Why? (Blog Archive)

 

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Below are the original comments that came in for this post and my replies:

 

luisnct

I don’t think europeans, as a whole, have more understanding or appreciation for the arts. I mean the regular people, the worker who only wants to drink beer and watch tv, but too the businessman who’s life appreciation is based on money over all…

I think art is a way on find a sense to our lives. In a world with so many destruction, art means creation, a light shining on the darkness and, as you said, a way of redeem human societies from their faults and crimes against nature and other human beings.

Monday, February 15, 2010-7:57 AM

 

George Pratt

My mention of European appreciation of the arts is based on my own observations. Having been fortunate enough to have my art be appreciated over there to have them fly me about and show me their wonderful cities and museums, I’ve met many, many, many interesting people.

Without a doubt the individuals I spoke with could intelligently discuss art and what it means to them, as well as what it means historically. Indeed, many impressed me as knowing much more about the subject than even me, and I think I have a pretty thorough knowledge of art. But more importantly, art seems to influence them in their daily lives.

In America we’ve thrown so much of our history to the winds, sold to the lowest bidder. Architecture is torn down to make way for the new. Most buildings seem to be thrown together with no concern towards his they fit in with the landscape or with what was there before. And most of it feels transitory, as if it isn’t meant to last in the first place. But there, they live in the midst of their past, as well as their futures. The old sits with the new, though, yes, not always nicely so. But the rich history hasn’t been paved over. It’s why we travel there, no? To wallow in the architectural and artistically historical world that is Europe.

But, I agree that art is such a positive force. I try to get students to talk about their “art moments”, where art overcomes one physically and emotionally. I have these moments all the time. Hell, maybe it has a lot to do with my sort of depressive nature, my chemical imbalance. But I’m moved to tears by art all the time.

Watching Cirque du Soleil I was totally overcome with emotion. That humans can do such amazing things! It made me proud to be a human. Watching a television show which I missed first run called “Slings and Arrows” I’ve been moved by every episode. But most assuredly when they put on their productions and show me a Shakespeare play that is so incredibly moving, especially when they juxtapose it with current life. It’s been nailing me. Again, that humans can create such wonderfully moving things is amazing!

It’s the best we have to offer, really, aside from the great virtues.

Yes, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to practice what I do and that there is an audience willing to support it.

Saturday, February 27, 2010-4:22 PM

 

Edward Kinsella

Inspiring words George. Thank you.

I’m not sure why I keep going either, but I’m thrilled to be a part of it every day. And, ya know, nothing feels as good as creative expression, at least to me.

 Tuesday, February 16, 2010-3:17 PM

 

 George Pratt

Thanks, Ted,

Well, your sketchbooks alone are reason enough for anyone to want to continue doing art. They’re some of the most beautiful works around. They’re inspiration in and of themselves.

 What I like most about them, about most sketchbooks generally, is their unassuming nature. This has sort of taken a back seat these days as younger artists seem intent on making their sketchbooks words of art, rather than the place where they let their hair down and do the things for themselves, without any regard to any audience.

 Sketchbooks have become a sort of “check me out” thing now. And it’s not that they’re not incredible, they are. They’re beautiful. But I like seeing an artist’s sketchbooks where they’re not performing for anyone. They were just doing their thing and there’s amazing stuff happening, and some…not so amazing stuff happening. And their not afraid to let the good lie with the bad. The contrast make the good stuff even better.

 Can’t wait to see you guys when you’re down soon!

Saturday, February 27,  2010-4:27 PM

 

Shawn

Very well written, George. I feel the same, even though the money hasn’t come, yet, I still feel the desire and urge to create works of art. It’s a sort of therapy to some degree. A way to relax and focus my mind on the beauty of nature.

 Thanks for writing this.

Best,

Shawn

Wednesday, August 18, 2010-3:53 PM

February 9, 2013 | Categories: News! | 2 Comments »

Procreate and Pogo Connect Stylus

Thought I’d post a few new Procreate images for you. I’ve still been having a blast with Procreate and have now been playing with the Pogo Connect Stylus and absolutely loving it. It allows me to have pressure sensitivity while drawing and painting in the program. Procreate is designed to work with the Pogo. 

