SatEvePost

When I left Chicago, after a summer at the Art Institute, I took two big portfolios with me on the train. One of hard-earned two bit stuff I had created, and one of all the great prints and posters I spent big bucks on at the great print/poster/book shop a few blocks off Michigan Ave. This J.C. Leyendecker was a favorite among favorites, that I actually spent money on to have professionally framed, at a time when I barely had enough money to eat on. That was my summer of exploring the essence of Rembrandt, and I remember reading that Rembrandt would spend his last few coins on a little vase as a prop for a painting rather than buy food. I identified with that attitude.

This was created as a SatEvePost cover in the 1920s.

Ordinary Subject, Extraordinary Artist

It's wonderful to see how ordinary subjects can be interpreted by extraordinary artists . . . like Jeffrey Catherine Jones.

Word Salad

The ol' stat counter has counted thousands of downloads from this site, but the most popular one so far appears to be Fred Schrier's underground comix work. Well that's just cool. 

Here is a story from Mother's Oats Comix #2, 1970, that has always been a favorite of mine. Some of these panels are great grafix and deserve to be seen close-up. I'm posting it extra large so you can click in on the cool details and text. These pages show what graphic panels can be about instead of the superhero beat em up fests that pass for comic books these days.

Word Salad 2

Powers That Be

1950s and 60s (and beyond) Science Fiction paperback covers  were dominated (at least from my point of view) by the artwork of Richard Powers. 

Powers brought an abstract quality (literally) to the genre with wildly imaginative designs. The first cover shown below was not sci-fi, but the quiet design appealed to me even as a kid. The Time Machine cover is also a big favorite of mine.

 

Powers That Be

Kelpie or Nixie?

Another in a series of Herbert Draper paintings, The Kelpie. Traditionally a kelpie is a supernatural water horse, so I'm not sure what Draper's title refers to, as this is perhaps more of a nixie, a type of river mermaid. Whatever.

Mean Mr. Mustard

Another Fred Schrier one-pager:

At First Glance

Here's a 1915 Willy Pogany illustration that, at first glance, I took for Franklin Booth. But it's a Willy alright, from a Sunday magazine.

Zen Zone-Outs

Underground comix helped get me through a difficult adjustment to Army life back in the early 70s. None more so than those created by Fred Schrier and Dave Sheridan. I would come back to my quarters after a rough day and many times unwind by escaping into The Balloon Vendor and Mother's Oats Comix and such. Fred Schrier, who now goes by Alfred Schrier, was my favorite with his goofy, benign, zen zone-outs. He's now a kid's illustrator.  I'll post more sometime, but this back cover one-pager is a good introduction to his comix and to a great idea.

Mr. Schrier, if you're out there, Clevelandish, I would love to hear from you. I'm a big fan of yours. Thanks for the good ol' daze. 

I've posted this extra large so you can get into the detail. Be sure to click on it.

Good Together

Husbands and wives rarely work together well, or so I've heard. But Leo and Diane Dillon are so good together, they literally work on top of each other's work. My wife and I aspire to work similarly, but we have found how difficult that is.

I met and talked with the Dillons at a book signing and was so impressed with their loveliness.

This illustration is, of course, from their spectacular Ashanti to Zulu.

Whelan

Michael Whelan has some really nice paintings, but these are two of my favorites.

Summer Queen

Snow Queen

It's Another Kelly Sunday

Forty-five years ago today:

Notice how Kelly purposely misspelled 'inc.' in the syndicate blurb.

Artful Rendering

From back in the stone age of the 1970s, another artful rendering by Stephen Fabian.

Ursula Andress as "She" by H. Rider Hagard

Stood Out-1

Gene Szafran had an art style that certainly stood out on the book spinner racks:

Stood Out-2

And Szafran did some nice illustration for Playboy, among other mags:

It has Magic

Stephen Fabian, illustrator of sci-fi and fantasy, seems undervalued and unrecognized by many. While his work could be a bit derivative here and there, it has magic. 

Decorative Art

Not all fantastical art was created for books. This is a decorative oil panel by Howard Cushing—commissioned  to decorate a room (that's a lot of what our studio does--some of my best artwork has only been seen by affluent families and their friends).

Appropriate Thought

A few minutes ago, out of the blue and unplanned, I came across this photo portrait of Amelia Earhart. I thought, oh this is cool, I want to post this next. But I thought, I should wait and use it when some particular date is appropriate. Then I thought (I'm always thinking) no, I want to post it next. I scanned it and just now before uploading I thought (there I go again thinking), I thought I'll just quick check any appropriate dates today. TA-DAA, this is her birthday, today, right now. She was born July 24, 1897. How much more appropriate could it get? I love synchronicity.

A portrait of Amelia Earhart by the Bachrach Studio, 1930

Wild About Harry

Here's a nifty Gahan Wilson illustration of Harry Potter for the New Yorker, for the first film. Notice that Harry is pinning up cartoons from the New Yorker, including a great Charles Addams on the upper left, and in his hands, the most famous James Thurber cartoon ("All right, have it your way—you heard a seal bark!").

That Was the Week That Was, July 25, 1969

People were high on the moon all week, not just for the one small step. Time magazine was still 'timely' with a cover date of July 25. But it also became a 'time' capsule of other icons of that dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Besides the cover and the moon men, I've pulled a few pages relating to us people on earth, just to show the context of the 'time'.

A really nice cover by Louis Glanzman, his 30th for Time, showing Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon . . .

' The Moon'—a catchy catch-phrase . . .

The Moon Men were photogenic and brave. The neat thing is that they weren't cocky . . .

It was a wonderful event for cameras, but it was cool that Robert McCall, and other artists for other media, were on hand . . .

In hindsight we can laugh that there was concern about bringing back 'moon bugs', but if they hadn't done the quarantine and there really were cosmic pathogens and we all died horrible blood-spitting deaths . . . wouldn't we have been pissed?

A cool Time diagram, adapted from Life . . .

Keep scrolling down to see about life on Earth . . .

That Was the Week That Was

Yes kids, Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982 . . .

And, hmm, it says here the Nixon Administration has secretly decided something. But Dick, you've always been so forthright. . .

And Ted took the wrong turn somewhere . . .

Raquel shows us that the moon wasn't the only heavenly body covered in the news . . .

And look who all was on hand for the media including Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers hisself and (Wow!) Rod Serling . . .