Category: Prints (Jones)

Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Prints (Jones) · Walt Simonson

Connections: Brunner, Jones, Simonson

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ABOVE: Howard the Duck #1 (Jan 1976), with cover art by Frank Brunner.
ABOVE: Jeffrey Catherine Jones, “Dragon Slayer,” oil painting originally commissioned, and then rejected, for the January 1982 issue of National Lampoon. It was published as a print by Glimmer Graphics in 1992.
ABOVE: National Lampoon, vol. 2, no. 42 (Jan 1982), with cover art by Walt Simonson.

The love triangle between the knight, the damsel, and the dragon depicted in both the Jones painting and the Simonson cover is oddly, unintentionally, wryly symbolic. As many comics fans know, Walt Simonson’s wife, Louise, had previously been married to Jeffrey Jones. Jeffrey and Louise had met at college in 1964, married in 1966, and eventually divorced some time in the early 1970s, or so it has been vaguely reported. Meanwhile, Louise Jones apparently met Walt Simonson in 1973, they began dating in 1974, and they married in 1980. Thus, in a sense, Jones was the knight who lost the damsel to the dragon, and what’s more — adding insult to injury, so to speak — failed to win the competition, if one may refer to it as such, with Simonson to have work published on the cover of National Lampoon. Or maybe Jones suggested Simonson for the job when his (Jones’s) painting was rejected. That’s a nice thought, though I have zero evidence to back it up…

Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Look Here · Prints (Jones)

Look Here: LORD GREYSTOKE print by Jeffrey Jones

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[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

UPDATE (12 February 2013):

Earlier today, the producer/director/writer of Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Maria Cabardo, posted the following picture of Gray Morrow to her Facebook photo album:

The photo was taken by Jeffrey Jones, and I recognized the pose and lighting immediately! Very cool to see! To his credit, and to the great benefit of his painting, Jones didn’t succumb to the desire to spell everything out, to invent all of the forms that he couldn’t make out in his reference photo, but instead simply embraced the idea of lost edges.

If you are able, please contribute to Maria’s Indiegogo fundraiser for Better Things. Documentary films about illustrators and comics artists are few and far between, but if you want more, you need to step up and support the intrepid filmmakers who are willing to stride out on a limb and make it happen. The perks/rewards are cool, and because Maria has chosen to run a “Flexible Funding campaign,” all of the perks will be delivered even if the total money raised does not match the stated goal. In other words, if you contribute at the level to get the art book (for instance), you WILL receive the art book.

Drawings and Sketches (Jones) · Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Look Here · Prints (Jones)

Look Here: WORLD WITHOUT END by Jeffrey Jones

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Jeffrey Jones’s “four seasons” portfolio, World without End, was published by S.Q. Productions in 1980 in a signed-and-numbered limited edition of 1000. The choppy but controlled hatching style here — the antithesis of conventional comic-book rendering/feathering — was typical of Jones’s work at the time; for more examples, see “I’m Age,” the wonderful one-page strip by Jones that appeared in Heavy Metal from 1981 to 1984.

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

A cheaper, “unlimited,” unsigned edition of World without End was also published, but that one did not include the black-and-white plate displayed above.

Heads Up! · Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Prints (Jones)

Heads Up: Two vintage posters by Jeffrey Jones available now on Ebay

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Just a friendly note to let fans of Jeffrey Jones know that ebay seller intergalactic (Positive Feedback: 99.8%) has multiple copies of two vintage posters by Jeffrey Jones on sale right now: Chastity (9 available, as of today, for the “Buy It Now” price of US$10.95 each plus shipping) and Sleep (10 available, as of today, for the “Buy it Now” price of US$12.95 each plus shipping). I myself purchased one copy of each poster a short time ago, and was impressed both by the service and by the quality of the merchandise, though please keep in mind, if you decide to follow my lead, you buy at your own risk.

Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Look Here · Prints (Jones)

Look Here: “In a Sheltered Corner” by Jeffrey Jones

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Here’s one of a signed-and-numbered edition of fifty prints, published by Idyl Impress in 1977, that were hand-coloured with watercolour by Jeffrey Jones. It is followed by the uncoloured version, which was published the same year by Idyl Impress in a signed-and-numbered edition of 1200: