Run Away!!!

The Good Duck Artist took a little break from painting Donald and the boys to paint some real humans. Run away!!!

© 1978 Carl Barks — King Beowulf

Warm 'n' Cozy

It's really cold outside my cozy little studio right now.

Hope where you're at, YOU are dry, safe, warm 'n' cozy!

Carl Barks — Blizzard Tonight — © Walt Disney Company

Way Up North

It's a little less than 3 weeks till Christmas, but this image shows what I like to think is going on right now, way up north — at least according to the vision of Carl Barks (the GOOD duck artist, as we Dell Comic aficionados like to say). Yes, Virginia, Barks painted more than just Scrooge and the boys.

I like that he has animal helpers, 'stead of them nasty little elves — the woodpeckers are a hoot and a half—'specially the test pilot.

©1979 Carl Barks — Santa's Work Shop 

I'm Trying

I'm trying my best to adapt to this new format that Blogger has so generously bestowed upon us Blogger users. Anyone that doesn't use Blogger won't see anything different from your POV (except the color of the text— I can't figure out how to get a color I like), but on this side the dashboard has been 'stream-lined' and I have to think twice as hard before posting (yeah, yeah, I know— 2 times 0 is still 0).

Okay, but I'm trying. As my wife sez: yes, VERY trying.

Completely off the subject, but relevant to the last post, this image is a cover that Robert Crumb created using the little lightbulb-headed character that is/was Gyro Gearloose's helper. That little guy stole the show in so many Carl Barks' Gearloose stories, living his own little adventurous inventive life. Crumb gave him a heart and put him on guard. As to the rest of the cover, Crumb wouldn't be Crumb if he wasn't offending SOMEbody, huh?

Robert Crumb — The Last Supplement — 1971

Zoom to School Over the Cloudlets

When I was a kid, inventors were all the rage. That's probably the case for all kids in all generations, but really, the 'space age' was the age of the future. Things had to be invented for the future to unfold the way it was being predicted. I would sit in church and daydream all the inventions that would make life more interesting.

One of the inspirations for wild daydreams was an inventor by the name of Gyro Gearloose, who usually invented just what was needed to solve a problem for his clientele. Sometimes he had to whack himself in the head and see stars and then invent something while in a delirium. I think that probably kicked his right brain into gear, while his left brain worked on automatic pilot.

Carl Barks — Gyro Gearloose — 1960

There are inventors and there are tweakers. The tweakers are forever noodling with a great invention, to try to improve it and change it gradually into something else. Sometimes it's changed into a complicated  gadget that basically does what the original invention did, but takes the fun out of the early concept. 

Airplanes have gone from barn-storming jennies that any adventurous soul could master to ultra-complex ultra-sonic jet fuel guzzling monster birds that can only be piloted by specialists with years of dedicated training.

Cars used to be sweet little contraptions with great diverse looks, that the owner could tinker with and fix problems and even replace a carburetor if needed. Now cars all look like one another and need specialized mechanics to hook the car's computer up to a diagnostic computer and then adjust components to just the right micro-tolerence.

Computers and the internet were once the domain of geeks bearing slide-rules (remember those?) and then finally reached a level where ol' grandma and you and I could figure out how to operate them and accomplish things with 'em. But there's always a new software, a new OS, a new plug-in gadget, all of them needing learning curves, special chargers, special training. Platforms that won't talk to each other without buying a special translator program, or things that you'd like to program or download, but nope, it's only for Microsoft, or nope, only for Mac. Oh, that great cutting edge computer that you bought last year? It's phased out, nearly obsolete, time to buy a new one, oh a new and improved one that does all the things the other one did, but it's been tweaked so that you have to learn new protocols and procedures.

Blogging was a great invention, a way for every person to communicate and publish, but now there's all kinds of options and decisions, hidden costs (ah, yes, extra storage), and just when you're comfortable with the program you're using, they imPROVE it, so that it does the same basic thing as always, but give you new learning curves, changing the look just for the sake of change.

It used to be that I could just whack myself in the head and see stars and kick my right brain into gear while my left brain worked on automatic pilot and blog, blog, blog for the fun of it for you and I. Now my left brain is in charge, trying to figure out which icon to click, which size to make each image, what unfamiliar color will work for the text, yada yada.

Change for change's sake, that's what inventing is about anymore.

