A VISUAL DIARY OF ILLUSTRATORS

I've previously written about my admiration for Alice and Martin Provensen, the husband and wife team responsible for some of the best illustrated children's books of the 20th century. 

Shipwrecked and battered, Odysseus encounters the princess Nausicaä and her handmaidens by the river (from The Iliad and the Odyssey) 

Married couples sometimes keep a scrapbook or a diary but the Provensens were artists and thought visually.  They had fun recording the day's events in sketches and cartoons, which they passed back and forth.  The result is a charming record of what went on behind the scenes in the creation of their famous books.  

For example, there were days when Martin took his portfolio and knocked on doors looking for work, only to end up sitting on a park bench.

Then there were days when he got in to see an Art Director and beg for work-- a demeaning process.  What illustrator can't identify with that?

There were cartoons of the days when Alice was supposed to be working at her drawing board but Martin searched the house and discovered her outside working in the garden she loved.  There was a sketch of the day they got new dogs.  Sometimes Martin drew Alice in bed in the morning before she got up:

Their visual diary apparently began when they were first dating, and Martin was still in the Navy:

It continued through their daily domestic life on their farm. Here is the famous day Alice couldn't cure her hiccups:

But the sketches I like the most were created when the the couple was working on books together and left little joking drawings about ideas they would never use.  For example, when Martin and Alice were working on The Iliad & The Odyssey, Martin offered an alternative version of the scene (above) with Odysseus meeting (and impressing) the maidens by the river:

The Provensens painted an illustration of the sirens singing to Odysseus, luring him to crash his ship on the rocks:

But behind the scenes Martin suggested that the sirens used a different bait to lure Odysseus:

Here's their sketch about the citizens of Troy, angry that Paris brought his new bride Helen back to their city:

Martin apparently questioned Homer's version of how enthusiastically the Greeks responded to the war cry of Achilles: 

In The Iliad, Zeus was angry at the mortals, and the Provensens painted lightning bolts crackling from his head:

But Martin entertained Alice with a private joke about the wrath of Zeus:

Of course, several of the the sketches were just little "I love you" drawings they left for each other.  

I've read plenty of books with lots of words about the techniques and working methods of illustrators but I've never seen anything like this visual record of the Provensen's career.  Some of the drawings are quite personal, drawn with a loose hand and the freedom that are a specialty of artists.  For years I've seen the Provensens' work, and now it was a delight to see them at play.