Cover Contest Update

Last week, I invited you to improve that half-finished New Yorker cover. Well, good news! The New Yorker editors are impressed with what they’ve seen so far, and they’re going to put a slide show of the results on the official New Yorker blog.


It’s not too late for you to send one in (but you'd better hurry). You might get your solution included on their official blog, too. Cartoonists and animators: this could get you noticed! It’s free to submit. Just grab a print copy of the July 4 issue—the one where the artist forgot to include a joke and left half of the cover blank. Fill the blank space with your best gag, and send it in to:

Emily Kan
Assistant to cover editor Françoise Mouly
The New Yorker
4 Times Square
New York, NY 10036

Or download the digital version of the blank cover from the last post, finish the gag digitally, and email it to Ms. Mouly's assistant Emily Kan (Emily_Kan@newyorker.com), subject line “Unfinished Cover Contest.”

Please email a copy to me, too (jgurneyart@yahoo.com). On this blog, I’ll pick my three favorites (excluding my own, of course) and let you vote for the top dog. I’ll send the winner a set of signed and remarqued posters for my recent books Color and Light and Imaginative Realism. The deadline is the end of this month.

LINKS
The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Book
Previous post announcing the contest

Nova’s Big Day

Nova the robot climbed into the automobile last Saturday morning.


He was all ready for his big adventure to Stockbridge, Massachusetts to meet some famous robots.


The auto stopped for a drink of gas, but Nova could not drink any because he was electric. He only sipped a little bit of oil when he got tired and squeaky.


Nova sat in a flowerpot at a bread bakery, while the humans refueled. He liked the way the flowers smelled, but he didn’t understand their language. He wished he could grow a new foot, the way they grow new leaves.


Nova’s humans, called “The OH RATS! Club,” stopped in front of the museum.


Inside he met Stanley, a pot-bellied kitchen robot from the far edge of the galaxy.

He met a famous movie star named Rodney Copperbottom from the movie “Robots.” Rodney let him sit on his shoulder.


He got to try editing a movie, and he hung out with characters from “Rio” and “Ice Age” by Blue Sky Studios.


After the museum visit, the humans stopped to refuel again. Nova liked the shiny badge on the sheriff and the chrome on the old diner.



But he felt sad for Uri, an old porcelain drainbot who was sick. He tried to talk to Uri, who was wrapped up in bandages and not feeling thirsty anymore.


When he got home, Nova was so tired that he had a little drink of oil and went right to sleep.
------
LINKS
The Nova character is from the book Nova's Ark by David Kirk.
Thanks, Susan Voss, for the photos!
Upcoming Blue Sky events at the Rockwell Museum 
Previously: OH RATS! Club

The Old Man and the Sea

In 1997, Russian animator Alexander Petrov singlehandedly painted a movie, morphing the pastel oil paint on glass, frame-by-frame with his fingertips.


(Part 1 of 2 above) The resulting filmed version of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and The Sea” is full of sensitive observations, aided by an evocative musical score and good sound design. It won the Academy Award in 1999.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66rB6k5Vab0&feature=related
(Part 2 of 2 above) Even though the dubbed track is in Japanese, the story of an old man catching a big fish is clear enough. Other forms of animation may have smoother action, but Petrov’s kinetic canvas conveys the brutal physical conflict of Hemingway’s story, as well as its stark poetry.

Thanks, Christian.
Direct link to YouTube Video, Part 1 and Part 2
Wikipedia page on Alexander Petrov

Portraiture: The Artist and the Subject

The new issue of International Artist magazine includes a portrait of Mrs. Zimmerman by Rose Frantzen, along with the following commentary by the artist:


“Grace Zimmerman is the subject of my portrait. As I painted her, I discovered Mr. Zimmerman, the wife, the history teacher, county treasurer, the Iowan; and the little girl who found her father’s dead body, then was shuffled about the countryside as her widow mother strove to support her family in a world that was not ready to let women do so. Grace, at 80, is now the woman her mother was disallowed to be. She is the widowed Mrs. Zimmerman, the former teacher, now the comedian, the actor in the community theatre, the dancing lady on the cruise ship, the mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, the writer, and the active citizen. She has come into her own and is in her joy.

“I painted her in the sun dappled shade, meeting the viewer in her history teacher stance with the light reflecting off her glasses. There is a world behind this woman and she meets you with a hint of knowing a bit about it.

“When looking at portraits, if there is too much of the artist in the mix, I feel it is not a portrait of the person, but of the artist. I don’t always see this, because I get caught up in the great execution, the artist’s style, or an exquisite area of brush work,. Yet, if I have a quiet moment in front of such a painting, I might observe that only the artist is expressed. Ideally, you meet the person in the portrait, and the artist seems like a witness that allows all this to be seen. There is something in the balance of the artist’s interpretation and the subject’s qualities.”

