Be Bop Business (aka I Know It's Only Rock n' Roll Part 2)

There are some professions that you know just don't equate with financial security and anything to do with the arts is guaranteed to prove this maxim. My Scottish aunts always used to shake their heads in disbelief when upon enquiring on our post school progress realized that your's truly  was intent on a career in illustration. "Why doesn't he train for accountancy?", they would enquire of my mother who was in the unenviable position of having to try and justify this lunatic enterprise. "Accountancy is a good career, Peter ought to consider it - he'll get nowhere with his art. It's no way to make a living", they reproachfully opined.

It was in a weird way rather flattering that they would consider me eligible for a career in accountancy, as I was to all intents totally innumerate, if there is such a thing as numerical dyslexia, then I have been a long term sufferer. Anyway my aunt's words do come back to haunt me from time to time, partly because although I have enjoyed a degree of success as an illustrator, the periods of financial uncertainty that accompany this profession reveal just how perceptive my well intentioned aunt's comments were. And also because as the parents of two avowedly non conformist sons, I do find myself unwittingly cast in my mother's role as various members of the family enquire as to the doings of Jack and Tom, neither of whom have been anywhere near a university thus far. I have run past our youngest the thought that if the dear little cherub does decide on three years of academe he needs to get on with it PDQ as come 2012 it's all going to look horribly different, as the experiment to keep 50% of school leavers funding themselves through "uni"  as opposed to cluttering up job centers, is about to become dauntingly expensive.

But at the moment Tom is gigging in France with his band Dark Horses and playing Glastonbury on Sunday:

and his elder brother Jack who as a singer /songwriter has been pursuing the rock n roll vision from bedsit land in London's East End to apartment land in Brooklyn and as well as joining Ryan McGinley's psychedelic cave dwelling waifs, has finally managed to form a band of  focused and driven musicians going under the name of Soft Skin. They've now got serious management behind them and all looks cautiously a little more promising than was the case a year ago.



But the music business is every bit as fickle as the graphics industry, fashion, acting, writing, fine art, you name it, it can all turn on a sixpence.

In a way that's what makes it worth doing, I don't worry about unemployment as until the next commission come in, I am by definition unemployed. It's a state of affairs that is a constant and by it's inevitability it forces me to work out  new ways of attracting business, people in the creative professions are not complacent - the fear of financial meltdown acts as an imperative and stimulant in a way which is inconceivable for someone with twenty years working at a proper job.

Anyway totally self indulgent but here's a promo for Dark Horses followed by a couple of salutory videos of Jack's first band when they were all still wet behind the ears, playing local gigs down on the south coast.

The first film was taken at one of the premier biker pubs in their hometown, where the juke box would play AC/DC at stadium volume (during the  day time!). The venue was happiest hosting Led Zep tribute bands but one of the younger members of bar staff had got them a gig there, provided they could play a 90 minute set as a minimum requirement for their otherwise wasting floor space. With manic integrity they insisted that the bulk of their set would be self penned material with a few covers thrown in as a sop to the old geezers in leather and black.

By nine o' clock the bar was still unremittingly dead, even tumbleweeds and stray dogs were conspicuous by their absence, so as you can see here, off they went for better or worse.

Forty five minutes later and the bar was filling with people who'd seen them at previous gigs, trouble was that they'd played the first half of their set and forty five minutes later they'd played their gig. Wiser counsels would have advised them to repeat their first set but not wishing to compromise on their "hauteur" the departed tout de suit.



The second example although badly auspiced was a much more successful affair. The venue in question must remain nameless for reasons which will become apparent as this tale unfolds. The bar was one of those places that opens when all the other bars in town have shut, acting as a host to the nocturnal world of assorted riff raff, flaky bohos and people with nowhere else to go. This meant that artistes and we're talking here of poets, performance artists and people just too "out there" to ever make it onto "Britain's Got Talent" would hit the boards no earlier than ten o' clock at night. This video captures the band at the start of their second set by which time the bass player had pushed his amp up to a sufficient volume that ensured that not just the floorboards were vibrating but people in Calais were probably picking up the odd snippet as well.



