Henry Patrick Raleigh- Serious Drawing Skills

Just in time for Christmas, Auad Publishing has unveiled a new book that would make Jay Gatsby drool. In keeping with the long tradition of fantastic books from Manuel Auad, comes Henry Patrick Raleigh-The Confident Illustrator.

  

This coffee table worthy volume is printed in glorious full color despite the fact that much of Raleigh's work was black and white or limited in it's color range. The extra touch of full color throughout lends nuance and depth to each of Raleigh's monochromatic pieces.

But the star here is Raleigh's unbelievable skill as a draftsman and storyteller. And boy could this guy draw! His characters pop to life with just enough stylization to be animated without dropping into the caricature zone. His confident line and deft use of value pattern makes each illustration in the volume study worthy. No detail is overlooked from the costumes to the furniture to the automobiles. Raliegh's art is a master class in telling just enough and telling it with flair. Lines jump off the page and exude confidence. No wonder he earned the nickname "The Confident Illustrator".

The text of the book is nicely written by Raleigh's own grandson Christopher and reading it, you get a wonderful glimpse into an era when illustrators were rock stars and paid accordingly. Raleigh reportedly was paid $200-$300 per quick spot drawing and as much as $3500 per color piece throughout the 1920's and 1930's. It is estimated that he produced some 20,000 works, or an average of around 800 illustrations per year over the first 25 years of his career. He worked quickly, sometimes spending under an hour on a spot drawing or possibly a few days on a larger piece which facilitated the completion of so many works.

If you do the math, 800 illustrations in 1930, even at an average of just $300, calculates to nearly $3.5 million in today's dollars. Raleigh was a wealthy man and his spending habits bore this out. He loved rubbing elbows with the rich and famous where he arrived at lavish parties in custom tailored suits while driving expensive cars. Despite his incredibly prolific output of work, Raliegh often traveled abroad for upwards of three to four months of the year, making his productivity even more amazing.

The book is divided into sections like The Gatsby Era, Advertising (He did Maxwell House coffee ads for years), Lithographs and Etchings (featuring the famous posters Raleigh did for World War I war bonds)The Authors (including illustrations he created for serialized stories from such notables as F. Scott Fitzgerald and H.G. Wells).

This hardback book with full  color dust jacket (featuring an alternate image) is beautifully reproduced. I would rank the print quality right up there with any high caliber art book in my collection. Also included are a couple of nicely done gatefold reproductions and a nice 9"x12" full color print is tucked into the flyleaf.

If you are an illustration junkie like me, this volume is a must have for your library. Auad Publishing's titles nearly all sell out and past titles can be hard to find and expensive. His previous books on Robert Fawcett and Albert Dorne are sold out and online prices for those tomes are now way out of my price range. I'm happy to own them already. If you are thinking about getting this new one, I suggest not waiting around too long.

Buy Henry Patrick Raleigh here
and also:
Al Parker is momentarily on sale from Auad for a ridiculous price of $20

Albert Dorne - Master Illustrator

Albert Dorne Master Illustrator is fresh off the presses from Auad Publishing and just in time to make it onto your Christmas list. I got my copy a few days ago and have been enjoying it ever since. The book is full of Dorne illustrations that I had never seen before as well as many classic pictures that I was familiar with.

Editor Manuel Auad and writer David Apatoff have done a bang up job here in presenting Dorne and his exquisitely drawn work to a new generation. It has been said that Dorne was the Jack Kirby of his day and with his expressive characters and knobby knuckled hands it is easy to see why.

I love the format of the book and the fine quality of the printing. Other nice elements include interviews from Dorne taken from period sources such as Famous Artists Magazine and Pageant. There is even a graphic tribute to Dorne drawn by the great Jack Kirby himself.

Albert Dorne (1906-1965) was a self taught artist who worked his way to fame and riches through sheer determination and hard work. He described a childhood in which he would skip school to draw from the sculptures and paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, claiming to be the youngest artist ever granted a sketch permit from that revered establishment.

Dorne worked at a studio for no pay for an entire year sleeping just a few hours and holding down a night job in order to get his foot in the door of the industry. He went on to found the Famous Artist School correspondence course which influenced countless artists.

It is obvious that Dorne had a gift and flair for drawing people but what surprised me was the range of expression and stylization that he achieved over his four decade career. He was at ease in any approach to the figure from total exaggeration to fairly straight forward depictions.

