AN ARTIST'S ATTIC, part 1

When cartoonist Leonard Starr retired at the end of a long career, he said, "I've been drawing every day for 60 years.  That's long enough."

I met Starr shortly after he retired and learned a lot from him.  I've often written about his work and I posted a tribute to him after he died this year.  Starr lived in a large home in Westport Connecticut and in his attic we discovered mountains of detritus from a career in the arts-- a career that spanned both the heights and the depths of the comic industry.  I've now spent a lot of time going through dust covered boxes in that cold attic on my hands and knees, .  I'm working to make sure that much of that material ends up in the Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University.  But for now I'd like to share some of my anthropological discoveries with you.

The original drawings in Starr's attic spanned the glory years when newspapers featured elegantly drawn, richly detailed soap opera strips reproduced large enough to be savored...

 

...as well as the later years as newspapers vanished and strips were simplified to satisfy new streamlined tastes: 

It's difficult to believe that the same artist's hand drew both styles.  But Starr won "best strip" awards from the National Cartoonist Society for each style he adopted. 

I particularly enjoyed the piles of sketches everywhere.  There were old character studies showing how Starr developed the faces for his strips:

 ...and of course preliminary sketches showing how he worked out compositions for his panels:

 

 There were also sketches left over from his bachelor days in the late 1940s.

 

     

 

One thing I admire about Starr is that he went to art school mid-career.  He began freelancing as a comic book artist in 1941, when he was just 16.  He desperately needed the money and in those days, almost anyone could find work drawing crude figures for low rates.  Starr was naturally talented and found work drawing the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner and other popular comics.  In the 1950s he earned his first nationally syndicated strip and was doing very well.  But he always regretted his lack of formal art training, so he sought out the best art teacher he could find and continued to study anatomy and perspective in between writing and drawing his strip, On Stage.  

Starr's attic contained several battered boxes filled with awards and plaques and trophies.  Judging from the dust, the boxes hadn't been touched in decades.

Starr recognized that a fancy bronze plaque designating you a "living legend" was no guarantee that either you or your legend would live.

What remained after Starr passed away was the contents of that attic.  This week I plan to share some of the lessons I learned-- artistic, philosophical, cultural, socioeconomic-- from going through that material.   

FINDING ENCHANTMENT IN THE COMMONPLACE

These days we are blessed with many new and wonderful tools that enhance our expressive powers. We can employ digital high def 3D animation to create persuasive flying dragons or pink worlds with green skies.  We can animate huge armies of marching trolls that would've been virtually impossible to draw by hand.

Where Dr. Seuss once penned an ink line to suggest a field of flowers, today his field is projected on a movie screen in high rez with colorful flowers that sway in the breeze:

Similarly, animators have given new life to the simple drawings of Charles Schulz...

...by adding what the studios call "a richness of technique."

In some ways these new tools unleash our imaginations; they free us from practical constraints that imprisoned previous generations.  But as G.K. Chesterton warned, "You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes."
 

It's easier to persuade viewers that they're seeing miracles when you depict miraculous subjects using miraculous tools. But the best artists, and the ones who are truly blessed, are the ones who can recognize the miracles in everyday life. There are miracles in the blades of grass at our feet, and we don't need digital tools to present them.

The great illustrator Richard Thompson lives in a small, ordinary suburban town but through his eyes it becomes a world of mystery.  He finds enchantment in the commonplace things that you and I ignore every day.  I've previously written about one of my favorite pieces, his Neighborhood of Mystery:

We've all seen plastic shopping bags lying in the gutter or caught in a bush somewhere. We do our best to ignore them. But here’s what Thompson thinks about:

Or, you walk by your neighbor’s house where they’ve left their garbage at the curb.  You've trained your mind not to think about it, but Thompson's mind recognizes the potential:

Now that we can animate pixie wings and magic dust so persuasively, we no longer have to work hard to see enchantment. We've certainly stopped looking for it in places like a pile of garbage left at the curb. But so often, what we find depends on what we're looking for.
In Thompson's neighborhood, construction workers mark up the street just like they do in your neighborhood.  When did you ever pause to consider the possible ramifications?

Thompson's Neighborhood of Mystery represents a world of mystery and it all begins with his imagination. I admire the way he keeps his eyes open and finds enchantment in the ordinary.
Another wonderful example is Thompson's series on local restaurants that have violated health  ordinances.  One day Thompson saw a notice in the town newspaper that a diner had been closed by the Board of Health.  This spurred a years-long acid trip in which Thompson mused about the kinds of restaurants that might be shut down and the reasons why:

These may seem like humble little jokes because there are no Thunder Gods fighting alien lizards to a Dolby soundtrack.  The drawings make no use of the wonderful tools described above.  But Thompson's fantasies gain strength and relevance and even truth from the fact that they are rooted in a human nature that we can all recognize.  They represent a different kind of miracle than the type found in fabricated digital universes.
 

