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Look Here: Highlights from “Drawing With Pen and Ink” by Arthur Guptill

Three highlights, to be exact, the first by James Montgomery Flagg, the other two by Charles Dana Gibson:

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In Drawing with Pen and Ink, Arthur Guptill writes that Flagg “draws his lines very rapidly, as may be ascertained by a glance at his illustrations, yet in spite of this rapidity these lines are skilfully placed. Many of his blacks are added with a brush[…]. If one of these spots seems over-black or solid to Mr. Flagg, he scratches through the ink to the surface of the paper, thus making white lines[…]. He also employs cross-hatch freely where he feels the need of it” (p. 426).

And here’s Guptill on Charles Dana Gibson:

Mr. Gibson, it will be seen, has at his command almost every sort of line and dot which the pen is capable of making. And he uses them all. Though his work as a whole is extremely free and direct, being done with a dash and daring for which, among other things, he is famous, it is by no means carelessly done in the sense that the student sometimes seems to think such work to be. Mr. Gibson is undoubtedly primarily interested in the message that his drawing is supposed to convey. In its making he almost instinctively chooses for every detail of the whole the sort of stroke which will lend itself best to the expression of his purpose, whether it be a delicate, hair-like line or a stroke a quarter of an inch wide. [p. 426]

Alex Toth · Comics · Link Roundup · Look There

Look There: Comics Stories with Art by Alex Toth

The Blood Money of Galloping Chad Burgess,” The Unseen #5 (June 1952) .

Murder Mansion,” Adventures into Darkness #5 (August 1952).

Alice in Terrorland,” Lost Worlds #5 (October 1952), as reprinted/recoloured in Seduction of the Innocent #1.

The Phantom Ship,” Out of the Shadows #6 (October 1952).

“Joe Yank: Black Market Mary,” Joe Yank #5 (1952).

The Hands of Don José,” Adventures into Darkness #9 (April 1953).

The Corpse That Lived,” Out of the Shadows #10 (October 1953).

Grip on Life,” The Unseen #12 (November 1953).

Images of Sand,” Out of the Shadows #12 (March 1954), as reprinted/recoloured in Seduction of the Innocent #4.

“The Reaper,” Creepy #114 (January 1980) – story by Archie Goodwin.

BONUS LINK:

Twenty Questions with Alex Toth.

GRATUITOUS LINK:

Barney Rooster” with fabulously fluid funny-animal art by the fabulous Frank Frazetta.

Look There · Oh the places I've been...

Oh, the places I’ve been… on the Web… today…

At Adweek.com, I read “Profile: Ralph Steadman – Gonzo art through the Decades” by Eleftheria Parpis:

“There’s a saying: ‘In art there is no such thing as a mistake — a mistake is an excuse to do something else,'” says the 72-year-old artist. “That’s how I feel about drawing and writing. I couldn’t draw very well. I kept blotting things by accident, so I decided to make mistakes part of my work.” Which is how, he adds, his work evolved from the cleaner lines of illustrated books such as I, Leonardo and Sigmund Freud to the messier, frenetic style that later defined his most iconic creations, such as the drawings for Thompson’s novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I caught up with Moving Pictures by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen:

I briefly browsed through the posts at GFXworld.org.

I admired the scans of Virgil Finlay’s H.P. Lovecraft illustrations, posted by Mr. Door Tree over at the blog, Golden Age Comic Book Stories: part one, part two and part three. Here’s a tiny taste (the images on Mr. Door Tree’s site are much larger):

I browsed through the latest images from the Phoenix Mars Mission. There are many more available today than there were yesterday.

I read/skimmed a few articles about the Democratic nomination campaign in the U.S., including this oddly uplifting profile of Barack Obama’s “body man” (an unusual term — or at least, one I’ve never heard before — that appears to be derived from “bodyguard”).

I went back to take another look at a small gallery of gorgeous cartoons by Ethel Hays. Love those sinuous ink lines! Love those flappers!

And I checked out Read Yourself Raw to see if the August preview list is up yet. It’s not.

To be continued…