I’m not really a digital artist but I have to say that it’s been a lot of fun playing in Procreate. The program totally gets out of the way and just let’s me concentrate on the work. It’s super intuitive. 

These images were each done in about an hour or so with multiple layers, flattening then working further. At some point, if there’s interest, I can throw up a step-by-step of my process. I do make my own brushes in Procreate, and with the newest update they’ve made it possible to share brushes as well. Very cool!

Anyway, hope you like these as much as I enjoyed doing them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 9, 2013 | Categories: News! | 5 Comments »

Edwin Austin Abbey Sketch

Thought I’d share this lovely Edwin Austin Abbey sketchbook page from 1885. I bought this years ago from Walt Reed at the Illustration House in New York.

Edwin Austin Abbey (April 1, 1852 – August 1, 1911) was an American artist, illustrator, and painter. He flourished at the beginning of what is now referred to as the “golden age” of illustration, and is best known for his drawings and paintings of Shakespearean and Victorian subjects, as well as for his painting of Edward VII’s coronation.” His most famous work, The Quest of the Holy Grail, resides in the Boston Public Library.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 9, 2013 | Categories: News! | Leave A Comment »

Howard Pyle and Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

 

 Years ago I was showing in the Jack Meier Gallery in Houston, Texas. Across the street from the gallery was one of the most enjoyable bookstores I’ve ever been to, The Detering Book Gallery. It was a wonderful place, as most old bookstores are, polished wooden floors, grand old wooden bookshelves, lots of nooks and crannies all filled with used and rare books. The smell alone was heaven. They had two floors and one could lose oneself in there quite easily for a whole day. Every time I visited Jack and Martha Meier I would walk across the street and become one of the lost for hours. On their shelves one could find original Robert Crumb art, books with original sketches and inscriptions by the likes of Bruce Bairnsfather (I can’t believe I let that one get away!) and Howard Pyle.

The Detering Book Gallery is gone now, but has been bought, renamed and relocated. It’s now called Graham Book Gallery and if you’re in Houston I suggest making the pilgrimage there.

The Howard Pyle I did not let get away and I thought I’d share it with you here. It is a two-volume set of “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, illustrated by Howard Pyle and inscribed by him. I figured this was as close as I would ever get to owning a Pyle original.

Pyle is considered the Father of American Illustration. He was a great writer and teacher as well, teaching the likes of NC Wyeth, Harvey Dunn, Frank Schoonover, etc. at his Brandywine school.

The books were published in 1893, originally copyrighted in 1858. In this particular edition, on the title page of the first volume is a superb inscription by Howard Pyle dated 1897 reminiscing about meeting Holmes and discussing his place in the world of American literature. I have tried to cipher all of Pyle’s handwriting, though some of it I could not figure out. Here is my attempt amended by Ian Schoenherr who I sent this to for possible inclusion on his Howard Pyle blog:

 

I did not know “the Autocrat” – (for so Dr Holmes loved to be called) until toward the close of his life. At that time he stood a prophetical exemplair of that poem he wrote away back in the thirties – “the Last Leaf”. Longfellow had gone, Lowell had gone[,] Emerson had gone, Whittier had just gone – “the Autocrat” was indeed the last leaf of that sturdy tree of literature that had for so long spread its branches over New England.

I had expected to find his loneliness weighing upon him with a burden, at least of gentle melancholy. Instead, I found him gay, chatty, debonair, almost boastful of being the last leaf upon the tree. He quoted the poem and plumed himself upon the fulfillment of his own prophecy. He felt that all the glory of that great generation of letters was now upborn, Atlas-like upon his individual shoulders.

Human nature is a queer thing; some wrap themselves in it as in a blanket. “The Autocrat” wore his with the jauntiness of an opera-cloak.

Howard Pyle

Wilmington Del

October 30th 1897

 

The Last Leaf

 

I have forwarded scans of this inscription to Ian Schonhoerr for his exceptional blog on Howard Pyle which you would do well to visit. It’s a treasure trove of information and drawings and paintings about Pyle’s life. I highly recommend it.