The circuitry was such that the light above the performers heads would balefully spit sparks every so often, threatening to combust the hideous coke encrusted pink carpet that ran unapologetically throughout this dive. In the end it all proved too much and the guitarist's valve amp blew out, but in  a magical moment of inspiration the remaining musicians extemporized a reggae work out while the guitarist suffered repeated electric shocks as he endeavored to, in the end successfully, run his guitar through the mixing desk. By the end of the show people were literally dancing in the aisles.

It all seems a long time ago now...

I Sold My Soul To A DeVillebis Super 63E - The Trials and Tribulations of Airbrush Artistry

There was a time, I remember it well, when illustration was a craft as much as an art form. By craft I mean that the ingenue illustrator had to acquaint himself with tools of the trade and master various disciplines that would facilitate the smooth and seamless delivery of artwork suitable for reproduction. This involved mastering the art of stretching paper/ canvas, mixing paints, applying washes of color, learning how different paints worked in terms of drying times and the chromatic changes that accompanied the drying process. These in addition to maintenance skills such as keeping your pencils sharp all the way up to maintaining a sharp tip to your series 7 Winsor and Newton Number 3 brush (essential for inkers of comic art). This latter skill involved momentarily holding the tip of the brush over a flame to burn away any excess bristles.

Then there was the process of preparing art for reproduction, which in the illustration pre computer, stone age lasted from the birth of photography and the arrival of offset litho towards the end of the nineteenth century all the way through to the arrival of the drum scanner some thirty years ago. Camera ready artwork was usually created twice to one and a half times up so that the artwork would tighten up when it was photographed and reduced in size for final printing. There were in truth a lot of dark arts attendant on getting the illustration from the artist's studio and into print.

And even the printing didn't guarantee that the artwork would be seen at it's optimum best, far from it in fact as a lot of stuff ultimately appeared out of register, looking for all the world like a 3D image minus the red and green specs that would miraculously pull the whole thing into 3D focus.

Bearing all this in mind the illustrator accepted that the artwork he delivered was pristine and ready for reproduction at its optimum best - no eff ups allowed!

None!

This therefore guaranteed that preparing the artwork could be a very stressful process - none more so that when employing that instrument of exquisite refinement the DeVillebis Super 63 E. This machine which is the closest you could get to owning the art tool equivalent of a Cadillac was as high maintenance as the life-style it alluringly implied could be yours for the taking - if (and it was a BIG if) you ever mastered the skill levels needed to join the big league of airbrush maestro such as Philip Castle, Alan Aldridge or Adrian Chesterman whose iconic cover for Motorhead's "Bomber" album was the toast of the 1980 Association of Illustrators exhibition. In fact artists such as Adrian Chesterman were the subject of awe struck gossip amongst many of his contemporaries as his legendary turnover in a profession renowned for being a sure road to skid row, was said to approach many of the stars whose album covers his work graced.



So yes, if you were semi serious about being tooled up for a carer in illustration Ms DeVillebis would have to be successfully wooed if not entirely bedded.

There was list of nightmare scenarios which ensured that if you didn't show her due respect Ms Devillebis would have to punish you. Usually for such was her inclination to make you really suffer, it would be at the eleventh and a half hour when the job had to be delivered camera ready.

The classic screw ups were:

1). The tube that ran from the compressor (if you were using a DeVillebis Super 63 you had to have a compressor Ms DeVillebis just wouldn't countenance one of those shitty aerosol cans) would run afoul of the board that you had your painting stretched to, as you were concentrating with beads of perspiration dripping down your forehead on the area you were airbrushing. The resultant jiggle would cause the paint in the airbrush cup to sploosh out onto your artwork.

On a grading of 1-10 with ten as the apex of the major eff ups this would definitely merit a 10.

2). The airbrush would decide that it was time to cough as it had got a little tickle in it's tiny larynx, producing a myriad of little splats which invariably went right across the sky you'd just carefully painted with lots of subtle gradations. Could also be any other smooth shiny surface, the higher end the client, the bigger the budget, the more likely this was to occur.

Eff up grading 6 if it's opaque paint, 9/10 if it's transparent.

3). This by far the most common for fledgling airbrushers, involved the use of masking film. You'd painted the whole scene bar the sky and it was just stonking, the sky would be a piece of piss in comparison to all the work you'd invested in the picture. You carefully covered the whole piece of artwork in gently adhesive, transparent masking film. Then you'd take a craft knife with a new blade inserted and you would carefully cut around all the elements you didn't want covered in airbrush spray. That done you peeled away the area you wanted to spray and then taking the airbrush in your steady hand you set to work. You sprayed away until you felt that the sky was taking shape and then when you decided it was complete you peeled away the film...

