A FEW CRESCENT MOONS

"Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt at being told that it is a fragment awaiting perfection."
                               -- Rabindranath Tagore

Most people realize by now that a quick, rough sketch...

Frazetta

... can be better art than a careful, detailed oil painting.

Frazetta

...and that an "unfinished" painting can nevertheless be quite complete.

Lautrec

Last week the participants in this blog had a robust debate about the kind of detail necessary to create a "well executed" picture.  In attacking the loose drawings of H. J. Mowat, one commenter claimed,

[Mowat] simply couldn't draw well. His struggles with basic anatomy, even basic drawing, are written all over his pictures.... This has to do with distinguishing between informed anatomy and bluffed anatomy....  [R]ough indication, like all suggestions, can be informed or uninformed. One type of uninformed suggestion results simply in vagueness. Another signifies bluffing/pretension. 

 The debate soon came to focus on the quality of Mowat's hands, as a test:

 [M]ost illustrators I know could easily knock out a good hand, in line, from the model, in a minute's time... And there isn't a single well executed hand in the lot. 

 When I offered several examples of drawings by Degas with a similar treatment of hands, the commenters responded that the Degas drawings, like Mowat's, are "shitty."

Are they?  Or are they just a different type of artistic solution, equally valid, with their own standards of quality?

One commenter wrote,

 I feel similar regarding hands which Kev criticized many times.  [In the following image]  her palm on the floor looks childishly crude, a complete mess, while the other one on her lap seems kind of acceptable to me, the area between the wrist and knuckles has an indication of a solid shape... but the fingers sadly end up quite weak. There is no artistic purpose for these anatomical conditions, they were not Mowat's thoughtful decisions, so I think if somebody fixed these things in front of him he would be pleased. 

Mowat (detail)

 I disagree with these assessments, and as I indicated last time, I thought the only way to have a constructive  discussion was with real live examples of quality art in front of us.

Few people would argue that Toulouse Lautrec did not understand the anatomy of a hand:

Lautrec

Yet, look at how he chose to treat the hand in one of his most famous finished pictures:

Kinda makes Mowat look like Vesalius.

Bernie Fuchs is another example of an artist who clearly understands the anatomy of the hand:

Fuchs

 Yet, as he became older and wiser as and artist, he chose to experiment for important assignments, such as this full page illustration for Sports Illustrated:

Fuchs 

Compare this hand to the much-vilified hands drawn by Mowat:

Fuchs

Henry Raleigh, a contemporary of Mowat, sometimes rendered hands in a looser, more amorphous way than Mowat did:

Nobody disputes Rodin's mastery of human anatomy...

Rodin

Rodin cherished his watercolors, such as this one where he deliberately took liberties with a hand to create the design he wanted.  Compare this hand to Mowat's:

Rodin

Finally, here's one more example from our old friend Degas.  In this early work, the hand is rendered with precision...

Degas

But later, in Degas' period of greatness, several hands look like mittens.

Degas

The examples above can't all be "incomplete" drawings or work that was intended for the artist's trash can.  And even if some commenters insist that they are, I can pull out a hundred additional examples of work by excellent artists who decided that the anatomical truth of phalanges was subordinate to the expressive truth of the picture.  These artists are not, in the words of last week's commenters, "fudging" their drawings of hands.  And it is my view that we cannot properly evaluate their work by saying, "the size of the area between the wrist and knuckles is too small, and fingers are too short," even if that is factually correct.

For me, this is like looking at a crescent moon and waiting for it to become a perfect full moon. I think that each of the works above has its own perfections.

     .

SOME THINGS I LIKE ABOUT H. J. MOWAT

At the end of last year I offered one lovely drawing by an illustrator you've never heard of, H. J. Mowat.   Mowat has been lost in the sea of anonymous illustrators of the 1920s and 30s who worked in the loose, scribbly fashion of the day.  But I think he was really good.

To give him a fair chance, I promised some commenters I'd show a broader range of his work.

 

Mowat's pictures may seem a little fuzzy compared to today's sharper, hard edge fashions.  But plenty of mediocre illustrators can make sharp pictures of fuzzy concepts.  It's harder to create successful fuzzy pictures of sharp concepts.  

Take for example the drawing, "She used to come into the Petrovski barracks and empty her pistols into the poor devils who wouldn't bend."

I think this is a well staged picture, with selective use of lights and contrasts to direct your eye.  The figures are well posed and integrated to show how the professional soldiers are queasy about the bloodthirsty woman.  But most importantly, Mowat has made some highly unusual but smart choices: the "poor devil" has no face yet Mowat chose to emphasize his cowlick (which conveys his rumpled condition).  Also without drawing a face, Mowat shows us that the man's chin is raised by positioning his ears.

Just as Mowat drew rumpled hair, the man's clothing is one big wrinkle.  He has a defiant tilt to his head combine with a posture of resignation waiting for the bullet.  Mowat did not focus on the facial expression, which would preoccupy a more obvious illustrator.  For me, this is excellent, subtle drawing.

Note how, in 1927, ordinary Saturday Evening Post readers were presumed to be cultured enough to know the lyrics to Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Mikado." 

Mowat used a bag of tricks to compensate for the cheap paper and primitive black and white printing of his era.  His medium would not permit him to display a blushing cheek or a steely glint in the eye, but he seemed to make maximum use of a tilt of the head.  

Many of the illustrators of the 1920s are best forgotten, but I think H. J. Mowat is one worth remembering.

THE END OF 2017

When I was a boy, there was something about Playboy's comic strip, Little Annie Fanny, that mesmerized me.

