the story. After sketching the two boys arguing, I added two other students hearing the commotion and looking over in a concerned way. I felt it added an element of sound to the picture and brought the picture out of the ordinary. I only have the sketch okayed and returned by the publisher for finish. I never did see the published finished art and would love to.

Crosshatch came naturally to me and I’ve always liked things lyrical. The portrait of Fanz Schubert falls into this category. I like it because of its style and mood.

When I was barely a teenager, I saw the work of European painters who were great draughtsmen. Edgar Degas, Antoine Watteau, and Augustus John who attended the Slade School in London that stressed drawing in its curriculum. Edmund Sullivan, the great English illustrator and Charles Dana Gibson, the American, were also early favourites whose work I studied assiduously.

I look back on my 20 years as an illustrator fondly and with great memories. It seemed to go so quickly and when my peers awarded me CAPIC’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995, I couldn’t have been happier. Since then I’ve been painting pictures for myself for over 35 years, but each picture, whether it be the comics, illustration or fine art has taken me to another place away from the ordinary world into the wonderful possibilities of the imagination.

Next: From Illustrator to Painter (The Final Step)

An Illustrator’s Story – Magazines and Newspapers (Part I)

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 14:09:00 +0000

By Gerald Lazare

In the 50’s and 60’s magazines flourished. Television had made its entrance but the print medium still remained strong with lots of fiction and articles to make pictures for. A challenging mix of love stories, westerns, crime drama, business, travel, politics — you name it, needed stand-out graphics that would catch the eye.

“Blind Spot,” by John Rhodes (1962)

Many new trends and styles came and went and art directors would often demand new directions and expect you to work in a number of styles.

One Art Director who kept my phone humming was Ron Butler with a great smile and easy manner. He was Art Director at The Star Weekly and The Star Weekly Novel, a section of the paper dedicated to fiction. Many great writers had a vehicle for their prose in novella form and they all needed black and white illustrations to embellish them.

I did many of them for Ron (which you can see both above and below), as did most of the top illustrators of the day. I loved reading the story and choosing a scene to draw and bring the characters to life. Unfortunately few newspapers or magazines contain fiction today. Here are a few more of the Star Weekly illustrations I did for novellas:

“Like with a Preacher,” by Ross Annett (1964)

“The Day the Bell Rang,” by Vera Henry (1962)

“Final Judgment,” by Pamela Barrington (1964)

Liberty Magazine, owned by flamboyant entrepreneur Jack Kent Cooke, specialized in articles on Canadian crime, Hollywood gossip, disasters, and often paradoxically enlightening stories on Canadian history by Frank Rasky, who also art directed. The Canada policy was highlighted by city names in their titles, such as: “The Vancouver Killer who Trusted his Wife,” “Curious Case of the Murderous Halifax Doctor,” or “Montreal Darling, Cheating Honeybunch, I’ll Murder You.”

“The Psychiatrist who Caught his Patient’s Craze,” by Dr. Robert Linder (Liberty Magazine, 1956)

“Ontario’s Two Wildest Forest Fires,” by Frank Rasky (Liberty Magazine, 1959)

Hugh Garner, the legendary writer wrote for the magazine and I met him at Liberty Magazine while delivering work, in the same way I met Pierre Berton at publishing houses. When I look back one of the advantages of being a freelance illustrator was all the interesting accomplished people one gets to meet when delivering your work to the offices of clients. Some of them become friends and enrich your life in myriad ways.

“Curious Case of the Murderous Halifax Doctor,” by Alan Hynd (Liberty Magazine, 1960)

A constant dilemma of being an illustrator is the transition from your original art to the reproduction. Your audience never sees the original, but only it’s reproduction on the page.

“My Dear Dorothea,” by George Bernard Shaw (Chatelaine Magazine, 1956)

Before the digital revolution, technicians working on a press with inks, paper, and plates, would pull proofs prior to reproducing your art. The Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘proof’: “printing a trial impression taken from type or film used for making corrections before final printing.”