 

February 9, 2013 | Categories: News! | Leave A Comment »

The Spoils of Saint Hubris

One more plug: I hope that you’ll join me in backing Sterling Hundley’s Kickstarter campaign “The Spoils of Saint Hubris”. I’ve known Sterling for quite awhile now and have had the privilege of teaching with him at VCU and at the Illustration Academy and TAD. He’s one of the most conscientious teachers I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. His students are indeed incredibly lucky to have him as a teacher. He’s also one of the best artists I know. I’m proud to call him a friend.

The personal work that Sterling is producing is just incredible and deserves to be seen by a much wider audience. Please check out his film about the project and do what you can.

“The Spoils of Saint Hubris”

February 9, 2013 | Categories: News! | Leave A Comment »

WWI Collection Peek

I’ve been asked many times “Why World War One?” It’s not an easy question to answer as there are several reasons for my interest. The most important was just getting hooked on reading about it as I researched my first graphic novel “Enemy Ace: War Idyll” years ago. The histories and memoirs of those who were there and fought that war touched me deeply. Those who experienced that war and who wrote about it were able to write about it with great clarity, intelligence and emotion. And reading the letters from the soldiers provides an indelibly visceral insight into thier thoughts and aspirations. One is immediately impressed by their honesty and their education. The letters are so well written, they are able to say what they mean with eloquence and, again, clarity. And reading those letters opened a door into their hearts that I’ve not been able to shake — nor would I want to. A generation cut down in the flower of their youth. It continues to resonate in me and the images I make. Stories continue to present themselves to me, rising unbidden into my mind.

As a child I was a nut about World War II because my father had been in that war and had history books about it scattered all over the house. His uncle Dick was in the infantry in WWII and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp. He was also made burgermeister (mayor?) of that town at that time to expedite the process of rebuilding. When I knew him he was bent forward, like my grandmother, with crippling arthritis, and the result of a jeep accident. He had what seemed to me a permanent smile on his face every time I saw him. We heard stories about how he was a fantastic sports figure in his day.

All my buddies’ parents were World War II veterans, either fighter pilots, bomber pilots, navy or infantry, so we had piles of uniforms and gear to play with. Also the World War Two movies were very prevalent at that time, as well: Audy Murphy (himself a Texas boy) in To Hell and Back, 633 Squadron, 12 O’Clock High, The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare, The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, on and on. Television had its share as well: Hogan’s Heroes, The Rat Patrol, Combat, etc. It was part of the general psyche of the time. The war was not but fifteen to twenty years over. Not to mention that during the whole of my childhood Vietnam was a constant source of anxiety to me and my friends. We grew up with it — the body counts on television, the news stories in the papers and television, the neighborhood boys who left, those who didn’t come back — and worried that we would have to go ourselves. My best friend’s mother was constantly telling us she was going to shoot us in the foot so we wouldn’t have to go. Interestingly, it didn’t stop us from playing guns.

In school we crowded around a worn out copy of Edward Jablonski’s “Air War” that was perpetually checked out, scouring the pages for the sometimes gruesome photographs inside, drawn to them like moths to a flame. Rubberneckers driving by a terrible accident.

World War I followed me throughout my childhood, though I didn’t realize it at the time. My grandfather was in WWI but didn’t see any action, as far as I know. I can remember him setting his 1911 .45 on the coffee table and, with eyes closed, disassembling and reassembling it while puffing on his wonderfully aromatic pipe and sipping from his flask of Jack Daniel, the two smoky smells/flavors mixing in the air.

My high school English teacher, Mrs. Kirkindall, posed for Howard Chandler Christy for his World War I poster “Gee!! I wish I were a man! I’d join the Navy!” She knew I was into art and impressed me with that. It’s definitely her smile and eyes beaming out of that poster. The odd thing was why I would know that poster in the first place, since we didn’t really study World War I in class. But I did know who Howard Chandler Christy was, as well as James Montgomery Flagg, and other classic illustrators, their work peppered through the various war books I would invariably find myself digging through at the time.