Not a Duck in Sight

This painting almost looks like a scene from How to Train Your Dragon, the animated film from DreamWorks (that I really enjoyed), but it's by Carl Barks (The Good Duck Artist, you know—Donald, the boys, Uncle Scrooge) from decades before the film was made.

Not a duck in sight in this work.

© 1978 Carl Barks

Exotic Locales

Carl Barks took us on so many adventures with Uncle Scrooge and the boys. The exotic locales were always my favorite, yours too?

Carl Barks — Adventure in Old Persia

(Rug Riders Last Flight)

The Streets are Swarming

A little story about a swell tree . . .

Carl Barks — 1948

The Barks Treatment

It's interesting to compare the 1988 cover below by Daan Jippes with the bottom cover from 1949. With the exact same pose and everything, Jippes' rendering gave the characters spirit and liveliness that the original cover lacked. He gave it the 'Barks treatment'.

Daan Jippes — Mickey & Donald #1 — 1988

Donald & Mickey _ Firestone Giveaway — 1949

Bright and Cheery

Here is a bright and cheery duck cover by Daan Jippes — the only (in my opinion) artist to draw the ducks (slightly) better than the good duck artist himself, Carl Barks. It's sort of a scene from Christmas on Bear Mountain, but not quite (in the original story, none of the boys knew a bear cub was in the tree until later that night).

Does anyone know if Jippes' Disney art has ever been collected in one place? I'd pay real money for an album like that.

Daan Jippes — Gladstone's Christmas Parade #2 — 1989

That Silly Season

Ah, the first ever appearance of Uncle Scrooge McDuck, from Christmas on Bear Mountain, already iconic in his first panel. Zoom in on the iconic beauty of Carl Barks' art.

Carl Barks — Christmas on Bear Mountain — December 1947

Madame X?

Speaking of humorous cartoonists working on adventurous comics—of course Carl Barks' best Duck stories were of the adventurous sort. But isn't it fascinating to think of what might have been if Barks had proceeded with his experimentation of a human adventure romance strip, as he attempted here in a character study back in the late 1940s?

Season to be Jolly

Carl Barks' paintings brought Duckburg to some form of reality. This one is entitled 'The Season to be Jolly', adding another layer of reality to Uncle Scrooge.

ToyLand

The previous post about Santa's Toy Shop was a set-up for this post, a Carl Barks story originally from the 1948 issue of the Firestone Giveaway series. Carl Barks' Christmas tales were always the best. I don't remember a Christmas season, as a kid, that I didn't curl up in a warm corner to read and reread Barks Christmas stories.

ToyLand - 2

The 1948 cover to this story:

Snow Fun

Perfect for a December day, this is "Snow Fun", painted by Carl Barks.

This 'blog is nothing if it's not eclectic.

Copyright Disney, of course.

Then and Now

At one point in the early 80s I was completely without funds. But when I saw the Celestial Arts publication of Carl Bark's Uncle Scrooge McDuck, I just had to have it. The so totally cool bonus was this signed print. I scrounged up pennies, I dug through old pockets, I did odd (really odd) jobs. I didn't have enough money for food, but I finally came up with enough for the book and print. It was $200 back then, I've heard that the value is 10 times that now. I missed a few meals then, but I still have this now.

My Favorite Depiction of Scrooge McDuck

This painting by Carl Barks is on the cover of Uncle $crooge McDuck: His Life & Times as well as the cover of Russ Cochran's Graphic Gallery #4.

My other favorite depiction of Scrooge is in Bark's story The Old Castle's Secret, but that's a story for another time.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Uncle Scrooge #16 Dec-Feb 1957—back cover

It seems appropriate to begin this pictorial autobiography on the first day of the new year, with the first ten cent comic book I ever bought off a spinner, drawn by the good duck artist—Carl Barks. It's sort of my 'old number one dime', the 'spark plug of all of McDuck's vast fortune.' The comic is a bit worn, but has survived decades of the ebb and flow of my collection of pictorial treasures.

I intend to share many of my treasures in the months to come, some not terribly rare, but terribly meaningful to me. I would like to zoom in on details along the way and share what has inspired me in my career as an artist. And I would like to examine the value of pictorial images, not in terms of money, but in degrees of imagination.

I refer to myself as a pictorialist, not just in my set of skills, but in my lifelong appreciation of the skills and talents of artists, illustrators, cartoonists, sculptors, photographers, typographers, and graphic designers. I'd like to share that appreciation with anyone who stumbles into my little world.

It's a good little world!