You Can See Why

You can see why they called her 'America's Sweetheart' . . .

Mary Pickford

Careening Through the Sky

In his day, Dave Stevens not only revived the look of Golden Age comics, he managed to surpass it in quality at the same time. 

Yow, wotta great back cover!

Dave Stevens — Rocketeer — Starslayer #2 back cover — 1982

'Twas a Dark & Stormy Creature . . .

Ray Harryhausen — Bat-Winged Creature

Fantastic

One of the more fantastic of the old Fantastic covers . . .

Phillips & Summers — Fantastic — Summer 1952

Speaking of Old Ways

Speaking of old ways of architectural renderings . . . 

Otto Wagner — Karlsplatz Tram Stop, Vienna — 1898

pencil - India ink - watercolor

Decorating Number

The old way of architectural rendering had such warmth & character.

Brandt — House & Garden — September, 1922

Loved Anew

Such beautiful old books out in the world waiting to be loved anew.

Eric Pape — The Geste of Duke Jocelyn — 1920

Alive and Well

From an old old textbook, when they knew how to keep a school boy's interest in history alive and well.

Bathsheba — circa 1900

Struggle for Life

I'm guessing this is an allegorical image and it looks pretty disastrous for what could've just been a boatload of naked people, all minding their own business. That poor baby is being swept right out of the picture, and the blindfolded guy at the rudder seems pretty darn calm considering what a ruckus is going on around him ("What's going on, people? C'mon, somebody tell me. Why's the baby crying?"). Whoosh. All this makes a lot of our struggles seem pret-ty tame, I must say.

Henry Delacroix — Struggle for Life — 1893

Grow, Grow, Grow My Hair

My last couple posts showed old guys with long hair, and my daughter sent over the jpeg below because I've talked about growing out my beard and hair.  Twenty years ago I had shoulder length hair, and a 'sea captain beard', but it all just got so hard to manage that I've had them quite short for a long time. 

Until now. Being so busy, I've just let my beard grow longer, and I was getting ready to trim it when I saw a really cool image of an older guy with epic long hair and beard. And I thought, well hey, nothing wrong with looking epic, so I'm going to let it all grow for a while and see what turns out. My wife loves long hair or dreds on guys, so maybe I'll get back to being in her favor a bit more, 'cept for the dreds part. They're just not me.

But my beard is just now passing 'Grandpa' length and heading for 'Wizard'. I'm hoping my hair will do likewise, thinning it appropriately along the way. At some point I hope to get a new portrait photo for my avatar/icony thing that will show my progress.

from PoorlyDressed.com

Ol' Man Winter

Ol' Man Winter done got us in his grip 'round here tonight, but I'm laughin' at him. We're warm 'n' cozy and we jump ahead an hour tonight so that we'll be that much closer to when the lovely Spring Maiden will come flittin' 'round like a butterfly that's been hanging out at the WinterFest mulled wine booth.

Below, an accurate portrait sculpture of the ol' man hisself.

'Winter'

Bedeviled

I swear to thee, I kid thee not,

Spam hath risen like devil's rot.

A hundred per hour or more,

Beyond my power, around me soar.

I cannot focus while this doth happen,

I must do sumpin before I snappen.

Donn P. Crane — Bedeviled 

I ain't kidding folks, I just had 80 spams in only 10 minutes make their way through the filter. This isn't what I signed on for. I long for intelligent discourse, not for discourteous gibberish. Maybe it's time to pull up stakes and migrate elsewhere.

Peak to Peak

An interesting homage to illustrator Bob Peak and the profile of a widow's peak channeling the bride of Frankenstein . . .

Rosaria Battiloro — L'habit de la Mort — 2010

Sensitive Lion IV

I'm sorry, one more image of this current conceit:

The sensitive lion of Frederick S. Church . . .

Frederick Stuart Church — Conquered — circa 1915

Sensitive Lion III

The sensitive (and wet) lion of Michael Satarov . . .

© Michael Satarov — Morbid Beauty — contemporary

Sensitive Lion II

The sensitive lion of John R. Neill . . .

John R. Neill — The Cowardly Lion of Oz — 1923

Sensitive Lion I

The sensitive lion of John Macallan Swan . . .

John Macallan Swan — pastel study of a lion — circa 1900

Sensitive Line IV

The sensitive line of Ernest Thompson . . .

Ernest E. Thompson — Loup Dormant — 1891

This is a sleeping wolf — and looks exACTly like our family dog, whose breed is directly descended from wolves.

Sensitive Line III

The sensitive pencil line of Gustav Klimt . . .

Gustav Klimt — Study for Water Serpents II — 1903-1904

Motivation

The mysteries of the universe keep me motivated. I'm gonna keep blogging here until at least the time I get the Pictorial Arts Journal up and running. But fair word of warning: I'm now holding back the very best stuff as content for the Journal.

Jean 'Moebius' Giraud