Seraphim

Jeffrey Jones

Didn't Do Justice

Speaking of the late Rowland Wilson, this is a promotional page for him that didn't do justice to his great talent.

Just a Little Idea

Speaking of Leonardo, that Vinci guy, here he be paintin' the saint.

Rowland B. Wilson — Playboy cartoon

'70s/'80s, somewhere in there

Fraught with Symbology

Ignatio Matus F. — Mujer en la Playa — 1955

To my way of thinking, the painting directly above, Woman at the Beach, is also of a spiritual nature. Note the mysterious hand gesture pointing to the heavens, utilized by Leonardo da Vinci and others, as if to mean 'as it is below, so it is above' (possibly referring to heavenly bodies).

The painting is fraught with other symbology, not unlike the paintings of Leonardo. If you can zoom in, note that the champagne bottle is fairly tiny in scale, but also if you look really closely, you can see that another bottle has been painted out (without removing its shadow), as well as an array of drinking glasses. My oh my, I could study the symbology of this painting all day.

Below, a reminder of that hand gesture by Leonardo that I refer to.

Leonardo — St John the Baptist

Mystically Minded

Cenotes are sinkholes, basically connections to subterranean bodies of water. They can be mysterious places, hence sacred to the mystically minded. This is a nice visualization of that spirituality.

Charles Frizzell — Sacred Cenote

A Savage Celtic Queen

The Pagan Queen

Learning Weird and Disturbing Things

Now here's an interesting contemporary illustrator worth paying attention to. Fun, intelligent — and a good drawer besides.

Check out Peter Arkle's website here.

© Peter Arkle

© Peter Arkle

home page

Mee-o My-o

Mee-o my-o my-o—why did I ever leave Ohio, what's going on here?

Erté — Ermyntrude & Esmeralda

April

Helen Dryden — April — 1916

Don't Be Nervous

I was never impressed with Playboy cartoon captions—they were always forced, stilted and unfunny. But so much of the art, created with a watercolor medium, WAS impressive.

Eldon Dedini — Playboy cartoon — 1970s? '80s?

That Flaming Chariot

1930s

One night there appeared in the sky above the Duke's castle a flaming chariot drawn by fiery dragons. And the next morning the lovely daughter of the Duke was nowhere to be found. So everyone knew that some evil creature, having the powers of enchantment, had carried her off in that flaming chariot.

Near-Mint

Back in early March, I posted some images from my copy of Kabumpo in Oz, with a cover that looked like it fell off the truck, skidded across the street and into the storm drain.

Here we have a near-mint version of that cover, courtesy of OtherEric, friend of these blogs, and all-together great guy.

Thanks Eric!

John R. Neill — Kabumpo in Oz

East with West

Promotional text for this artist states 'Unites East with West, Past with Present'.

Muramasa Kudo — Love's Messenger — lithograph

Marking Time

Again, ya gotta know that I'm marking time here with all these latest posts—pulling up miscellaneous material that's already been scanned (back when I had this thing called 'spare time') but isn't all top drawer stuff (that's not a dis to any of it).

It's just stuff that got set aside the first time around, for whatever reason, and has filled up a folder that lets me post quite a bit now, even though I am in DEEP deadline territory. This will probably go on for some time.

Mort Drucker — Animal House promotional drawing — 1980

Fred Astaire Has a New Partner

Pin-up artist George Petty scored big time when he landed this cover back in 1941. It had to have helped Rita Hayworth's career, and I'd wager that Time magazine sold a few more copies than usual that week.

George Petty — Time — November 10, 1941

Peace

Wishing peace and contentment

to all you cyber bunnies around the world.

I hope you can relax in the safety of your dens,

play tag with a neighbor

or nibble on a clover leaf.

Ed Dodd/Tom Hill — Mark Trail —May 26, 1974

Sermon on the Amount

Also to honor Easter weekend, in the spirit of its spiritual founder, is this sermon about 'the church'—written by Marylyn Ippolito and illustrated by Wally Wood.

Wood's work always has amazing grace.

Wally Wood — Mad Magazine — 1960s

Resistance to Progressive Thought

There are a lot of fans of Donn P. Crane's illustrative drawings of the 1930s. And there are even more fans of the Carpenter of Nazareth — so in honor of Easter weekend:

"Even in the shadow of his betrayal and death, Jesus comforts his disciples at the Last Supper in the upper room."

"Jesus before Herod Antipas, whither Pilate sent him on discovering he came from Herod's province, Galilee."

"Pilate shows Jesus to the mob from the loggia adjoining the Judgement Hall. All through history in every nation, great leaders of thought, like Jesus, have stood alone with the crowd against them. It was not a race of people who condemned Jesus; it was the resistance to progressive thought which has crucified great leaders in every race and age, and still often continues to crucify them. Just so the Greeks condemned Socrates. Part of the arch in this picture still exists in Jerusalem and is called The Ecce Homo Arch. Adjoining it is a room in which can be seen today a pavement marked for a game by the Roman soldiers of Pilate's palace when they were off-guard. The Jewish council, or Sanhedrin, could judge Jesus but only the Roman governor, Pilate, could sentence him."

The crucifixion

"The faithful women see Jesus risen from the dead."

Ho Hum

What do these fanboys see in Jim Lee's artwork anyway?