LINKS

Rose Frantzen works
International Artist magazine
Portrait of Maquoketa (book of her portraits of townsmembers)

41 Illustrators and How They Worked

A long-awaited new reference book on American illustration has just arrived. “Masters of American Illustration: 41 Illustrators & How They Worked” documents the life and work of a select group of Golden Age illustrators.

It’s a whopper of a book: 432 pages, 9 x 12 inches, and hundreds of high-quality color reproductions. Tipping the scale at six solid pounds, it’s enough to knock the wind out of anyone who tries to read it in bed.

The book was lovingly compiled by illustration historian Fred Taraba. It compiles the “Methods of the Masters” articles that Mr. Taraba wrote for the magazine Step-by-Step Graphics from 1989 to 2001. In this respect, it resembles its 1946 predecessor “Forty Illustrators and How They Work,” which was a compilation of biographical articles that Ernest Watson wrote for Art Instruction / American Artist magazines.

The book leaves out the most famous illustrators, such as Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish and N. C. Wyeth. The author admits that the lack of these big-brand names made it hard to find a publisher at first, until the project was championed by Dan Zimmer, publisher of Illustration magazine.


But plenty of ink has already been spilled on the headline illustrators. American illustration had a very deep bench. The people featured in this new collection, such as Saul Tepper, Mead Schaeffer, Pruett Carter, and Alice Barber Stephens, well deserve the attention.


Unlike a lot of art books, where long-winded writing crowds out the art, the pictures occupy plenty of page space, and most of the images have never been seen before. In the case of virtuoso John Gannam, for instance, we get to see not only his finished paintings, but also tearsheets, studio photos, thumbnail sketches, and color studies. The attention to working methods makes the book a useful tool for art students, and for illustration enthusiast who want to peek behind the curtain.

Subjects include: Constantin Alajalov, McClelland Barclay, Walter Baumhofer, Harry Beckhoff, Rudolph Belarski, Wladyslaw T. Benda, Walter Biggs, Franklin Booth, Austin Briggs, Arthur William Brown, Margaret Brundage, Charles Livingston Bull, Gilbert Bundy, Pruett Carter, Matt Clark, Walter Appleton Clark, Will Crawford, F.O.C. Darley, Joe DeMers, Albert Dorne, Robert Fawcett, James Montgomery Flagg, John Gannam, Edwin Georgi, Earl Oliver Hurst, John LaGatta, Andrew Loomis, Orson Lowell, Neysa McMein, Wallace Morgan, Rose O’Neill, Herbert Paus, Edward Penfield, Coles Phillips, Garrett Price, Norman Price, Mead Schaeffer, Alice Barber Stephens, Saul Tepper, Jon Whitcomb, and Coby Whitmore.

The price of $44.95 is also inviting to any budget-conscious student. You can buy it directly from Dan Zimmer at Illustrated Press (with free shipping), from select retail outlets, or from Amazon. The book will be officially unveiled at ComicCon later this month.

Masters of American Illustration: 41 Illustrators and How They Worked
The Illustrated Press, where you can preview the whole book  

Adventures of a Cross-Dresser

Mary Anne Talbot (1778–1808) was an Englishwoman who wore male dress and became a sailor during the Napoleonic wars. Her story was illustrated by the Italian-born British artist named Fortunino Matania (1881-1963).

In 1792 she unwillingly became a mistress of captain Essex Bowen who enlisted her as his foot-boy under the name "John Taylor" for a voyage to Santo Domingo. Matania captures the captain’s imperious dominance and the 14-year-old’s fearful acquiescence to her new identity.



She served as a drummer-boy in the battle for Valenciennes, where captain Bowen was killed. She was wounded and treated the wound herself to avoid revealing herself to the surgeon. She decided to continue working as a male sailor.


On a sojourn to Rhode Island in America, she attracted the attentions of a young woman who fell in love with the eligible young “gentleman.” Matania’s illustration on tone paper shows the moment when the girl openly declares her love. Mary Anne’s expression of consternation, and her blend of male and female qualities, is a difficult thing to express in a drawing, but Matania accomplished it.

Despite a series of injuries received in battle, Talbot continued to wear sailor's clothes. She worked in menial jobs and even tried her luck on stage at Drury Lane but eventually was arrested and taken to debtor’s prison at Newgate.

READ MORE
Mary Anne Talbot on Wikipedia
 Fortunino Matania on Wikipedia
Download her 1809 autobiographical account on Digital Commons 
Previously on GJ: Matania at Work 
Images courtesy Anthony Smith

The Photograph and the Drawing

Why does a drawing appeal so differently to our minds than a photograph? Do we feel a kinship because we know that reality has been filtered through the human eye and the human hand?

From Freehand Perspective and Sketching, by Dora Norton, 1914.