“Yellow, Yellow, Catch a Fellow,” by Margaret Flynn (Canadian Home Journal, 1957)

Depending on many factors, but mostly the skill and dedication of the technicians, the reproduction could be very true to your original or a mess that would make your heart drop. Often it fell somewhere in between.

“Woman in the Mirror,” by Virginia Akin (1959)

“The Tie that Binds,” by Loretta Burrough (1959)

It depended on the art director to okay the proof and thus the final reproduction. One art director who cared about quality was Gene Aliman at Maclean’s Magazine. He was a no-nonsense, serious perfectionist. I often saw on his desk proofs from the painter marked with hundreds of written corrections for the printer to follow. Below is a very early illustration done in 1955 for Maclean’s Magazine. It showed my love for Albert Dorne’s work. His style was very animated with a strong line approach and washes of coloured inks floated on top. He also was an excellent draftsman and this showed up in the way that he drew hands.

“The Great Carlak’s Bitter Magic,” by John I. Keasler (1955)

Later, with my love of painterly illustrators and fine artists, my style became more opaque and painterly.

Continued on Friday...

An Illustrator’s Story – A Life of Deadlines (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 16:09:00 +0000

By Gerald Lazare

Art Directors at publishing houses usually pick the artists for a particular book. Matching the story with the right artist is very important to the success of the book. Frank Newfeld was one of the best, with a very discerning taste in both the commercial and fine arts. When he called me to illustrate the textbook Parlons Francais 1, he definitely did not want a Dick and Jane effort. All the lessons inside were skillfully worked around the activities of an upper middle class Parisian family. He wanted, as I remember, a light sophisticated style with contour drawings like Modigliani.

Parlons Francais 1 Longmans, Green & Company 1959

Another assignment from Frank was an anthology of Canadian writers in the Canadian Centennial Library Series by Claude Bissell. The opportunity to illustrate stories by leading Canadian authors such as Ethel Wilson, Morley Callaghan, Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies and Gabrielle Roy was a dream job. A great Art Director can lift your reputation with lovely commissions like this.

Great Canadian Writing, The Centennial Library, McClelland and Stewart Ltd. by Claude Bissel, 1966. This includes portraits of Roger Lemelin, Mordecai Richler, Gabriel Roy, Morely Callaghan, Robertson Davies, Ethel Wilson, Stephen Leacock, and Brian Moore

While I’m on the subject of famous people, the ability to get an exacting likeness is an essential arrow in any illustrator’s quiver and it comes up more than you might think. An early lesson in the Famous Artists Course stresses the need for reference material on famous people in politics, theatre, sports, science, music, etc., and they even supplied categories to build a system on. Now I know, as a painter who does portraits, I was helped and prepared by all the assignments I received as an illustrator. Here are a few done for various magazines, books and newspapers in the '50s and '60s:

(Chaplin)

(Lincoln)

(Hitler)

(At the bottom you can see John F. Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro)

(Johann Sebastian Bach)

For portraits of people who are not universally well-known like the World War 1 aces below (Freddie McCall, Bill Claxton and Donald Maclaren) photos were supplied to me by the publishers.

Many high school text books dealt with short stories to encourage reading and language. The stories were often about famous Canadians in all walks of life and Canadian culture in general. For the illustrator it meant a lot of research and often difficult compositions. One such book was “Outward Bound” published by the MacMillan Company of Canada in 1965.

A second colour done on overlays helped to enhance the work.

Sometimes a publisher will want changes. The illustrator then was nearly always required to submit sketches for approval so they could see what they were going to get.

The Secret of Hermit’s Bay (1962) by Elinor Lyon from the Follett Publishing Company in Chicago was one I enjoyed because its title figure Mr. Brown was such a great anti-hero… a scruffy loner who teamed up with three kids to solve a mystery. It also had a wrap-around full colour cover that I could design myself. Mr. Brown was really an anti-hero but sweet underneath it all. On the cover I depicted him as more sweet than menacing and scruffy and the instructions that came back from the Art Director were to “Make him uglier!”