Omigawd!!!

Too dark!!!

What had happened is that you'd overcompensated for the sky as with the film covering the untouched areas of the painting you'd forgotten the tonal relationship to the original.

Eff up  grading anything up to 8, but it's pretty bad news if it's a large area.

Anyway I now return rather circuitously to the Fantasical Paintings of Steve Lavis, as this is precisely what happened when Steve was finishing off his first cover for the paperback edition of Alan Garner's "Elidor". Garner had signed off on the visual which Steve had presented to the publisher Collins, with the suggestion that the child in the picture needed to be a bit older. The artwork had been completed and was due to be delivered the following day and with the evening drawing in, Steve had masked off all the beautifully watercolored areas of the painting and having sprayed away had just peeled back the Frisk Film to discover that he'd scored a hefty 8 on Ms DeVillbis transgression chart.

As the artist relates, having spent half an hour going ballistic followed by a long walk, he returned to the scene of the disaster and carefully cut the whole sky away. He then resprayed it and damn it all - did it again!!!

This time he circumvented any further craft knife misery and throwing caution to the winds used a can of white car primer, which then became a race against time as the primer gently melted away the Frisk film.

The resultant cover was and still is a masterpiece!

As Steve rather ruefully reflects, "When I think about it, I was 22, married and living in London working full time as an illustrator - makes me feel quite old really"

More Of The Fantastical Art of Steve Lavis

A few months ago I made a posting about the work of fantasy artist Steve Lavis, whose work sprang to prominence in the early 1980's with covers for the Narnia novels of C.S. Lewis and the then rising star of children's fantasy literature Alan Garner.

Those were heady days indeed, pre-computer where illustrators used real material such as pencils, inks watercolors and in the case of some of these paintings by Steve, acrylics. Having achieved an enviable profile as a young fantasy artist, Steve was regularly being approached by art editors and publishers eager to have his work adorning their projects.

Included in the gallery of work are illustrations for "The Book of Merlin"  and "The Once and Future King" and work for a book entitled, "The Tasks of Tantalon" by the noted games developer Steve Jackson and edited by a young guy working at Oxford University Press by name of David Fickling.

The model for many of the covers of the Fred Saberhagen and Gene Wolf novels is none other than another distinguished artiste of all things phantasmagorical, Ian McCaig, who Steve Lavis had befriended whilst both the young artists were living in London. McCaig who had a two handed sword amongst his collection of fantasy bric a brac would strike heroic poses in the cramped surrounding of his tiny London flat while his wife illuminated the scene with a hand held anglepoise lamp and Steve clicked away with his camera. The selected images would be projected via an epidiascope onto the paper on which Steve had laid out the cover area to be filled.

Not a million miles away from Maxfield Parrish's modus operandi and with McCaig's profile bearing an uncanny resemblance to Parrish's, the resultant covers have an at times uncanny resonance with an earlier age of romantic fantasy illustration.

Color Your Dreams - And Your Nightmares...

As regular visitors to this blog will be aware, I have on more then one occasion fulminated against the perfidies of computer colorists let loose on treasured classics of comic art. Having gulped in horror at some of the less than sensitive handling of line art by wannabe painters I am firmly of the school that less is more.

However there are some instances where a colorist is really on top of his game, these guys are usually artists in their own right as with Nikos Koutsis, the colorist of the very extraordinary and compelling graphic meisterwork aka "Mirabilis Year of Wonders". Working with Leo Hartas's distinctly linear rendering Nikos adds layers of color and modeling which actually add to rather than conflict with Leo's linework. The finished result is indeed a wonder to add to the year of wonders.

Here is another example of an artist who knows what he is doing adding to the artist's original intent. In this case it's French artist Richard Isenove, who has studied painting, drawing, photography and animation with some of the top talents in the business. He left his native France in 1994 after qualifying at the Ecole Nationnale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs and then headed off  to the California Institute of the Arts, where he further refined his skills.