Jim Lee - art / Joe Chiodo - colors

Underground Puppets

Kid makes a comment in the last post about the guy having thinning hair. Well that ain't nothin' compared to this guy. This guy looks a bit like an American underground cartoon by Jaxon or somebody like that. It's an arresting cover.

If I remember right, this is a handmade book from socialist Cuba of the '90s, under the auspices of a puppet theater.

A Fine Pose

Barry Smith doesn't usually draw super heroes per se, but for an ad agency commission he gave the drawing the quality of a Lou Fine pose, using brush, ink and zip-a-tone.

Barry Smith — Superhero

Gaieté

Gaieté — 1930s

A 65,000 Day Year

Murphy Anderson — Life on Uranus

Planet Comics — 1947

Murphy Anderson — Life on Uranus

Planet Comics — 1947

Anything Worth Doing is Worth Over-Doing

Elwood Smith — self-promotional page

© Elwood H. Smith

Trink

Trink Coca Cola

Parisienne

Raphael Kirchner — from La Vie Parisienne — 1915

Behold!

I'm still under the deadline gun, one of the most intense and complex periods of my life, but I'm making progress, and I don't want you to lose interest in this blog, so here's the deal:

I'm going to start posting again more regularly, but it's going to be stuff that was scanned months ago and awaiting proper time and place. Some of it was awaiting investigative research, or has already been seen somewhere on the net, or might be what some folks refer to as risqué, or some images seemed a bit dull but still worth gathering.

Whatever the reason, I've got quite a bit ready to go, begging your indulgence of extremely little comment or explanation. I'll label them if I can, but some might have absolutely no information. If YOU have the info, please feel free to leave a comment supplying it. If you've seen some of this stuff elsewhere, I'm thinking probably a lot of other people haven't. And fer gosh sake please don't be offended by any risqué stuff — beauty, in all its forms, should not be avoided.

Well, already I need to get back to work, but here's a timely image awaiting the springtime which is finally starting to take hold here in our area.

H. Granville Fell — To Spring — 1912

From canto IX of The Revolt of Islam by Shelley

Goodbye

This am not Bizarro #1 here, and me wish miserable birthday to Mr. Mxyzptlk. Him always give Superman happy times, not like me who am perfect sense maker, cause when me make backward sense then that too am backward so that when me wish you miserable April Fool's Day that not make sense, cause me really not wish you anything, me unwish you—which make no sense at all, except to me it make perfect sense, except me mean imperfect sense, which is nonsense, which to me mean perfectly logical, except me mean imperfect which mean me had it right all along, which mean it wrong. See what me not mean?

Bizarro birthday am not on April 2, 7, 12, 17, 23, 25, or 27, which mean me got lots of birthdays!

Me not go look for that ugly tramp Donna Troy on April 26, cause me no have thing for her and no have present for her which am not Bizarro #1.

Hello!

DC calendar — 1970s

Keep Swingin'

Okay, I'm taking one more deeeep breath of fresh air before jumping back into the ring with this heavyweight deadline. There's the bell! The only way out of this is to keep swingin'.

George Petty

ThINK you all

Just to let you know I'm still vertical in this world, having finished another HUGE deadline, with one more to go before settling back to just the usual BIG deadlines, where I can start posting regularly again. I'm thINKing maybe another week or so.

George Herriman — Krazy Kat

Feat of Clay

Did you have any notion at all that today is the birthday of the original Princess Diana, Wonder Woman? At least it is according to DC Comics back in the 1970s.

Perhaps instead of a birthday, she should have a Made of Clay Day...

Still Here

I'm still so overwhelmed with deadlines that I can barely justify eating lunch, but I'm making a bit of headway, finishing one major deadline, and chopping away at some intermediate overlapping deadlines here and there. But new deliverables keep getting dumped into my lap and I still see no end in sight, exCEPT that I plan to say to hell with it all, come my daughter's spring break from university. Clients stare wide-eyed as I tell them my daughter takes priority, but they don't argue. Of course the load will be even heavier when I come back to it all, but live for today, ey?

In the meantime, I have a couple of minutes breathing time, so I'm posting a nice number just to let you know I'm still here and hope you'll still keep coming back. And thank you to all you nice folks who have been supportive in stressful times, even though you have stressful times of your own.

This cover has been seen elsewhere on the net, but this is my scan of the magazine in my collection, which is in lovely condition, even though it's nearly 78 years old. What a lovely design and rendering, with no blurbs at all! Many illustrators could be turning out this kind of quality, and many of us would buy more magazines, if only art directors and editors took a stand against the same ol' same ol' that we see on the newsracks.

John Holmgren — Judge — July 1934

Passing of Another Great Artist

The terribly sad news of the passing of another great artist, Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, brings me back to the blog.

I was in the middle of laying out a graphic tribute to him, when my deadlines pushed that project to a back burner. I bring forward the cover and title page at this time to pay honor to his prolific genius. Down the road I will post the full tribute.

Condolences to his family, friends and fans.

Shhh

Shhh — don't tell anybody — I still have weeks to go to finish off this workload, but it's near midnight on a Friday and I can't help myself, I had to sneak away from the drawing board and do a quick post—some more lively, energetic and imaginative stuff from John R. Neill.

John R. Neill — Kabumpo in Oz — 1922