(Initial sketch sent to publisher)

I did and the cover was a big hit and as everyone knows the cover sells the book so I received many more to do.

The American Melting Pot agenda required illustrators skilled in depicting urban ethnic populations, so publishers were always after that particular talent. My agent told me they thought I fitted the bill and started to send me tough city dramas like The 23rd Street Crusaders. It was the story of a street gang whose fortunes are changed by an outsider who introduces them to basketball.

The book that gained me probably the most celebrity was Queenie Peavy (1966) by the famous southern children’s author Robert Burch. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had seen my work in Jean Little’s stories and told his publisher he wanted me to illustrate his latest book. He found me through my agent. The Georgia writer was quite famous with a string of successful award winning books but Queenie Peavy became by far his most successful and was published and re-published in many languages around the world. It won the prestigious Jane Addams Award for both writing and illustration in 1967.

(Viking Press, 1966)

The comic strip work I did in my youth was immediately devoured by its equally young audience and I was recognized for it by many fans right away. When I started my painting career with a series of one man shows many years later in 1975, I received reviews in the major newspapers and art magazines and positive reactions from many generous collectors. But, as an illustrator you are anonymous to the public unless you have a vehicle like The Saturday Evening Post and are Norman Rockwell. Illustration receives little recognition. I think of all the extremely talented men and women of illustration who I knew and whose work I admired and followed avidly in that golden period. Attention should be paid! They should be noted and remembered in our Art History for all they did to brighten our lives.

Continued tomorrow...

Dedicated to the memory of Tom Bjarnason

An Illustrator’s Story – A Life of Deadlines (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 16:01:00 +0000

By Gerald Lazare

The beginning of my career as an illustrator was preceded by 3 years as a comic strip artist at a place called Bell Features. It was brief and intense. Though I was only 16, it taught me to be disciplined and meet deadlines. Very important, as well, for the needs of an illustrator.

After the Second World War and the demise of Bell Features, I embarked on a career as an illustrator with an apprenticeship at Bomac Engravers...

... and became involved with the “Famous Artists Course” through my friendship with its founder, Albert Dorne, who I had first met on one of my yearly trips to New York as a teenager.

Then, after a year studying art in Europe, I returned to Toronto in April, 1954 to begin a freelance illustration career that lasted over two decades from the early 1950s to the 1970s.

For those old enough to remember, it truly was a “Golden Age for Illustration,” with a wealth of great draftsmen, designers, typographers and art directors filling the countless magazines, books, newspapers, and corporate publications. The prosperity that followed the War fueled trade and rebuilding and the Pearson and Trudeau eras resulted in Canada politically coming of age with its own flag and constitution. Expo ’67 in Montreal was a great success inviting the world to share in Canada’s accomplishments. In good times The Arts flourish and, in Toronto, we formed a Illustrator’s Society as well as a society that specialized in the book field to organize contracts and provide a bank of illustrators that publishers could draw on when needed.

(Top Canadian illustrators of 1968, Top row: Huntley Brown, John Mardon, Tom McNeely, Hanz Zander, Will Davies, Roy Hewetson. Lower row: Stewart Sherwood, Tom Bjarnason, Roger Hill, Gerry Sevier, John Wood, Gerry Lazare, Lewis Parker)

In the early sixties I acquired an agent in New York, Estelle Mandell, who supplied me with an abundance of assignments for the American market. When I first began to freelance in 1956, I refused advertising work to concentrate on fiction which I enjoyed more and at that time was plentiful in magazine and book publishing. Many of the books I received illustration assignments on were for young people.

(This is what Estelle Mandell would send out as a representation of my work at the time.)