That’s where I found the Harvey Dunn drawings and paintings while growing up. They made a lasting impression on me and cemented a visual “take” on the First World War that I carry with me still. His drawings gave the soldiers so much visual power, yet they were humble. He made them human. Unfortunately the images were always in black and white and I didn’t get to revel in the power of his color until years later while shooting a documentary on him.

I took piano lessons as a kid, which I wasn’t into. I wanted to play baseball and draw all day. But I was mesmerized by my teacher’s handwriting. She would sharpen those pencils to long points and really bear down while scribing graceful lines. The first piece I learned was “The Caissons Go Rolling Along.” The song was originally written in 1908. John Phillips Sousa dropped the key, changed the harmony and the rhthym in 1917 and released it as ”U.S. Field Artillery”.

I was hooked on Charles Schulz’s Snoopy and the Red Baron, and, of course, Joe Kubert’s “Enemy Ace” comic book. My family went to Estes Park, Colorado a few times for summer vacation and in a shed at the lodge there was a Red Baron game that I would play incessantly.

I worked on Enemy Ace: War Idyll while living in Brooklyn, NY. Once, I happened to be returning from my girlfriend’s place when I passed by two older gentlemen talking on the stoop of one of the brownstones. One was dressed in jeans with a red baseball cap on, and the other, older gentleman was dressed incredibly dapper in a dark suit, hat and cane. As I passed I heard one of them mention the word “trenches”. I pulled up short and introduced myself and mentioned that I overheard the word trenches. The guy in the baseball cap told me that he fought in World War II but that his buddy fought in the trenches in World War I. I could’nt believe my luck! That day I got to meet Frank Snell who was a machine gunner who fought with an Australian unit in the trenches. Amazing that he was still alive as the average life expectancy of a machine gunner in WWI was like a week or so at the front lines. Machine gunners were first in and last out, and every enemy fighter was gunning for them.

I got to speak with Mr. Snell a couple of times and he was a wonderful raconteur and filled me in on his time in the trenches. I remember him snapping his fingers close to my ear repeatedly and telling me that that was the sound the bullets made as they went by his head. He explained to me the differences in the German machine guns and the British and American machine guns, the rate of fire, etc. Amazing. He had been wounded and gassed, and evacuated by train. He told me a story of a friend of his who had just finished cleaning his handkerchief, had wrung it out and was laying it on the parapet of the trench. He was shot through the handkerchief and between his eyes. How does one live with those kinds of memories?

Several years ago I was visiting New York to jury the Society of Illustrators show and afterwards several of us went to a restaurant not far from the Society. I don’t remember the name of the establishment but it had an Old World feel to it and there were lots of people at the bar. There was a piano player and he was busily running through lots of standards. There was an old couple sitting next to us and the gentleman asked the piano player if he knew a certain song. The musician did and started playing the tune. I don’t remember the name of the tune, but it was a World War I tune. The gentleman said that he had been at this restaurant once before, back in 1918 just before he boarded a ship to go “over there”. The song he asked the piano player to play was that song. How crazy is that?

I have a great friend and mentor, Phyllis Lee, who is a wonderful painter who pushed me in all the right ways as a young artist. She is convinced I died in the trenches. Who knows?

Anyway, as if it isn’t already obvious, I’m a packrat. I’ve always had the collecting mentality. It began with comic books, and then spread into other areas of interest — art, books, cards you name it. And in the course of my travels and research to dig deeper into World War One I’ve been able to collect lots of interesting things. Of course most of what I’ll show you here has to do with art, though I have collected other things as well — physical objects, helmets, trench lighters, whistles, bullets etc. There’s a presence to these things that lends great weight and gravity to my thinking about that war and what those people went through. But the printed matter from that time is wonderful and many have no sense of the plethora of interesting art from that time. There’s lots of stuff I would love to show here, but I’m trying to present just the material that was actually printed in the First World War, rather than stuff that came out later about the war.

