I've had some unkind things to say about illustration in the New York Times in recent years. I felt that the Times had lost its taste for traditional drawing, and its replacements-- digital collages, naive scrawls, and postmodern mewlings-- were unworthy of the Times. I suggested the Times had succumbed to the "I'm-so-smart-I don't-have-to-draw-well" attitude that infected too many other publications. Some of its digital illustrations in recent years demonstrated a young medium with potential but even then, much of it substituted flash and gimmickry for genuine substance. One step across a two-step ditch.
So perhaps I've been remiss in not commenting on a regular source of pure joy for me in the pages of the Times: Bill Mayer's regular contributions to the "NYT For Kids" section:
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| Detail |
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| Note the skin textures |
Artists have been drawing funny creatures with wacky expressions for millennia; the ground is well trodden and formulaic. But it's a measure of Mayer's great ability that his creatures remain fresh and funny.
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| Illustration for another client |
10 comments:
I concur. Mayer with his exceptional, creativity and attention to detail does bring us joy to see. More please.
The Shark is great would make for a wonderful PIXAR film.
Love these!
He is brilliant. And as kind and playful and decent as his work. Love love.
Porcelain appeal. Cute, slick, and generic like emojis.
Used to be the accidentally insulting art compliment was "wow that looks like a photograph!" Now it's "wow that looks like AI."
His method of repeating the elements he makes to populate his work, iterating, flipping them, or warping them slightly, or adding a change here or there to make them seem different is smart business.
I've known Bill for 42 years. He is a genius.
Kev Ferrara-- That "porcelain" effect has been a thread through 20th century illustration; Dean Cornwell, Leyendecker, Doug Johnson... heck, Malcolm Liepke nearly beat it to death single handedly. I always assumed it was part of a 20th century streamlined/deco/polished/synthetic materials aesthetic. You even see it echoed in Jeff Koons' shiny reflective surfaces.
To Mayer's credit, he applies that technique mostly to his big, shiny children's illustrations. It's the perfect look for a combination goldfish / big puffed up inflatable toy. If you check out the adult paintings in the gallery on Mayer's website, you'll see very different approaches. I say bravo!
What is Bill like as a person? I'm nuts about his brilliant pictures but he seems to have a weird fixation on frogs and bugs. Is he an entomologist?
Mayer's kidding work will appeal to kids, I think. Functionally, it's fit for purpose. But the issue for me is the that the rendering and style is so obviously programmed by Adobe Inc. And so is the digital workflow, with all the duplicating of elements, and their slight modifications, using their programs. Many moons from now we will look back and see how period it was, corporate and coded.
I don't see the parallels with any of the names you mentioned. Least of all Dean Cornwell. And there's only a tenuous case that Leyendecker could now and again become too slick; but he would never be caught dead doing what was called "gross roundness". Doug Johnson; yeesh. The worst, most tasteless, and egregiously glitzy 70s airbrush and poster paint hack of all. At least he manifested all that crap by hand. Malcolm Liepke's attempt to make juicy pigment application seem like content exhausted itself at first brush, but it still took handcraft.
I don’t know Bill well, but I’ve interviewed him and spoken to him a number of times over the years. And I concur - a genius!
And if this is Rick Parker formerly of Marvel Comics, then I’d say it takes one to know one! 😀
My original love of Bill’s work goes back to his commercial stuff for Big League Chew (which I believe was brought good measure toward its initial success) and his creature work for Tangy Taffy (later Laffy Taffy) is pure energetic fun.
His contemporary work is the stuff of dreams, of course.
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