Drawing People for Fun

There were a lot of books running around in the 1940s, trying to teach people how to draw people. I got this book in my 40s, called Drawing People for Fun (1943), by Roger Vernam, who had a loose technique based on tight principles.

Open the Door Albert

45 years ago this morning you could open your newspaper and turn to this page:

Only one Kelly post this morning cuz I'm so busy scanning for Pogo in Pandemonia. If you haven't been there yet, click here to see what's unfolding.

Witzendish

Another Wood sketch that I bought from Woody with a whole batch of artist's originals of all kinds. This was obviously a work-up for Witzend, but I've never seen a final published anywhere.

Enchanting

As I keep saying, books for children published in the early 1900s had a special magic, that are still enchanting over 100 years later. This book only had two illustrations in it, but they were pretty special, and it was lovely to have the picture titles on  tissue overlays, as shown below. Haven't heard much of Beatrice Stevens, but hopefully there is more of her work out there somewhere.

Above, frontis with tissue overlay. Below, without.

The Other Whistler

Some interesting illustrations by Rex Whistler.

Gulliver's Travels

The Marsh King's Daughter

Garden of Paradise

Faerie Alphabet

Once again, the old ways of illustration are so appealing. These faeries and elves are truly enchanting to my way of seeing. I certainly have Respect for the Queene. I would like to visit her kingdom.

Faerie Alphabet

Rediscovered Masters

Sometimes when wandering through my library I rediscover masters of painting that I had relegated to a dusty corner, feeling that their work seemed dusty. But different times I have different feelings, and these paintings by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) suddenly seem interesting again.

Silenus—1838

Rediscovered Masters

Diana Surprised in Her Bath—1836

View Near Naples—1841

Landscape with Figures—1859

Landscape with Figures — detail

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.

Kelly Sunday

Another Pogo Sunday from 45 years ago today:

And finally (drumroll please), the Pogo "Mars" sequence is ready to start rolling. It is so saturated with Kellyness that I decided to let the sequence have its own 'blog. The image below is the header, and this is where you can find it: Pogo in Pandemonia

There is another blog, The Fabulous Fifties, that intends to showcase the sequence as well, and who knows maybe others have or will be showing it around the world. But my showcase will be in pretty high resolution and from my perspective of having talked with Kelly about the sequence before it was ever published (as explained already in Pogo in Pandemonia). My one shortcoming is that the Sunday strips, that I collected week by week when they were first published, are the tabloid format, dropping one panel from each page each week. Maybe we'll be able to see those over at The Fabulous Fifties. 

But the run that I have is pretty complete, and I'm going to begin the run at the first week of 1966 to include all the build-up. It will be more than a year's worth of material, but it certainly won't take that long to see it, as I will show up to a month's worth at any one posting.

Stop in, hope to see you there, hope to see some comments.

Princess Pam

I wasn't going to post this until a later date, but I am now for the sake of connection to the previous post regarding Bruce Jones and Dave Stevens. What a great pairing of talents. What a loss with the passing of Dave Stevens.

Princess Pam is a gorgeous 4 pages, thanks also to Joe Chiodo's colors. It's terrific that there was no violence in the story, even if the ending is sad. What's really sad is that we don't have more stories of this sort.

Friends of the Rocketeer

Above and below from the Rocketeer Album limited edition. There are some books I am glad to buy; and some, years later, that I'm really glad I bought.

Below are full-page 'pin-ups' from the 1984 Rocketeer Special Edition #1, created by some of Dave Steven's friends.

Gray Morrow

Doug Wildey

Bruce Jones

Friends of the Rocketeer

Russ Heath—very cool

Murphy Anderson

William Stout

Al Williamson

GF—I'm sorry, I don't know who GF is.

Rescue of Sorts

This book is falling apart, barely holding on to its existence. Scanning and posting is a rescue of sorts, spreading its treasure around the globe, waiting to be discovered by someone anew.