I first discovered the strip in old issues of Playboy that I'd smuggled into my room.  Before I'd heard the names Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jack Davis or Frank Frazetta, I studied the pictures so intently, they're still burned into my consciousness today.     

Revisiting the strip, I see that its message remains relevant.  Fifty years ago, the brilliant Harvey Kurtzman wrote an episode with an island where the population became bored by conventional politicians so they elected a vulgar brute to shake things up. 

Kurtzman offers us his view of "populism" at work:

We've elected an ape, indeed.

The character Annie was simple minded, yet Kurtzman always managed to put words of wisdom in her mouth:

"When people are so mean and selfish, they deserve to be led by an ape."

Wishing you all a 2018 that is a little less mean and a little less selfish.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 55

You've never heard of the illustrator H. J. Mowat (1879-1949).   He was lost in the sea of anonymous illustrators of the 1920s and 30s who worked in the style of the famous Henry Raleigh.

Thousands of popular magazines of the era featured loose pencil illustrations shaded with charcoal or blocks of wash.  It was an appealing style because it was fast and helped conceal a multitude of artistic weaknesses.

But if you flip through those illustrations, it's easy to spot the few artists with genuine talent. It shows in the selected moments of tight focus or restraint, in the staging, in the imaginative solutions.  Mowat wasn't one of the illustrators hiding behind this soft style, he used it from a position of strength.

Consider the two ursine figures on the left.  Mowat doesn't neglect their faces out of laziness or uncertainty; those blurred faces are part of a carefully orchestrated effect with bulky bodies, small heads, stooped posture and thick limbs.  

These are lumpenproletariat, and sharply defined facial features would only distract from the effect Mowat wants.

Next, in the figure leaning over the bed, all Mowat needs is one strong, carefully placed jaw line and a few rounded strokes on that arm to define the figure: 

Mowat has proven he knows anatomy; that leaves him free to go wild with the rest of the figure.

Or consider the focal point of the picture, the figure dying on the bed.  All you see is a tiny head-- a minuscule part of the picture's real estate, but it occupies a choice location right in the center; the shadow of the window on the wall serves as a spotlight directing our gaze; and the shadow on the right side creates one of the highest contrast spots in the picture.

Who needs details such as eyelashes or lips when you can achieve your result with such a broad range of other tools?

Among the glut of mediocre pencil illustrations in the first decades of the 20th century, some genuinely lovely drawings stand out.

IT'S WAY PAST TIME TO TALK ABOUT SAUL TEPPER

When I started this blog, my plan was to publicize my favorite works by great illustrators of the past.  I had a long list, starting with illustrators such as Leyendecker, Rockwell and Cornwell-- and figured I would soon get to the talented Saul Tepper.

Then 12 years went by.

I fear that many people share my mistake of treating Tepper as an afterthought: he's an important artist that we'll get to eventually.   One reason may be that people rarely see high rez images of his rich, dramatic paintings.

Whatever the reason, he deserves better. 

Tepper (1899-1987) was one of the last great "painterly" illustrators who worked in oils on canvas to achieve a thick, buttery effect.  

The following lovely example is from the Kelly Collection of American Illustration:

The variegated textures and rich colors of Tepper's originals rarely showed up in the final published versions:

By the latter part of Tepper's career, illustration had moved on to smaller, faster, water based paintings on cardboard that were better suited to the demands and timetable of modern publishers.  By the 1950s he was working for second tier magazines such as Argosy and True.  He found work as a photographer, teacher and musical composer.

But before he migrated away from illustration, Tepper spent a solid 30 years painting in the classical style, creating remarkable paintings that are worthy of our attention.

TOMER HANUKA'S PRELIMINARY SKETCHES

This week the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a major new retrospective of the work of David Hockney,  described as "one of the most notable painters of the 20th century."  The BBC tells us that Hockney's "greatest subject [was] private swimming pools," where he captures "something as impossible to fix as light on water."

Personally, I think illustrator Tomer Hanuka did a better job of capturing light on a swimming pool in this preliminary sketch for a movie poster:

Note how Hanuka's loose, quicksilver line suggests the essence of his subject:

Until the Metropolitan Museum of Art announces its major retrospective of Hanuka's work, I'll use this space to share a few things.

At the recent CTN animation expo in Los Angeles, I had the pleasure of meeting Hanuka and hearing his excellent talk about his series of posters for classic movies.  For example, he re-invented the poster for Hitchcock's Psycho...

...with this powerful composition:

As stark as this composition is, it contains numerous subtle touches that contribute to its potency.  For example, Hanuka's keen eye picked up on the dripping tile wall, still wet from the interrupted shower.

Other smart touches include the keyhole perspective, the shower curtain tangled around the woman's ankles, and the confined space, all of which give the poster a chilling intimacy.  Compare its eroticism to the original poster, where a plain photo of Janet Leigh in a bra once passed for titillation.  What a difference good design can make!

Here is the final version:

Hanuka reinvented the poster for Dr. Strangelove, from this:

... to this:

Here is an interim version...

and here's the final:

In many of these pictures, I prefer Hanuka's preliminary sketches to the final versions.  They show off the muscle power and the sparkle of the original ideas, before he tightens them up and begins to layer them with complex shapes, details and afterthoughts.  The great illustrator Robert Fawcett wrote, "A design started tentatively rarely gains in vigor later.  In anticipation of the dilution which I knew would later take place, the first draft was put down with an almost savage intensity...."

Hanuka's preliminary sketches are so strong, they help glue together final images that could easily fragment.

Preliminary

Final

Preliminary

Final

It was a treat to see these earlier drafts at the CTN expo and hear Hanuka discuss his approach.