He was a master of the complex multi figure composition and could manage dozens of figures in a scene and yet let them all add to the overall effect with an appropriate hierarchy of importance.

As with the previous volume on Robert Fawcett, This book also has several vignette pages that focus on Dorne's skill in depicting hands, characters, attention to detail and complex picture architecture. This book is a feast for anyone who enjoys vintage illustration or simply likes to look at great drawing. Gotta go now, Albert Dorne is calling, and I have to figure out how to draw better.

Get your copy of Albert Dorne Master Illustrator

Robert Fawcett - Draftsman Extrordinaire

I received the book "Robert Fawcett - The Illustrator's Illustrator" for Christmas this year and boy is it a beauty. With insightful text by illustration aficionado and intellectual property lawyer David Apatoff, this book comes to life with hundreds of eye popping images by Fawcett.

I was aware of Fawcett's work from my history of illustration classes, but this book brings a whole new appreciation for the quality and draftsmanship that Fawcett produced. Born near London in 1903, his family moved to Winnepeg , Canada while he was a young boy. Popular magazine illustrations by the likes of Howard Pyle and N.C.Wyeth sparked young Robert's interest in picture making.

Fawcett was largely self taught, spending only two years of formal art training at the Slade School of Art in London. This volume documents his rise to the top if the American illustration ranks after abandoning a short career as a "fine artist". Apparently not being able to stomach the "commercial side of fine art", he determined to earn a living doing "honest commercial work".

Fawcett felt there really was no line between fine art and commercial work insisting that an illustrator was just as capable of creating quality work as a gallery painter was of creating mediocre work. As far as his own work was concerned, Fawcet said, "everything I do is fine art".

Opinionated and often brash, Fawcett commanded top prices at the height of his career that stretched from his return to the United States in 1924 until his death in 1967. Though he never took a course on human anatomy, It would be difficult to argue that there has ever been an illustrator with stronger skills in draftsmanship and narrative composition than Fawcett.

This book showcases all of his formidable skill in stunning fashion.Particularly of interest in the book are some of the sidebar details that describe Fawcett's style and working methods as well as a reprint of a Famous Artist Magazine interview with Fawcett from 1960.

Anyone with an affinity for great drawing and gorgeous mid-century illustration will want to pick up this volume. Also check out the other great art and illustration books from Auad Publishing at the link below.

Auad Publishing's website
Another post on Fawcett by David Apatoff on Today's Inspiration

New Harvey Dunn Book

The Prairie is My Garden- By Harvey Dunn

One of my favorite things about Christmas is that if I don't get exactly what I want, I can still hope to get it a few days later on my birthday. That's what happened this week when I opened up the new over sized volume on the work of Harvey Dunn written by Illustration House founder Walt Reed. This long awaited tome does not disappoint.

Harvey Dunn - Illustrator and Painter of the Pioneer West is a fitting tribute to the artistic legacy of  Dunn, arguably the most influential of all the artists who studied under Howard Pyle. Dunn studied for two years under Pyle and went on to notoriety in his own work but also became a great teacher. He is known  mainly for his depictions of prairie life on the American frontier, though his career range of subject matter was broad and deep.

Harvey Dunn's artistic descendants include John Steuart Curry, Dean Cornwell, Harold Von Schmidt, Saul Tepper, Mead Schaeffer,Mario Cooper, Arnold Friberg, John Clymer, Ken Riley and the list goes on. This book represents the largest collection of Dunn's work ever assembled and color reproductions abound, with most of the surviving paintings being newly photographed for this volume. Reproductions of original magazine pages fill in the holes where the actual art has been lost..

The Calf Path- circa 1912 by Harvey Dunn

At 10" x 13" this book has space to show off the juicy brush strokes, incredible compositions and the enviable value and color control of Dunn's paintings. I found myself lingering over all the works I had seen previously as well as discovering for the first time, dozens of paintings I had never seen before. The book also contains a section profiling many of Dunn's most successful students as well as a facsimile of a booklet long out of print called "An Evening in the Classroom." This section is a treat in it's own right as it collects from classroom notes much of Dunn's considerable wisdom and advice on the art of picture making. I am currently reading the book from cover to cover and look forward to being inspired by the work of Harvey Dunn for a long time to come.

The Harvey Dunn book is available through Flesk Publications