THE SKETCHBOOKS OF AUSTIN BRIGGS

In keeping with our current theme of posting working sketches by the great illustrators, today let's look at some unpublished drawings by Austin Briggs.  It is a shame that Briggs does not get much attention today; for decades he was one of the most highly regarded illustrators in the country.  An excellent painter, Briggs was especially known for the great subtlety and sensitivity of his drawing with a lithography crayon, charcoal or similar tools.

Despite the free and spontaneous look to his drawings, Briggs' sketches and preliminary drawings show that he was a disciplined and skilled draftsman.  He drew numerous preparatory sketches...

 

...sometimes with great precision (especially earlier in his career, when his style was tighter):

To plan his more complex illustrations, Briggs would do numerous preliminary sketches:

Briggs wrote a note to an art director in the margin of one of these sketches, saying "If you don't like this one, I've got a dozen others on the floor of my studio."

The following drawing is not a sketch, but a finished, published illustration.

Drawing with corrective patch

However, the original version was never published:

Drawing without corrective patch

We forget today that Briggs was at the forefront of artists introducing a more realistic informality into illustration. Previous illustrators focused on the one key moment or reaction shot, where the subject's eyes were widest or their expression was the broadest or their leap was at its height.

Norman Rockwell

Briggs took a different approach and began focusing on moments that looked less staged.  His sketches reveal a deliberate search for offbeat moments, where a subject might be looking away or checking their watch or other things more integrated into daily life.   It may seem crazy to us today, but in the 1950s art directors sometimes choked on this radical approach.  In the two drawings compared above, the art director instructed Briggs to change his drawing to make the man sit up straight.  Briggs glued the correction on with rubber cement, causing the stain.

Today's illustrators should be grateful to Briggs as a bold and principled pioneer who left the field with more artistic freedom than it had when he began.

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF BERNIE FUCHS

In keeping with our current theme of preliminary sketches, today I am posting some unpublished sketches by Bernie Fuchs.

I have long admired the designs in Fuchs' finished pictures.  I assumed that, like everybody else, his working drawings would show a lot of sweat as he struggled with different compositions to achieve those beautiful designs.  Fuchs clearly worked hard, but after looking at a hundred sketches, I was struck by the way his sense of design seemed to be inherent in everything he touched, from the very start.

The simplest, earliest  marks in his sketches were applied with a sense of grace

The forthcoming book on The Life and Art of Bernie Fuchs will include a substantial collection of his unpublished sketches.

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF A.B. FROST

Following up on last week's collection of unpublished drawings by illustrator William A. Smith,  here are some unpublished drawings by the great A.B. Frost.

In a series of tiny pen and ink sketches (less than 3 inches tall),  Frost noodles around with different treatments of an old geezer by a country pond.

 

In his sketches, Frost subtly honed his final pictures for maximum effect.  For example, the following is an unpublished sketch for The Bull Calf,  Frost's parable about a "humane man" who scolds a farmer for mistreating a calf, until he gets his own first hand experience with the vexatious little beast:

Even in his preliminary sketch, look at how astutely Frost captures the body language between the calf (with his feet firmly planted for maximum stubbornness, his tail and ear pulled roughly),  the exasperated farmer and the know-it-all city slicker.

Compare the sketch with the final published version:

 

Frost transformed the naive "humane man" from a city slicker to a religious Quaker.  He decided to conceal the stubbornness of the bull calf until after the humane man buys it.  He gave us a foretaste of the long country road where the bull calf would soon be dragging the humane man.  These and other subtle touches are why Frost's final versions were so devastatingly funny.

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF WILLIAM SMITH: day 7

This concludes my week of unpublished drawings from the sketchbooks of William A. Smith.  Such drawings provide a very different perspective on an artist than what we might learn from finished paintings in museums or books.

The sketchbooks themselves are an impressive body of work-- large stacks of binders, lovingly worn from all of the effort lavished upon them over the decades, battered from being transported on military planes, horse carts, trains and buses around the world.

Sleeping passengers became a favorite subject for Smith.

Sandwiched between the working drawings, the sketchbooks contained addresses, bus schedules, translations of key phrases Smith used for getting around in foreign languages, and notes of all kinds.

A small poster tucked into one of the sketchbooks from a military post overseas.

Storage depot in Mandalay

No corporate sponsor would ever commission drawings of the thousands of anonymous subjects that Smith met along the road.  Smith immortalized them out of love-- occasionally out of love for the subject, but mostly out of love for drawing.

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF WILLIAM SMITH: day 6

For the past 5 days, I have shared a number of portraits and life drawings from Smith's sketchbooks.  But Smith didn't stop with drawing people, his sketchbooks are filled with drawings of animals, landscapes and objects of all sorts.

Because of his extensive travels, Smith's landscape sketches include interesting sites from all around the world.

Whether he was drawing the megaliths of Stonehenge or random rocks by the side of the road in Ireland, Smith paid his subjects the tribute of fresh visual attention.

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF WILLIAM SMITH: day 5

Today I am posting a garden of faces selected from Smith's sketchbooks:

Even with just a quick sketch, Smith captured the personalities of the middle eastern musician (above) or the American housewife (below).

Note how Smith is never lazy.  He does not draw these faces from a template that he learned in art school; he pays attention and works to understand and capture the unique qualities in each face.  Otherwise, what would be the point of sketching?

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF WILLIAM SMITH: day 4

 I was amused by the number of drawings of backs of heads in William Smith's sketchbooks.
 

 Smith drew tirelessly, and when he went to concerts, lectures or meetings he often brought his sketchbook with him.  It's a measure of his talent that, even when he was limited to the backs of people sitting in front of him, he still found artistic challenges :

In this next sketch, a floral arrangement takes priority over the rows of ladies at some event:

Smith did life sketches at hockey games...

 ...and at the beach...

 ...and at performances...

...and at a whole lot of other places.