NEW BOOK ABOUT ALBERT DORNE

Just in time for the holidays,  Auad Publishing (which brought you last year's Robert Fawcett monograph) has released the first monograph dedicated to master illustrator Albert Dorne, the most successful commercial artist of his day.

The book is hard cover, 9x12" with a dust jacket and 160 deluxe pages. Like the Fawcett book, it was edited by the talented Manuel Auad, who was kind enough to let me write the text again.

Many thanks to Walt Reed, Howard Munce and Leonard Starr who generously provided me with their memories of Dorne.  Here is my favorite anecdote, from Starr:

The artist Andy Warhol explained to Albert Dorne, "Art must transcend mere drawing."  

"Pardon me, Andy," Dorne interrupted, "but there's nothing all that fucking mere about drawing."

Dorne was one tough bird, and as you can tell, completely unapologetic for the "commercial" nature of his work.

Thanks also to Magdalen and Robert Livesey for generously sharing the archives of Dorne's Famous Artists School, as well as to the Norman Rockwell Museum for their archives containing the illuminating correspondence between Dorne and Norman Rockwell.  Introduction by  Howard Munce, with a "graphic foreword" by Jack Davis.

HERCULES TRIUMPHS OVER THE DUMPSTER

Some archaeologists believe that the oldest existing illustration of a fictional work on paper is this drawing of Hercules fighting a lion:
 

Known as the Heracles Papyrus, it was discovered under the desert sands outside the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus (named for a fish which, according to legend, ate the penis of the god Osiris).

The city was once the bustling regional capital of the 19th Upper Egyptian Nome.  For a thousand years, residents dumped their garbage-- including this noble little illustration of Hercules-- in the sands outside the city.  With the fall of the Egyptian empire, the city was conquered by successive foreign invaders (from Alexander the Great in 332 BCE to the Arabs in 641).  Reduced to ruins, Oxyrhyncus was abandoned and gradually reclaimed by the desert.

But it turns out that the climate was perfectly suited for preserving the scraps of paper in the rubbish heaps outside Oxyrhyncus.  The site had virtually no rain, a low water table, and was far from the Nile river (which flooded annually).  The dry sand blew over the tattered bits of papyrus, covering and preserving them until they could be rediscovered by archaeologists.  This was the ancient equivalent of mylar.

Thousands of years later, parents were still throwing away trashy illustrated stories of Hercules.

Hercules rescues Franklin Roosevelt from the Nazis: a comic from the famous "mile high" collection preserved in part by the favorable climate in Denver

But it is all in vain.  Hercules will always triumph over the dumpster. 

Parents hope their children will read something with enduring value, not cheap stories of musclebound heroes drawn on equally cheap paper.  But it's a funny thing about endurance; even the most perishable materials can become darn near immortal when they carry a message that is renewed by each new generation.  The Heracles of the papyrus seems to have outlasted the stone capitals of the mightiest empire on earth.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 42

The remarkable Harry Beckhoff drew this tiny picture of a man scared by a black cat in 1913.

What a marvelous design.

Many artists would feel constrained by the actual size or shape of a cat.  Or they might struggle over the fact that a cat walks on the ground around our ankles, so you are obligated to draw the entire body if you want to show the face.

But Beckhoff understood that the design comes first.  Everything else flows from that.

BELIEVING IN A RED PIXEL

The computer gaming industry was launched using just a few primitive elements.

Two or three colored pixels were all that was necessary to construct a story in the minds of viewers: a red pixel might represent a missile trying to knock out that green pixel before it hits blue pixel earth.

Later would come photo-realistic graphics, complex story lines and motion sensitive technology.  But the most important step-- turning viewers into believers-- was achieved with just a few basic visual symbols.  Our imaginations did the rest.  

It's amazing how a visual image--even a single red pixel--  gives our minds a starting place for belief in scenarios where mere words might fail to persuade.   Even the most far fetched ideas become more plausible once we can visualize them.

The newly released movie Argo tells the true story of the rescue of American diplomats hiding in the Canadian embassy in 1979 after  a mob of Islamic militants took over the US embassy.  To smuggle the diplomats out of Iran, A CIA “exfiltration” expert made up a wild story about the diplomats being a movie crew scouting locations in Iran for a Hollywood space fantasy called “Argo.”