In World War II America had cartoonist Bill Mauldin who was drawing the Willie and Joe comic strips for the Stars and Stripes newspaper. Mauldin was able to take a serious situation and make it humorous thus lightening the load for the dogfaces struggling against the Axis powers. He won a Pulitzer for his work and had a run-in with Patton who was pointedly not a fan. He later went on to be an incredibly influential political cartoonist after the war, and his memoirs of his wartime exploits are very engaging reading and I highly recommend them: Up Front, This Damn Tree Leaks, The Brass Ring.

During World War I there was a British Captain, Bruce Bairnsfather, who was doing the same thing, obviously years before Mauldin (though Bairnsfather also worked during WWII and influenced Mauldin). His character was Old Bill and the strips were printed in a British weekly magazine on the homefront called The Bystander. Bairnsfather was in the trenches in Flanders, knee deep in the mud and drew his humorous strips to lighten those soldiers’ lives. He sent them in to The Bystander as sort of a lark, and they began to collect them in their own magazines called “Fragments from France.” They were a hit and ultimately made Bairnsfather a hero with the soldiers and quite a wealthy man, though his fortunes flipped later, I believe.

From Wikipedia: “In 1914 he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and served with a machine gun unit in France until 1915, when he was hospitalised with shell shock and hearing damage sustained during the Second Battle of Ypres. Posted to the 34th Division headquarters on Salisbury Plain, he developed his humorous series for the Bystander about life in the trenches, featuring “Old Bill”, a curmudgeonly soldier with trademark walrus moustache and balaclava. The best remembered of these shows Bill with another trooper in a muddy shell hole with shells whizzing all around. The other trooper is grumbling and Bill advises: ”Well, if you knows of a better ‘ole, go to it.”

Many of his cartoons from this period were collected in Fragments from France (1914) and the autobiographical Bullets & Billets (1916). Despite the immense popularity with the troops and massive sales increase for the Bystander, initially there were objections to the “vulgar caricature”. Nevertheless, their success in raising morale led to Bairnsfather’s promotion and receipt of a War Office appointment to draw similar cartoons for other Allies forces.”

His drawings are lots of fun and he was a great cartoonist. I remember going to the Imperial War Museum in London years ago and seeing a Bairnsfather original drawing of Old Bill messing with tins of bully beef done on toned paper in ink with white highlights. What a fantastic drawing! It was so volumetric and done with such skill. Just beautiful! I’ve been a fan ever since.

I was able to snag many of the original printings of the “Fragments from France” on Ebay and I love looking through them. They take me back to my own childhood and my fascination with cartooning, which I’ve never been very good at, but which I am forever awed by, especially the early strip artists like Billy DeBeck, Frank King, Winsor McCay, George Herriman, George McManus, Walt Kelly, et al. I can remember poring over the comic strips (a love of which I got from my father), loving the simplicity of the line and crazy proportions of the characters. Bairnsfather’s drawings fill me with that same sense of lightheartedness and love for that kind of work that I had then. And how poignant that these strips show the indomitable spirit humans have for finding humor in the weirdest places, of finding some way to make the best of an intolerable situation.

Anyway, here is a sampling of his work scanned from the original Fragments from France as well as his book “Bullets and Billets“:

 

 

  

 

Another neat publication I found years ago is “The Kaiser’s Garland” by Edmund J. Sullivan. This book is filled with beautiful pen and inks by this great artist. I believe he was an influence on Arthur Rackham, and looking at the line quality it seems a foregone conclusion. He’s the artist whose work was repurposed for some of the Grateful Dead album covers. Beautiful stuff.

Other interesting publications I’ve been able to collect from the First World War are copies of the French magazine “Le Baionnette”. The French cartoonists working in this publication are fantastic and here are a few pages from those. I found these in a flea market in Dinan on the coast of Brittany years ago. I love the quality of the printing and, of course, the drawings themselves. The Gus Bofa covers are fantastic! Hope you like thes As much as I do.

 

I found “Wally” totally by accident on eBay. It turned up in a blanket search on World War One and I immediately snagged it. What an interesting glimpse into the life of a soldier from that time. A little worse for the wear, but a unique find. I love the format of these. I only scanned one strip as to truly try and scan these would destroy the publication, which is in sad shape anyway.

