Video: R. O. and R.

Michael Sporn and others have posted a link to an interview with my great teacher, R. O. Blechman, on the Comics Journal.

Somehow or another reading that combined with whatever other web browsing I've been up to connected me to this series of videos from the Strand with Bob and the lovely and talented R. Sikoryak.



I was there, but I'm an old man, so things like this a good reminders of what I once know.



At the beginning of this video he says "it was only about a year ago I became acquainted with [Harvey Kurtzman's] stuff". He told me the same story about ten years before. I suspect by the early 1970s R. O. had already filed away the work of every illustrator in world history and has used the following years to appreciate them all and add to the list.



This also starts with a great story about doing covers for Story magazine -an important lesson for how to be happy with your work.



Questions.



Anyone who's interested in illustration, especially students should pay close attention to this talk.

You Get What You Pay For

I don't like to spread negativity with this blog, but these subway ads embarrass me.  Every time I see them, I sort of cringe and hide my face lest something recognize me as someone remotely associated with drawing and hold me somehow responsible.

You may have seen EZ Pawn's cringeworthy  commercials featuring a thrift store Uncle Sam if you've got TV insomnia.

Usually when I see these low end, direct spots I think -use some simple illustration you can make a nice spot with this same small budget.

There's no accounting for taste.

Happy Spring

Some Guys

rug cutters

Triangelo

NASA Man

His Date

The Big Apple

Trois Ouefs

George Plimpton on Bill Plympton

While reviewing the Bill Plympton book, I pulled an old collection of his caricatures off the shelf.

Medium Rare was published by Holt Rinehart Winston in 1978, several years before he embarked on his full time animation journal. 

The illustration contents are terrific and speak for themselves.  Had Bill decided to stick with caricature he may have given David Levine a run for his money.  Animation, I guess, requires just as many lines but used over a few dozen more drawings.

Young David Levine worked at Terrytoons.  Maybe Plympton's career is like Levine in reverse.

The introduction by George Plimpton is very funny and worth sharing.

I have always envied those who practice the art of cartooning, and are good at it.  The one drawing I ever had published -when I was the editor the Harvard Lampoon and had the power to put my own material -was printed upside down, a state which my staffers, who were probably responsible, assured me was an improvement on the original concept.  Indeed, as I turned the magazine around a few times I was inclined to agree with them -though I did take exception to on of the Lampoon people who preferred the caricature lying on its side.  Since that time I have become only slightly more proficient, as the drawings on the next page might indicate.  In case the reader does not immediately recognize them as U. S. Presidents, I have identified which is which.

The reader will notice my hats.  I have trouble with the tops of heads, so I invariably put hats on them.  I am not bad at hats, sometimes I draw them lying around at the feet of my caricatures (or rather the foot, since I am incapable of drawing a pair legs on anyone en profile).  It will be noticed that I am not all that bad at drawing the balloons to contain the words the cartoonist's characters have in mind to say.  My trouble is with the words to put in the balloons -as is demonstrated by what I my two Presidents saying... their comments lacking a certain je ne sais quoi.

All of this is preamble to an expression of my admiration for the craftsmanship and the wit of Bill Plympton.  He is not only an admirable artist (he has no trouble with his legs at all) but he finds very funny and very perceptive things for his people to say.  How rare it is to find an artist adept at both these requirements of the great caricaturist-cartoonist.  Some are good at finding things for their characters to say, but deliver them through uninspired child-like stick people; others are draughtsmen with skill but little wit.  Plympton, on the other hand, combines artistic skills (some of his caricatures reflect a close study of Honoré Daumier) with a lively sense of his function as an artist-commentator in these parlous times -namely to present his work as a correct to social inertia.

What follows is a selection of Bill's best strips and caricatures since 1975.  Some of them ran originally in The Soho Weekly News, others  in a small-press paperback titled Tube Strips.  Many published here are new -an added fillip for those familiar with Bill's work as they commemorate the pleasure they had first discovering it.

Ink Tank Poster

I used to have a few of these, but floods, vermin and other plagues did them in.

One of R. O. Blechman's original models for The Ink Tank was the Magnum Photo Agency.  Replacing photographers with illustrators, he thought he could create an animation agency for the world's great print artists.

Seymour Chwast designed this poster with eight fingers -one for each artist in the stable.  Blechman, Chwast, Maurice Sendak, Ronald Searle, Andre Francois, Edward Sorel, Chas. B. Slackman, and Jean-Michel Folon.

The Ink Tank evolved into a more traditional production company.  I don't think Folon or Andre Francois were ever animated by the studio.  Searle had some bits in a 2:00 spot for The Atlantic (I think), Slackman and Sendak only Simple Gifts.  Sorel had a few commercials over the years, and Chwast has several.

A La Mode

Today I had planned on writing about Brent Green's "Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then" which just finished a two-night stint at The Kitchen.

Last night was the second time I've seen it. This one with live accompaniment.

I figured I'd be able to pull together something cogent after having already screened it once. No, it's still a little raw. Maybe it's for the best. Maybe there are no words to do it justice.

And then, I had planned on a tribute to Fashion Week for Sunday by showcasing some Covarrubius drawings.

I can't find the book, though.

I did find this uncredited illustration in another book. I like it.

The designers are credited as is the magazine in which it originally appear.

L to R: Molyneux, Beer, Doucet, Jenny, Doucet, Beer, Molyneux, Beer, Molyneux from "Art-Gout-Beaute" 1921

And I had always planned on sharing our pencil sharpener. A gift many years from Kate Hambrecht.

It was being discarded when she worked at Cosmopolitan Magazine.

We are certain that models used it to sharpen their pencils.

Valentines

Here are some Valentine's thoughts from my old pals back when interesting people could afford to live in New York.