As one film critic recounts:

“You don’t have a better bad idea than this?” a State Department official asks the CIA.  ”This is the best bad idea we have,” is the reply....   They can’t fake any of the usual identities for the Americans because they are too easy to disprove.  The normal reasons for foreigners to be abroad — teaching, studying, aid — are not plausible.  Only something completely outrageous could be true.

But how to persuade the fanatical Iranian border guards who were skeptical of all foreign devils?   Why should they believe such a far fetched tale?  Because the CIA showed them Jack Kirby's concept drawings for the "film."

They really liked the drawings.

Once the guards saw the pictures, they were able to visualize the movie and became persuaded.  They let the diplomats go.  Whether you're playing video games or smuggling hostages out of Iran, the principle that "seeing is believing" pays off time and again.  People who dismiss pictures as the mere illusion of reality underestimate the reality of illusion.

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF HOWARD PYLE

Howard Pyle (1853-1911) was the father of American illustration.   His powerful compositions (such as these horizontal stripes across a background color field)...

...had their origin in Pyle's small sketchbooks where he developed the designs for his pictures.

In some of Pyle's sketches we see him carefully mapping the placement of figures and objects in space:

But my favorites are the ones where we see Pyle wrestling with the abstract designs of his paintings:

 

These images are courtesy of the good folks at the Delaware Art Museum which owns a treasure trove of Pyle's sketchbooks showing the master at work (Thanks, Mary and Erin!)

Figure study

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF E.F. WARD

These unpublished sketches are by the illustrator E.F. Ward (1892-1990).

In an era before photography became convenient, illustrators filled sketchbooks with meticulous reference sketches of props and period costumes.  Like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter, they kept records of little details and touches that might be useful for some future assignment. 

 Today, an illustrator who wanted to draw someone in an historical outfit would not have to go through this.  They could easily pluck a dozen reference photos from the internet.

Lest you think that Ward's detailed sketches are anachronistic, he also did a series of faster, smaller figure studies and gesture drawings.  Done for a different purpose,  they were drawn in a much simpler style:

In good, workmanlike fashion, Ward only devoted as much time to a sketch as its purpose warranted.

Ward's sketches reveal a hard working, talented artist.  We don't remember him much today because he had the great misfortune to be working at the same time as Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth. 

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF ROBERT FAWCETT

These unpublished student sketches by Robert Fawcett show that, even as a teenager, he was a precocious talent:

Ten minute sketch

Ten minute sketch

All his life, Fawcett continued to sketch from the model.  Based on what he had learned at the Slade School,  Fawcett believed his weekly drawing sessions would keep his eyes fresh. 

Fawcett's mature sketches show how his powers grew over the years:

Detail

Detail

Fawcett believed that his weekly life drawing sessions paid off when it came time to make preparatory sketches for illustrations.  It gave him the confidence to work from his imagination in situations where many of his peers would be dependent on reference photos.

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF THOMAS FLUHARTY

Tom Fluharty is probably best known for his magazine covers using the classical oil painting techniques of the Flemish masters, but his preparatory pencil sketches-- slashing, vigorous drawings-- are a whole different kind of excellent:

Detail of McCain sketch

Fluharty wrote, "How Beauty is found in a graphite line or ink scratch is beyond me, but one thing I know is when I behold a sketch, beautifully executed, it's a beautiful thing."

Fluharty is a master of facial expressions.  Devoutly religious and traditional in his methods, he nevertheless manages to create some of the most hilariously wicked portraits I have ever seen.

In the margins of his sketches, we can see Fluharty exploring facial expressions and gestures in tiny thumbnails.

Even these small doodles (two inches tall) convey knowledge and strength.

More recently, Fluharty has branched into digital media where somehow he still manages to capture those imaginative facial expressions:

I was afraid that when he began working digitally it would rob his dynamic sketches of some of their vitality.  But his drawing skills are so strong, he has adapted to digital media beautifully:

Fluharty recently began illustrating his line of children's books under the sobriquet T. Lively.  His web site contains a collection of great pictures:

Oil study for children's book illustration

Like Fluharty's other work, these books will be worth watching.