 

I have a fascination with stereoscopic images and was lucky enough to find this large collection on the First World War on eBay years ago. One can never have too much reference from the time and being able to see these in 3D is remarkable. I’ve also bought many as singles and built up a pretty good collection of others that are not in the boxed version, including some from France that are not as well presented, but which are intriguing images all the same.

If you get the right distance away from these and cross your eyes to overlap the two photos you can see the 3D effect. Or, if you have the viewer it’s a lot easier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strong stuff to be sure. And one wonders if our news organizations were this honest today would we be so quick to go to war?

One of the prizes of my collection is the complete New York Times Photogravure of the war from the time. These I was able to purchase from Mad Magazine artist George Woodbridge via his son Curtis, a wonderful illustrator in his own right. There were also a couple of other volumes in the collection, a German volume in particular that is a rarity. These are large, heavy books, tomes really, of just photography, though sprinkled here and there with drawings and maps. These are indespensible volumes of reference and give one an uncompromising visual insight into that time and place. Not only are these huge, bulky tomes but they are brittle with age, so I won’t scan anything from them.

This interesting signed and numbered portfolio of drawings by Forain has some nice prints in it. I also found this on eBay.

 

Bob Burden, the creator of the Flaming Carrot and the Mystery Men, knowing my interest in WWI, came by my table years ago at San Diego and sold me his collection of World War One magazines. These are nice issues of photography.

This unique portfolio of a play is illustrated by noted Belgian illustrator Louis Raemaekers whose poignant illustrations and satires of the war and the German invasion of his country swayed public opinion in a major way. Unfortunately I can only scan a little of this as to try and scan other pages would split the spine of the book.  So I’m supplementing with photographs. It’s a beautifully produced portfolio with gilt stamping and two color inks with tipped-in plates.

I found this unique collection of drawings by Muirhead Bone in Monterey, California while staying with Allen Spiegle. A fantastic set of drawings covering the Western Front through landscape and various factories during the war. These were all observational drawings done on the spot and as such lend a sense of incredible verisimilitude to that time, especially for another artist looking to get a solid feel for that time.

This is a lovely original etching by J. Andre Smith, one of the eight artists sent to the front to illustrate the war for America. Harvey Dunn was another. Six of the eight were students of Howard Pyle, the father of American Illustration.

 

 Here’s a wacky bit of trivia, an identity disc kit, used to punch the names and serial numbers of the soldiers into dog tags (though they weren’t called that during the First World War).

Here is a trench whistle. Scary thing, really. The sound of this whistle might have been the last thing many men heard before dying while going “over the top” of the trench in a hail of gunfire.

Below is a shell casing I found on Mount Cosna in Romania while filming the documentary Hill 579. Bullets were everwhere, easily seen, and were scattered all over the side of the mountain. One could still see the shell craters and trench lines overgrown with grass.

Here is a sort of petrified remainder of a trench wall from Flanders.

Two Iron Crosses from the First World War.

Charles Schulz sent this Snoopy in the trenches strip to me for my wedding years ago. One of my most prized pieces of original art. Talk about coming full circle. So many hours spent loving up on Snoopy and the Red Baron as a child. I loved Schulz’s nods each year to Ernie Pyle, and for Veteran’s Day. Schulz was so woven into the fabric of our lives back than with all the television specials and toys and games and, of course, the strips. 

 

eBay is the ultimate bad/good place to find WWI ephemera. I try not to go anymore because it’s too easy to spend money. But there was a time when I haunted the place. Here are a couple of photographs I purchased from eBay. Some might wonder why one would want such images, but I see them as things that keep me straight, so to speak. There’s no way to glorify something like this, and this serves as a constant reminder of that for me.

I’ve also used eBay as a reference tool. It’s a great place to find imagery of the various costumes, buttons, hats, helmets, guns, ammo, etc. One could build a nice collection of reference materials from the auctions.

This book by Leroy Baldridge is a wonderful fragment of the war, being able to see through the eyes of an artist as he works observationally in the field. His drawings are very nice and to the point.

