ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 79

 In 1966, The Cartoonist Cookbook published a drawing and recipe from each of 45 popular comic strip artists.  

The book reminds us about the snappy draftsmanship on the comics pages in those days.

For example, the talented Leonard Starr contributed this drawing of his wife trying to trick him into eating tuna fish, which he'd told her he hated:

Stan Drake contributed this sparkly drawing of his character Eve Jones:

There's no artist on the newspaper comic pages today that comes within ten miles of these draftsmen.

 

Even the most simplified strips such as Johnny Hart's BC could demonstrate observational powers and drawing skills.

But among all the drawings in The Cartoonist Cookbook,  the one with the real Frim Fram Sauce and shafafa on the side, is the contribution from young Neal Adams: 

Adams was a mere stripling at the time, young lean and out to conquer the world.

Bio from The Cartoonists Cookbook

Even at that young age he exhibited the fearlessness with ink which later became his trademark: 

The astonishing variety in the width of his line is not something found in nature; it is purely an invention of Adams, something he forced into the picture to great artistic effect.

The precocious Adams already had the courage and the range of a more mature talent.  Look at the range of marks he employed in this one small drawing.   

Flipping through the pages of the 1966 book full of talented cartoonists, this one lovely drawing stood out.  It must've been obvious back then that the boy cartoonist was destined for greatness... and indeed he was.

 

TRIBUTE TO AN ILLUSTRATED BOOK, part 1

Harold von Schmidt's illustrations for Death Comes for the Archbishop were greatly admired when they first appeared in 1927. 

Von Schmidt was ideally suited to illustrate Willa Cather's tale of the southwestern desert.  He grew up in that land, roughing it on cattle drives, wrangling horses and riding the buffalo trails.  He got to know and love the desert by contemplating vast landscapes of clouds and rocks under an intense sun.  

The desert, rather than the human characters, became the center of his big, bold illustrations for this book.  This type of illustration is more than just a visual recital of the author's text.  The term "Illustration" comes from the Latin lustrare, "to make bright, illuminate" and pictures like these are intended to achieve that by complementing the text, expanding and adding depth.  After many centuries this remains one of the highest roles for illustration.

Von Schmidt chose to paint his pictures with black tempera on white board, ten times(!) larger than the final published image. 

The potency of his illustrations was recognized and commented upon in arts magazines (which in those days paid close attention to important developments in the illustration world).

Von Schmidt did over 60 illustrations for the book, and they are artfully interspersed with the text to create a book that is itself an aesthetic object.

We have a few years left before books become obsolete, but the telltale signs are already here.  As books are gradually replaced by more effective and convenient means of ingesting content, we'll lose the qualities that make this book such a fine experience.  Generations raised on scrolling electrons on computer monitors won't miss the aroma of old paper, the feel of fine bindings, and especially the delight of images crafted by hand on the basis of long observation.  

This is the first in a series of posts in which I plan to pay tribute to special books that aren't discussed much anymore but which I think were especially well illustrated.