Before a book is published it comes to the artist in galley form. The pages of text are printed running together in a long, page-wide, vertical roll for the artist to read and decide which scenes in the story are the best to depict visually. He or she begins to visualize the drawings that will best describe the characters and the twists and turns of the plot. If you love reading and dreaming, this first step is very pleasurable, especially with a glass of wine on a sofa in the early evening. It is from this, that the sketches and compositions follow. I illustrated many adventure stories which needed a cover and several line drawings inside.

Jean Little, the celebrated Canadian author of children’s books is a very sensitive and lyrical writer whose books were always a pleasure to do. I illustrated three of them (see above and below). They are often about families with very personal problems and needed an artist who could depict very distinct personalities in turmoil. I love this kind of challenge. At this time in my life I had a young son and knew many families with children and these families were often personal friends that I used as models.

(Little, Brown & Company LTD.)

Stories about our Great Canadian North are a must for any Canadian illustrator. When the mother and daughter of Pierre Berton, the iconic journalist and author, wrote “Johnny in the Klondike,” for McClelland & Stewart in 1964, I was asked to illustrate it and I jumped at the chance.

From my agent in New York I received My Fair Lady. It was to be published by Warner Bros. and the Four Winds Press to take advantage of the enormous popularity of the film. I was told that the book was intended to appeal to a teenage girl audience. I had read its source, Shaw’s play Pygmalion and loved the illustration possibilities of the Edwardian period.

My Fair Lady by Monica Dickens, 1967 Four Winds Press

The book was adapted by Monica Dickens, the great-grand daughter of Charles Dickens whose works I had read as a young boy, so I relished the commission. I was told Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison would have to okay all the drawings.

Cont'd tomorrow...

Frank Furlong: "... the most fulfilling work of my time in commercial art."

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 16:57:00 +0000

Frank Furlong was a young illustrator in Detroit during the mid-20th century when that city, fueled on high-octane auto industry dollars, was as much an epicenter of advertising art as New York. Previously Frank described his departure from Detroit and what came next. Today, the conclusion of the story... ~ Leif Peng

Frank writes...

"Word got around and an old rep from Detroit called from L.A. wanting my reel as old clients from Detroit had moved on to various cities and expressed an interest in what I was doing. So work started coming from L.A. and I started flying back and forth, still getting work in Dallas. I landed a 20 minute film for the Southern Baptists of "David and Goliath." This was major work in that market and gave me a chance to use Jack Unruh as a stylist. Turned out the Baptists didn't want me playing fast and loose with their idea of the showdown. No suspense, no drama. It was pretty... but dull. Fortunately I still have one of Jack's BGs... magnificent. It was about this time that Peggy Lee was singing "Is that all there is?" - and I felt the same. So we moved on again."

"Feel free to envy me in that for a couple years Tex Avery and I were the animation department for a commercial production house here in L.A."

"Tex's hands were pretty much crippled by arthritis so he was more a teacher than anything else. At meetings with clients he came up with gloriously funny bits but unfortunately most all of them wanted harder sell so I wound up directing the commercials, with Tex as an adviser. Thank God."

"I fear most of the animation I see where people are trying to emulate Tex really misses the point. He wasn't just speed, he was timing and humor. I remember one such attempt with the resultant comment from Tex that he didn't mind people stealing his stuff, he just wished they'd get it right."

"Tex never understood his place on the Pantheon and was stumped when fans from all over the world showed up wanting to meet him. One of my favorite memories in this end of the biz was directing a spot that called for a female shopper walking away from the camera at it's end. I was not an animator (I kinda backed into it from designing characters and BGs) but, with Tex at hand, I knew what I wanted and was unable to get it from a couple really good people so I tried my hand. When I showed Tex the pencil test his reaction was "Furlong, that's the worst animation I've ever seen. I love it!"

"To Tex it was the gag uber alles. Different from Disney he couldn't have been."

"I worked animation for almost 40 years and I've got to admit it was the most fulfilling work of my time in commercial art, but I never again found the atmosphere I enjoyed with other artists that makes Detroit's glory days unforgettable. Before I wrap up I want to make sure I didn't leave the wrong impression, by maybe concentrating on the fun and love of my time. It was work. And it was hard work. It was frustrating and fulfilling. I feel privileged to have been part of it."