Two from Sam Henderson.

He can be stalked via http://themagicwhistle.blogspot.com/

And one from the elusive Greg Fiering.

Bunny New Year

I won't put down our crop of Christmas Cards this year, that would be unfair (but let's try harder 2011, people, alright?!?!), but if Joey Ahlbum's Chinese New Year card came in December it would have had a fair chance of winning Best in Show.

www.joeyahlbum.com

Models

That's What Could It Look Like

These are some early development sketched by David Fremont for a preschool idea we've got.

He drew these after talking to Brian about the show.

We were already pretty far along our design path, but he like the idea and worked these up.

Tomorrow we'll post the more "finished" art that we already had in progress and use for the pitch.

The Gif Not Taken

This is a drawing for our homepage (one version ago).

It wound up evolving into something else.  A little darker, a little more Art Nouveau.

Just uncovered this, and I like it.  So here it is.

Calendar Girl

My ol' pal Dame Darcy sent me a 2011 calendar.

I have her 2010 calendar above my desk.  In September, Dana from WNET pointed out that I hadn't changed it since May.

I keep most of my calendar in my head -there's plenty of empty space, or on the dry erase in the studio.

This is a nice backup.  Each month is illustrated with one of her signature Victorian/Ed Gorey inspired drawings and the calendar itself lets you know the dates for things like "Festival of Flora" (4/29), "Full Moon with Lunar Eclipse" (6/15),  or just marked with advice "$ Bless your inner sexy witch, take a memaid bath in epsom saltwater" (9/1).

They're for sale on her Etsy Shoppe.

December 25, 1914 - Simple Gifts

Here's the second to last segment from "Simple Gifts".

"December 25th, 1914" is based on a letter from the front by a British soldier.

The film is carried effectively by the soundtrack and taken to a whole new level by James McMullan's illustration.

There was a tragedy after this production.

Apparently all of the original artwork went missing -mostly likely accidentally discarded. 

Simple Gifts - My Christmas

Animation is one way to achieve character, design is another.

In this segment from "Simple Gifts" Chas. B. Slackman illustrates the Christmas entry from 11 year old Teddy Roosevelt's diary.

There's no animation. Just of couple of dissolves here and there. But plenty of character provided by the artwork which is a clever match and foil to energetic script from a child who has it all.

Nhek Dim

In researching design for our segment in the upcoming "Don't Think I've Forgotten", director John Pirozzi turned us on to the work of Nhek Dim who flourished in Cambodia in the 1960s and early 70s.

These are some of his political cartoons.

Sam Henderson jokes about political cartoons.  Without context many are simply absurd.  Still -great cartooning.

Note the four fingered hands.

Sometimes the strength of image transcends cultural specifics. 

Hong Kong, and step on it.

LBJ shown with some scorn in the above two cartoons.

Johnson's war (actually Kennedy's as evidenced in the Pentagon Papers) continuously spilled over the border from Vietnam until Nixon ultimately began a direct bombing campaign of Cambodia.  That led directly to the rise of the Khmer Rouge.  Nhek Dim was murdered by Pol Pot's men in 1978.

Some More TeleTV Boards

These are a few more concepts created at The Ink Tank for TeleTV.

These were thought up and drawn by the inimitable Santiago Cohen.

These are meant to be simple, 5 second, 'bumps'.

There's something about these boards (the above in particular) which makes me think of Folon's TV ID from the late 70s.





Folon's an illustrator who's fallen out of favor.  I wonder how many American animators have even heard of him.

This would have been mixed media.  Simple.  Fun.

And sunset.

Marguerita

I picked up a 1975 issue of Graphis for the Roland Topor cover story and found two other notable articles inside.  In the future I'll post the magazine's wrap up of that year's Annecy festival.

For now, a piece written by Stanley Mason on a Marguerita Bornstein -well known at the time by simply  "Marguerita".

Being an international magazine, the editorial commentary is short. Just the top section of this page is the actual copy of the write up, it's then repeated in English and French.

The gist: Marguerita was born in Australia, raised in Brazil and returned to Australia where she became a household name in illustration and worked in animation.

A comparison is made to Tomi Ungerer -fair in one regard, unfair in another.  That's like measuring a left handed pitcher against Steve Carlton and his slider.

The top two frames are from an animated title sequence for "O Rebu" a Brazilian television series.

Much is made of 1950s animation design.  It's been recycled to intramural acclaim for the past couple decades.  I prefer the rawness of the 1970s stuff.

Above: frame from animated sequence from the Brazilian broadcast film "How To Make Your Child Schizophrenic".

The artist has been living and working in New York for some time but I'm unaware of any film work since this article.

The Bard and Rockwell Kent

One could argue that Rockwell Kent is the "Shakespeare of Illustration". OK, maybe that's going too far.

Even so, it only makes sense to put the two together.

Here are some Kent plates from a 1936 edition of the Bard's complete works published by Doubleday and Company through Garden City Books.

Above, "Henry VI, part 3".

Above, "A Winter's Tale".

One thing I remember from high school English class, Mr. Griffin said "Every person should have a complete works of Shakespeare."

He was partial to the Riverside.  But this one, based on these great drawings alone, is an acceptable replica.

Above, "Antony and Cleopatra."

"The Life of King John" was the most performed play in Shakespeare's lifetime.  Like most of his histories, its become less popular than the Tragedies or Comedies.

"Measure for Measure" (above) being one the greatest comedies.  My college belle directed a terrific version back in the day.  She's still doing terrific directing  at The Perishable Theater in Providence.

"The Merchant of Venice", above.

The above illustration for "Titus Andronicus", appropriately disturbing imagery.  Just an amazing piece.