 

 

This book by Kerr Eby is slim but the work is poignant. Eby later was a combat artist in WWII and produced some of the most powerful images of the war in the Pacific.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve saved some of the best for last. One of my favorite magazines is the German humor weekly Simplicissimus. It was an oversized magazine that was chock full of some of the best graphic work anywhere. The artists were ahead of their time, and just about all of them were brilliant —I love the work of them all. In the pages of this groundbreaking publication one could find the work of Bruno Paul, Rudolf Wilke, Olaf Gulbransson, Theodore Heine, Wilhelm Shulz, Kathe Kollwitz, Theophile Steinlen, Jules Pascin, Heinrich Kley (rhymes with eye), and many, many more wonderful artists.

My hero from that publication is Eduard Thöny. He just hits me where I live, graphically. I love that he can go from something very observational and “realistic” to something cartoony. I also respond to his simple style and that he can jump around with various media and handle them all with equal aplomb. His charcoal drawings are powerful, but so are his black and white pieces.

I’ve been lucky enough to track down many of the separate portfolios that were published at the time, as well as collected bound volumes of the original Simpliicissimus magazines. Thöny in particular focused on the military and his work during WWI is exceptional. Before I show you the work from Simplicissimus here’s a little book I found from WWI on the German soldiers’ slang. Very handy thing to find as it provides wonderful insight into the slang of the German soldiers, and even more cool because Thöny illustrated it!

   

 

 

The work below is some of Thöny’s work for Simplicissimus during the First World War.

 

 

 

 

 Basically

 I’ll just have to do a whole post on Thöny at some point.

Below are images from other artists in Simplicissimus from the War years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 2, 2013 | Categories: News! | 6 Comments »

“Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones”

Please take the time to check out the Indiegogo campaign for the documentary film by Maria Cabardo, “Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones”. There’s 27 days left in the campaign and the film is really a wonderful insight into the life of painter Jeffrey Jones.

“Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones”

If you’ve read much on my blog then you know what a profound influence Jeff was on my life and work.

There’s a link with a small clip of Jeff and I discussing landscape painting in the gallery section of the campaign:

Gallery

We’re the third clip on the top row.

I hope you’ll support this film!

George

February 2, 2013 | Categories: News! | Leave A Comment »

Newtown

My heart goes out to those in Newtown, Connecticut. I cannot imagine what you are going through. No words could ever adequately convey the depth of sorrow and loss that you are feeling right now, or help to lessen those feelings. But you are not alone. The world’s prayers are with you.

December 17, 2012 | Categories: News! | Leave A Comment »

BlogPad Pro: A shameless plug

For quite awhile I’ve been messing around trying to find the perfect blogging tool for my iPad WordPress blogging needs. There have been a couple that I have liked, the first being BlogPress, which is easy to use and has served me pretty well. It was the app that I used to initially create Murmurs while on a trip to Belgium and France. What I’ve found, though, is that it doesn’t show me all of my posts. Maybe there’s a way to get it to do this, but I’ve not found it.

Next came Posts, which I thought was going to be my favorite. But I found that it added bizarre returns or ran all my images together, and/or truncated my images, requiring me to do TONS of massaging to get my posts to look halfway decent. I wrote the programmer and he did reply, but then vanished totally. I’ve since sent several emails trying to get help, all to no avail. The app has not been updated since August. There was lots to like about the app. The interface was very cool and it had several nice touches in design and accessibility. But what I was seeing on my pad was not what I was getting in the actual published posts—not cool. Out of desperation I’d sort of decided I’d probably use it since nothing else killed me.

However, I did some searching yesterday and found BlogPad Pro and decided to give it a shot.

Wow! I’m thrilled! Here is a wonderfully well thought out app that is a breeze to use and packs a lot of power and amenities. I did run into a little snag, wrote to the company and they responded in less than 20 minutes or so and solved my issue. What I see on my pad is exactly what I get when I publish. Adding a blog is incredibly simple and editing is even more so. One is up and running in no time at all.

When you fire up the app for the first time you’re presented with a help screen that explains all. If you are still uncertain there is a help menu and tutorials, as well as more online.