To see Frank's recent work, please visit frankfurlong.com

Frank Furlong: "Goodbye Lions and Hello Cowboys."

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 16:22:00 +0000

Frank Furlong was a young illustrator in Detroit during the mid-20th century when that city, feuled on high-octane auto industry dollars, was as much an epicenter of advertising art as New York. Previously Frank talked about the illustrator's life in Detroit, including freelancing, studios and art reps. The story continues... ~ Leif Peng

Frank writes...

"After we had become parents my wife and I decided to take a break and go off to Toronto. Far away places with strange sounding names. We were nothin' if not adventurous. But while we were still in the planning stage my car was totalled while parked. So needing a new car and now being a family man I bought a station wagon and it being air conditioned it made little sense to drive a car with AC north. So we headed south."

"I wanted to stop at Contemporary Cards in Kansas City and for reasons I still can't fathom I had representation in Oklahoma City so the trip that far was a business trip. We were curious as to what Texas was like and I wanted to meet Jack Unruh and Tom Bailey, whose work I had seen in the Illustrator's Annuals, so further south we went."

(Above: a Jack Unruh illustration for Ling-Temco-Vaught Inc, reprinted in Illustrators 10, 1968)

"I had brought along my samples so they wouldn't think I was just some yahoo, but a bona fide working yahoo (speaking of bona fides I hope you've looked up Frank Furlong.com to see I'm not just some long winded wannabe) and in lunches and drinks and such with them and Bart Forbes I was encouraged to show my wares to a film studio there in Dallas that wanted to branch out to print work. Keitz and Herndon offered me a pretty good raise but I didn't jump at it 'cause Detroit was my hometown, my home, my town."

(Above: Larry Herndon (L) and Rod Keitz) © Amid Amidi

My first job back was for an Art Director named Dallas Goes (really) and one night I got a call from K&H telling me I had to see a film by Saul Bass, "Why Man Creates" and, and this is gospel truth, sitting down to watch PBS with my wife on comes "Why Man Creates."

Okay God, I got the word. So the house goes up for sale and it was Goodbye Lions and Hello Cowboys.

"You asked for a chronology of time working in Detroit, and as best I can remember it was sorta like this:

I hit the bricks from school in the summer of '56 so let's give the first year to MDM and Allied Artists, both shorter than I'd hoped for.
So that puts me with Ivan T. Smith for two years, let's say '57 to '59 and Fairchild/Groeneveld for "59 to '61, New Center Studios from '61 to '64 and finally, Advertising Illustration from some time in '64 to my exit late in '68. And you can see how important I was to the biz 'cause shortly after I left, Detroit went to hell in a handbasket."

"Dallas was a pretty good time but the print work didn't really happen to the extent I had hoped for, but... K&H put me to work doing a lot of BGs and doing character design and eventually I even directed a couple lesser commercials."

"One thing led to another and it all led to me breaking off on my own, with a couple clients. One of them had Rice-A-Roni as his client and I wound up doing a couple cartoon opera commercials for Golden Grain spaghetti, still among my favorite jobs."

"An animator, a new friend, saw those thru production and he came in more than handy real quick. An agency in town wanted me to design 12 spots in 12 different styles. Now all that experimenting with styles paid off and I was one happy man. After I designed them the AD asked if I could produce them and I, in total ignorance, said sure. Now that new friend and his friends really saved my hide. As a result I had an education and a reel."

Concluded tomorrow.

Frank Furlong on Fuchs, Freelancing, Reps and the Detroit Graphic Artists Guild

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 13:54:00 +0000

Frank Furlong was a young illustrator in Detroit during the mid-20th century when that city, fueled on high-octane auto industry dollars, was as much an epicenter of advertising art as New York. Yesterday we heard about how Frank began establishing his career, and the camaraderie among Detroit's illustration community. The story continues... ~ Leif Peng

Frank writes...