FRAZETTA'S UNREALISTIC REALISM

Frank Frazetta's painting of the Egyptian Queen...

...inspired the famous Princess Leia slave costume from Star Wars:

The costume designers originally specified 25 yards of fabric to create a long, flowing harem skirt similar to the one in Frazetta's painting.

Costume designed by Aggie Guerard Rodgers and Nilo Rodis-Jamero

However, they quickly found that Frazetta's concept made no sense.  That long blue drape looks great in the painting but in real life "the costume department could not make the concept work."   You don't realize how ridiculous it is until you try to translate it from image to reality.

In this next picture, Frazetta paints a demon about to strike a blow...

...except the blow could never land because his horns are blocking the way.  Part of Frazetta's brilliance was that he was able to portray imaginary characters as solid, muscular beings who lived in a real world governed by laws of physics.  But Frazetta often broke those laws for visual effect.

In this third example,  note that Frazetta has planted the archer's foot firmly on thin air.

 

This was not a mistake.  The painting would not have looked nearly as powerful if Frazetta had changed that stance to place the foot on something solid.

Such liberties are not uncommon in Frazetta's paintings, but somehow they don't keep his work from looking realistic.  In fact, his paintings are far more convincing than the work of his imitators who meticulously follow the laws of gravity, lighting, anatomy, etc.

Part of Frazetta's art was that he understood when the laws of appearances take priority over the laws of physics. 

MARK ENGLISH UP CLOSE

I've noted on this blog that many of today's illustrators seem to devalue design and composition that have been so important to previous generations of artists.  At some point, awkwardness and ungainliness came into style, as audiences became suspicious of beauty and skill. 

I'm a big fan of awkward and ungainly art when it is done well, but too often this style is an excuse for laziness and lack of talent.  We let ourselves off the hook too easily by underestimating the continuing importance of design and composition.  One of the best ways to remind ourselves of its value is to take a look-- close up-- at the work of illustrator Mark English.

When was the last time you saw a composition this powerful in contemporary American illustration?  English has simplified these forms to their basics.  Don't go looking for fingernails or individual eyelashes in this painting.  But at the same time, his little touches of control make clear that English understood exactly where those fingernails and eyelashes would have gone.  They were removed out of strength, not out of weakness.

English was struggling with the exact same design challenges as internationally renowned fine artists such as Robert Motherwell and Clyfford Still.  In my judgment, he usually did a better job.

We can appreciate the strength of the first composition from a mile away.  But let's look at another picture up close, to see the subtler elements of design at play.  Here is an illustration from 1969 about the participants in a funeral:

To understand the nature of English's accomplishment, look at some of his details:

Even the most abstract quadrants of the painting are impressive close up. 

Looking at Mark English's work up close makes me yearn for what we've lost in contemporary illustration.

DRAWING THE BACKS OF HEADS

There are thousands of reference books about drawing faces, but only the good ol' Illustration Art blog will talk to you about drawing the backs of heads.

Most people sitting in an auditorium will ignore the rows and rows of dark, featureless, identical ovals in front of them.  Nothing to see, right?

But recently I had the privilege of viewing the sketchbooks of illustrator William A. Smith and was impressed by the number of times he sat in large audiences and studied the backs of the heads in front of him.  Looking at his insightful sketches, I realized that a subject I thought was uniform and uninteresting was really overflowing with variety and choices. People slouched in different ways. Their shoulders were uneven.  They cocked their heads in various postures.  And Smith's razor sharp eyes caught it all.

I have only a few isolated examples here, but Smith did some some superb detailed drawings containing multiple figures at what would otherwise have been a pretty dull lecture. They are in the collection of the Michener Museum.

Robert Fawcett is another illustrator who found challenges in the backs of people's heads.  He never drew on automatic pilot.

If you study these heads with the same open eyes that Fawcett employed to view the originals, you'll recognize that no two are the same.  Fawcett came up with some surprisingly wild and jagged ways to depict a subject the rest of us never even notice:

 

There's no such thing as a dull subject matter when Fawcett picks up his brush.

I love the way that artists such as Smith and Fawcett were constantly observant.  While the rest of us  sleepwalk, they have the energy to keep looking and it seems their search is always rewarded.