Fine Art · Frank Frazetta · Illustration Art · Look Here · N. C. Wyeth

Connections: Wyeth, Fischl, Frazetta

I’m not going to put forth any arguments here regarding a possible chain of influence from Wyeth to Fischl to Frazetta (because I don’t think there is one), the relative quality of the three paintings pictured below (because none of them is truly first rate), the relative merits of “fine art” versus “illustration art” (because I don’t care about the issue), etc. I just have a hankering to see these three paintings mashed together in one post:

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BONUS IMAGES:

Bob Haberfield · Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here

Look Here: A pair of Runestaff paperbacks with cover art by Bob Haberfield

Two more Moorcocks with art by Bob Haberfield this morning, as promised yesterday:

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Keywords: The Jewel in the Skull, The Mad God’s Amulet, by Michael Moorcock; Bob Haberfield.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here

Look Here: One lovely SF cover with art by David Blossom

Not by Dean Ellis, and not by Paul Lehr, though vaguely reminiscent of both, the illustration on the cover of Robert Silverberg’s Tower of Glass is complemented rather than overwhelmed by a big block of bold, compressed, sans-serif type:

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The artist here is David Blossom, but who the heck is David Blossom? The following summary of the artist’s career appears on various sites round the Web; my source is New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA):

Though born in Chicago, Illinois, Blossom lived most of his life on the East Coast. Growing up in Rye, New York, he later moved with his family to Westport, Connecticut in 1963, where he lived until his death. Early in his career, he worked as an art director at Young & Rubicam, a communications company, where he specialized in advertising for the Ford Motor Company and Pan American Airways. His work in illustration included covers for romance novels and popular magazines such as Outdoor Life and Reader’s Digest. Blossom is also known for creating movie posters for such Clint Eastwood westerns as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars, and A Few Dollars More. In its annual awards for excellence to deserving artists, the Society of Illustrators awarded the Hamilton King award to Blossom for best illustration of the year in 1973.

I’ve done a bit of searching, and I can’t find any information about which Clint Eastwood movie posters, exactly, featured art by Blossom, but possibly/maybe it was the ones that looked like this:

Here’s an example of Blossom’s non-SF illustration work, copied from the NBMAA blog, for comparison:

Oddly enough, a later, photo-based design for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is build around more or less the same typographical idea as the design for Silverberg’s Tower of Glass, with art by Blossom:

And thus the serpent eats its tail… sort of…

Bob Haberfield · Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here

Look Here: Three paperbacks of Corum with cover art by Bob Haberfield

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I have a couple more Moorcocks with cover art by Haberfield in my collection. Will probably scan and post ’em soon, if not sooner.

Keywords: The Knight of the Swords, The Queen of the Swords, The King of the Swords, by Michael Moorcock; Bob Haberfield; Habberfield.

Illustration Art

Look Here: Three enigmatic idylls by Alexander Rothaug

This morning, I’ve decided to bring you further selections from the Austrian humour/men’s magazine, Die Muskete. The artist this time around is Alexander Rothaug (1870 – 1846), who studied painting at the Vienna Academy of Arts from 1885 to 1892, pursued further studies in Munich, where he produced illustrations for the German magazine, Fliegenden Blätter, and then moved back to Vienna, where he worked as a freelance artist from 1897, becoming a member of the Association of the Visual Artists Vienna in 1911; the paintings, which I have extracted from the online archive of Die Muskete hosted by the Austrian National Library and have processed for display here at RCN, are At the Source, Dreaming, and The Herdsman:

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Specific publication information for each image is included in the file name, as usual.