"If it weren't for Ardy [Kazarozian] trying to convince me I'm not sure I would have believed there really was a Bernie Fuchs. I was a believer that he was just a boogyman created by clients to scare us all. As my other reports have said we were a pretty social bunch in Detroit. But I never met, never even saw a Bernie Fuchs. He was always 23 years old, was missing more and more fingers and was faster than a speeding bullet, never had a job bounce. Gimme a break!"

"Unknowns who deserve credit for so much great art were the 'pencilers'. Photos of the cars would come in the door and the penciler would start his magic, cutting apart stats and reconstructing the car to be lower and longer, then scoring his reworked car onto illustration board with a 9h pencil, so the man who painted the car (a different artist than the one who did the figures and backgrounds) could actually feel the drawing with his brush. This drawing had to not just pass muster with the AD but also with persnickety engineers at the client car company. And just how fussy they were staggers the mind. But none of the ads, wonderful as they were, would have made it to the printer but for The Unknown Penciler. And don't you dare put a figure in front of their work!"

"Freelance work in Detroit was called "sore legging', and my guess is because you had to do all your own running around involved in getting, producing and delivering work. And as for competing with reps -- it couldn't be done. They had persistence and expense accounts. My last boss, a rep, had a reputation that when he asked a client out for a meal they packed a bag. His theory was that every rep took his clients to the same expensive restaurants where they'd see just about every other rep and would never remember who took them there last. So he'd hire a small plane and fly his clients off to wondrous locales. He didn't do it often but when you were asked out for a meal you'd remember it. We had one free lancer in town, a pretty well known guy named Art Radebaugh, who had his studio in a van-type vehicle and he'd bring his studio to the client. But most everybody found it so much easier and more profitable to align with a studio."

"One thing I've been remiss in not mentioning before, and it was a really important thing in the history of the biz. The Detroit Graphic Artist's Guild. The artists had decided that it was true "workers wise unionize". I'm more than a little proud that I was one of the original signers on. But then Button Gwinnett was one of the signers of the Declaration Of Independence and who remembers him? JOHN HANCOCK, sure. But old Button? Nehhh."

"One of the things I feel honored by was that the first anniversary edition of our magazine had the cover art done by your's truly and I had an article inside, along with three or four cartoon spots.(okay, so I'm bragging)"

"The idea of a union came about because the end of the stick the artists were getting grew shorter and shorter. The budgets got smaller and smaller and "90 days same as cash" became the standard. But I think the bit that stopped the stampede of the lemmings was "spec', everybody expected to contribute art for free. As I mentioned before I was happy doing KMAs (pro bono?) and had found a studio that paid me whether or not they were paid for my work. So 'spec' didn't affect me outside of feeling this was a con job most of the time."

"The agencies seemed to have come up with the notion that all would be willing to contribute art for their bids for new campaigns or new clients by "If you do this one for free you'll get the entire campaign", an idea that's hard to sell after a few times. I was not alone in loving the chance to do artwork but there comes a time when you feel you're being had. And too many had come to that feeling and, as we were a pretty social set, the feeling gained momentum and VOILA! The GAG!"

To be continued...

"We're selling Fords, not Furlongs."

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 21:05:00 +0000

Frank Furlong was a young illustrator in Detroit during the mid-20th century when that city, fueled on high-octane auto industry dollars, was as much an epicenter of advertising art as New York.

Yesterday Frank recounted his earliest experiences as an apprentice at a couple of different art studios. The story continues... ~ Leif Peng

Frank writes...

"At this point I was blessed with one of the advantages of Detroit in that my next employer was, like so many studio heads,almost as interested in nurturing young artists as in making money. Ivan Smith had a couple of us aspiring guys learning and earning slowly, doing comps, spots and experimenting. He was the man I mentioned before who gave Ardy space and supplies. Without studio owners like this us guppies wouldn't have been able to cope with the competition of commercial art."

