Constructing People, Drawing Figures: Round-Up
Harry Beckhoff, Slowly the clawlike blades closed over the cigarettes, gently lifted it off the table, and pulled it through a hole in the ceiling. Story illustration for Collier’s Weekly, January 29, 1938.
I have been teaching Word and Image 1, or a version of it, for many years. Due to the coronavirus, we are operating remotely, from as far away as China and Korea, and as nearby as sundry locations in the Central Time Zone, including metropolitan St. Louis. Happily, we had time together in the same room before our transition to through-a-glass-darkly Zoomtastic teaching and learning. We’re drawing on the memories of near contact as we peer through our screens.
I will likely not be teaching this course again for some time, as my responsibilities have shifted, due to our MFA program in illustration and visual culture. Our final project, which goes by the name of Action Figures, is a staging problem in response to prompt—say, Discotheque 1975, or Summer Camp MIsadventures. But all the work is devoted to the figures, costumes, and props—no settings or spaces.
I love this project, and am always envious of the students who get to do it. Maybe we’ll do a local drawing club version of the project—that would be great fun.
Over the years I have written quite a bit about the issues at the heart of this project. As I was preparing an email with links to various posts for the 25 students working on the project now, it occurred to me that it might easier for them to get a single link with options within one post.. So below are quick descriptions of five different posts with relevant samples and information for students preparing for tomorrow’s class.
Pál Pusztai, Jucika. Undated. A dispute over a dress, solved Solomonically.
First: Recently I came across an obscure but wonderful comic strip titled Jucika, published in Hungary from 1957 to 1970. That post is here. Pál Pusztai drew the strip, which focused on the exploits of its title character, an enterprising young woman with comedic gifts, a curvy profile, and a rotating set of jobs which set her up for social-sexual hijinx of various sorts. She is comely, enterprising, dogged, witty, and decent. She lives in a world of variously grumpy, clueless, kind, oafish, and endlessly manipulatable men. I’m highlighting Pusztai’s strip here because it isolates shape, extremely shallow space, and abbreviated drawing to create extremely efficient narratives. Sophomores: don’t get caught up in the three panel narratives: just look at the single frames. How efficient! How clear!
I continue to suck up examples of these strips courtesy of the @JucikaDaily twitter feed. I cannot get enough of these things. Fresh example above.
Second, an exploration of two-color work by fiction illustrators Harry Beckhoff and Al Parker from the late 1930s and early 40s, and example of which appears at the top of this post.
Seymour Chwast, illustration in Pushpin #21, 1959.
Third, a reflection on the relationship between drawing and design. Seymour Chwast, above.
Fourth, midcentury riffs on positive and negative, and flats and patterns, a reflection on Lively Pictures of Boring Things. See below.
Illustrator uncredited, detail, Walls and Floors, section divider illustration, Better Homes & Gardens Handyman's Book, Meredith Corporation, 1957.
And finally, fifth, an exploration of how key drawings and color masses can create clear, charming images in abbreviated cartoon languages. Ink as Architecture, accessible here. Sample below.
Rea Irvin, They’re all kings and dukes, fiction illustration for Snoot if You Must, by Lucius Beebe, 1943.