So let's look at an example of his work as he tackles one of the (imo) greatest stories ever to appear in comics, the sequence in question of which I'm only going to show two pages to avoid spoilers, was when I first read it some thirty something years ago one of the most genuinely chilling moments in comics that I'd yet encountered. Roy Thomas and Barry Smith's adaptation of Robert E. Howard's "Red Nails", is in every way conceivable a tour de force, Smith went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that this his swansong on Conan would be as good a job as he could deliver and the result is so haunting that images from the story have burnt their way indelibly into my subconscious.


The story first appeared in Savage Tales in 1973 and then a couple of years later was colored up for inclusion in the large format Marvel Treasury edition. Isenove's version which appears in the recently published Barry Smith Conan Archives volume 2, is the first version which truly evokes the colors and atmosphere of the jade city trapped within an outer temple where light seldom ventures and nameless horrors await incautious visitors.


Isenove has admittedly from a purist standpoint, taken liberties with Smith's line work by transposing elements of it into separate channels and adding flaring and textures, but I've got to reluctantly admit that for me, it does work and while I still prefer the black and white version as far as Red Nails in color goes, this is the best I've come across. An instance where the colorist has attempted to put himself inside the head of the artist and in the process added to rather than subtracted from the work itself.


An interview with Isenove can be accessed here:

La Ligne Claire - Edgar P. Jacobs and the Spawn of Herge

The popularity of Tintin and the work load that it consequently generated for Herge was such that for much of the post war period the small coterie of artists he would call in to help meet  delivery dates for Tintin as well as "Jo Zette et Jocko","Quick Et Flupke" and any number of design briefs, had expanded into a studio with a team of assistants, who according to their capabilities would be assigned backgrounds, research, coloring etc, etc.

Amongst the earliest recruits was the opera loving Edgar P. Jacobs (he was by all accounts an accomplished Baritone singer), who was responsible for adding an extra layer of detail to much of the hitherto relatively spartan backgrounds. Jacobs was also responsible for overseeing the post war move into color which was spectacularly showcased by the serialization of "Prisoners of the Sun". The cover of "Les Cigares du Pharaon" includes Jacobs as one of the mummified Egyptologists - look for the red bow tie).

Jacobs was an accomplished artist and storyteller himself and his energies spilled beyond the confines of his work on Tintin, when in 1946 he launched the "Blake and Mortimer" strip in the weekly Tintin Journal. The style that Jacobs adopted was in truth very similar to that used by Herge. The beauty of the style which is characterized by a linear emphasis rather than reliance on areas of dropped shadow had the added bonus of being more accommodating to a studio set up where diverse hands are always liable to undermine continuity.

The adventures of "Blake and Mortimer" although never as successful in global terms as Tintin did garner a sufficiently sizeable audience for a succession of Blake and Mortimer albums to be issued and by the early sixties a distinctly Francophone look had been established for comics read by millions of children in Europe which was at a distinct variance to the much more superhero dominated product emanating from the U.S.

It was a look which captivated and inspired a whole new generation of young artists in France, Belgium, Holland, Spain and Italy and one which one of the artists who forefronted this resurgence, the Dutch artist Joost Swarte dubbed the "ligne clair". Also referred to as "the democracy of line", because the line itself through maintaining a consistent weight, does not lend any particular import to any part of the illustration. Emphasis is achieved through balance of color with areas of strong tonal contrast being offset by areas where the color is much more laid back. The whole effect is one of great elegance, where the eye is guided by design and nuances of color.

Included in the examples shown here are the aforementioned Joost Swarte, a sublime collaboration between Yves Chaland and Serge Clerc, Ted Benoit (who has created artwork for some of the "Blake and Mortimer"titles published in recent years including this color sample as well as his Private Eye "Ray Banana" who has just had a collision with an Ever Meulen articulated truck), Peter Van Dongen (the tiger sequence from "Rampoken") a wonderful Tintin spoof by Jacques Tardi (from "Les Cigares du Pharaon"),  Ever Meulen with one of his wonderfully idiosynchratic roadsters and the UK's very own Garen Ewing - more on Garen shortly.

'Dirty Job' - Toth and Haney - And One of the Greatest Stories Ever Told.

It appeared with little fanfare in a 1972 issue of DC's "Our Army At War" a collaboration of two comic veterans, artist Alex Toth and scriptwriter Bob Haney - all four pages of it.

It still ranks as one of the greatest comic stories ever to appear anywhere and you don't have to be in the slightest bit religious to get just a little swayed by it.