"Don't misunderstand, none of this was a free ride. There were dues to be paid. We learned it was a tuff, demanding business and if you weren't willing to give it your all, nights, weekends, whatever, you weren't going to last. There was a term a bunch of us bandied about: "hacks," a term of endearment not derision. One of the proudly proclaimed hacks was Ed Fella, who has become a world renowned designer who publicizes himself at talks world round as "Currently a former Detroit commercial artist."

"It was at this stage that I learned just how important I was. I did a piece for JWT that I was proud of, so I signed it only to have it bounce back quickly to have me paint out my name, with the comment "We're selling Fords, not Furlongs."

"Then I joined the game trying to find the artist's name in ads, hidden away in store names, street names and initials on the license plates. Maybe not the same as finding Ninas in Hirchfield drawings but a challenge none the less. Later in my career GMC asked that I sign my work. I think they felt I'd put more into the work if my compadres were to judge me on it. And that brings up one of my favorite events..."

"The artists had a show with no judges, jury or input by anybody but the artists. As I remember we each entered two pieces, guaranteed to be hung. A show that said plain and simple "This is what I do" or maybe "This is what I'm proud of." A show by the artists, for the artists and of the artists."

"As I've said before Detroit's artists were a pretty fraternal sort and so we had frat houses, or club houses, or whatever. Okay, so they were a couple bars, near where we parked our cars. Wonderful places to wait while traffic cleared, around 10 at night, since that was the usual end of a working day. Not so bad considering that the day most always started around lunch time. I think the odd hours were dictated by the agencies being unwilling to let go of their input and needing the work done NOW. Because of this we got to know each other and catch up on the latest gossip. My time in Dallas taught me this should be called "drinkin' mash and talkin' trash." It was a comfortable situation and no less a personage than Coby Whitmore thought this was great fun. It was, and part of the comfort was that this time was just about exclusively the artists. Okay, we shared some of it with late working construction workers, but no reps and no clients. And the show let us see what everybody was doing."

"I'm going to take a break here but first a sidebar: A couple months before his death I had a phone conversation with Bob Heindel and he talked of how he missed the time spent mixing with artists in Detroit, saying he "really hated this famous shit."

(Above, a Robert Heindel brochure illustration from 1966)

To be continued...

Frank Furlong on Guppies, Whales... and Koi.

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 20:28:00 +0000

Thanks to the show Madmen, even those who've never had a passing connection to the industry now get the gist of the day-to-day workings of a New York City advertising agency during the mid-20th century. Less well known (and much less documented) is what life was like for the creative class working in the high performance, turbo-charged combustion engine that was Detroit during that same era.

Frank Furlong was there, along-side Harry Borgman, Bernie Fuchs and other "whales," as Frank calls them (see below). Frank's recollections are fascinating and entertaining - you're going to love the stories you'll read this week. The only problem is... not a stitch of his work from that period has survived. That makes it challenging for a blog devoted to mid-20th century illustration to 'illustrate' this week's posts. Happily, some years back Harry Borgman gifted me a couple of Detroit Art Director's Annuals from the early '60s. Along with some artifacts I've collected on my own, I'll attempt to give you a sense of the art of Detroit - even if it can't specifically be Frank's art - during the period in which he was there. So, with great anticipation, let's begin. ~ Leif Peng

Frank Furlong writes...

"... happy to send on some memories of Detroit's wonderful glory days, from my point of view. I gotta warn ya it'll be a bit different from Borgman's Detroit. He was one of the whales, I was one of the guppies. But there was a mess of us guppies and some of them became quite famous."

"Actually, let me reclassify people: 'Guppies' seems too insignificant for anybody not a whale. Let's call most of the artists as porpoises; intelligent, beautiful and impressive. I'm going to raise my class to koi. No more guppies."

"I've always drawn and for a while it was my safe place because of a gruesome stammer. With a lot of help I overcame that problem but I never shook the delight in drawing. Detroit was my home and on the GI bill I attended what was to become the Center for Creative Studies, at that time a wonderfully funky pile of bricks in one of the lesser parts of town. After a year there my two commercial teachers encouraged me to go out and try my hand at commercial art. Years later I found out from one of them that they sent me off so I'd learn I was not really an artist and could go on engineering or law or some such before it was too late."

"I never did catch on. Thankfully."

"What a privilege it was to work in Detroit in commercial art's glory days. Great opportunities, great people and great fun. The thing I have missed most, and from what I've seen only existed then and there was the camaraderie of people who were in essence competing with each other. Maybe because the reps were the ones competing for us. The only thing I've seen anything like it were army buddies. Whatever it was, and admittedly booze came into the picture reasonably often, it was a pleasure to be riding that rollercoaster never quite sure what would happen next."

"At that time there were a couple hundred artists and who knows how many studios. But most of the action was in two sections of the city, Downtown and the New Center area. The largest studio was New Center Studios and naturally they were Downtown. Of course. And kinda like a pinball machine artists bounced from one studio to the next. I was there fifteen years and worked at six studios, changing four of them by choice."

"It was the first two studios that ended without my planning it and both look like I was belatedly stalking Harry Borgman. The first was MDM who hired me as an apprentice. Using my great talent to wash brushes, palettes, change water bowls and matte outgoing artwork. "Yours not to reason why, yours but to do or die. Tissue and flap and let 'em fly!"

"About six months in I got sprung from the matte room by painting in the local colors from drawings for a slide film. Before I had a chance to celebrate my success, the cops seized the studio and my heroes, the principals, wound up in fist fights. Talk about an exciting business! I WAS HOOKED! On the recommendation of one of the stars I was hired by Allied Artists. I think they thought they were getting someone a bit more ready 'cause I wasn't there long before they invited me to leave."

"But at least now I had more impressive samples and I was off and running."

To be continued...

Frank Furlong on Ardy Kazarozian, "the least commercial artist I've met."

noreply@blogger.com (leifpeng) — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 15:55:00 +0000

It started with a comment on an old post I'd written about a series of 1960 Dodge truck ads that stood apart from the vast majority of car illustrations of the time. My friend Harry Borgman determined these beautiful stylizations were the work of Charles Wysocki. But then someone named Frank Furlong added a comment to that post that intrigued me... so I went looking for him on the internet, found his website and contacted him. Frank soon replied, and so began a most remarkable correspondence. I'll share much more with you next week, but for today, here's a little teaser from Frank Furlong. ~ Leif Peng

"I'm a great fan of Wysocki's Detroit days. Given I, of course am an admirer of his New England stuff, having most of his books, feel his work prior to that deserves more attention."

"When Wysocki left his Detroit studio I was hired to fill his spot. For very good reason I don't say 'replace him'. Seeing as [Bernie] Fuchs was the dominant illustrator in town I was trying to come close to what he was doing. But when I saw what Wysocki was doing I made a complete u-turn and gave up what was an uncomfortable quest, needless to say an impossible one.

"I guess the studio wasn't too disturbed by my switch as they kept me on as my work got more and more decorative and eventually whimsical."

"I'll start recollections as they meander thru my mind but first off I want to enter my theory that involves Detroit's Unknown Artist. I was working at a studio that hired(?) Ardy Kazarozian. I say hired(?) because they offered him no money, just a place to work and supplies. Ardy was the least commercial artist I've met but WOW! what an artist he was."

"The only real success he seems to have had were some jobs for Playboy but he was hired away from this studio by Art Group, Fuch's home. Maybe it's a coincidence but I'm convinced that the fact that Fuch's work steered away from his Austin Brigg's-type stuff to the more experimental pieces that brought him such deserved fame came shortly after Ardy joined his small studio."

"Ardy himself moved on to N.Y. and seems to have disappeared but it was a great pleasure to share space with him and call him a friend."