Adding images is simple and to the point. One can even scale the images and change the amount of memory the image takes up. Perfect. And as they say on their site: 

“Blog online, in airplane mode or when you don’t have an internet connection – just sync your changes when you’re done!”

Anyway, this is the blogging app I’ve been waiting for. Everything is at your fingertips: WYSIWYG editing, comment moderation, creating and editing posts and pages, WordPress.com blog stats, adding images & featured images, custom fields, sticky posts, draft posts and lots more…

But don’t take my word for it, check out BlogPad Pro on the Apple App Store or go to their website:

http://blogpadpro.com

December 13, 2012 | Categories: News! | 1 Comment »

Sweet Relief!

A little reflection on how cool technology is: Was painting at my buddy Cameron Thorp’s home last night, but before we began painting he suggested we go to WalMart and snag a dropcloth for his carpets. Off to Walmart we go. We found the dropcloths easy enough and picked one up, did a little other shopping. While shopping I decided to check my email on the phone and wander a bit. We then checked out. Got back to Cameron’s place and I realized I left my phone in his car…only it wasn’t in his car—I’d misplaced it at WalMart somewhere!

Cripes! I freaked out. I was sick to my stomach! We drove immediately back to WalMart. On the way Cameron handed me his iPhone and had me log into iCloud via “Find My iPhone.” It scoured the ether and found all my devices (ipads, phones, etc.). I chose my phone’s name and voila, my phone’s location popped up. It was still at WalMart! I put my phone into “Lost” mode, locking it with a passcode, then typed in a message to whomever found it: “Please take this phone to Customer Service. The Phone is being tracked.”

I ran to the last known location, where I thought I’d lost it and no luck. Cameron meanwhile had parked the car and was using his phone to track mine. He told me to go to Customer Service, but before that to make sure my phone’s alarm would sound. I turned the alarm on. He also said that my phone was on the move. The tracking was live and he was able to see the phone moving on the radar/map. So he began to follow it.

I ran to Customer Service. A massive line! Ugh! I waited. Next thing I know Cameron is there with my phone in his hand. He was outside in the parking lot and heard the alarm. A guy had it out of his pocket and was looking at the screen reading the message. Cameron walked up to him and thanked him for finding it. The funny thing was he was on his way out, and more than likely had no intention of turning it in. Might be the last time he picks up an iPhone.

When I got the phone back I had emails from Apple as it tracked the phone:

 
So, anyway, how amazing is that? I thought for sure that my phone was toast. I could have also wiped it via iCloud, but glad I held off on that before making sure I did or did not get it back. Talk about relief, though. Whew!

We finally did get to painting and had a lot of laughs over the almost loss of my phone. Here’s the painting I started last night. Just got it blocked in, but am happy with where it is. Actually the painting is further along than what you see here, but this is the only shot I took in progress.

December 13, 2012 | Categories: News! | Leave A Comment »

Joe Kubert 1926-2012

I’ve been meaning to sit down and write something about the passing of Joe Kubert for awhile now. I hate that I’ve not been able to do this sooner due to a pressing deadline. Now I’m finished and can actually concentrate, though I question whether I can truly sort out my thoughts about the passing of someone so important to comics and to my own life.

One of my most powerful memories of growing up in the 1960′s and 1970′s was of sitting on the passenger side of my mother’s car (yep, the old bench seat) having just returned from the grocery store. It was a typical sweltering Texas summer day. In the blazing Texas heat, pulling in to the driveway with the radio playing “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young, I stared at Sgt. Rock’s Prize Battle Tales with a Joe Kubert cover. Joe Kubert was synonymous to me with the best of the best comics work in the world. I was so excited to have that comic in my hot little hands and knew without a doubt that the promise of great stories and art inside was a given. That memory is a wonderfully warm place I still go to now and again. It sumps up perfectly what comics meant to me then. They were everything, and Joe’s work was one of the reasons why.

There was a time when I was very young in my comic reading that the characters were everything to me. I started reading comic books because I was in the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston having open heart surgery. I was there a long, long time. The Batman television show was on and I was hooked. This was first run stuff. I didn’t know what comics were, I don’t think. But everyone in my family saw how much I loved the Batman show and started bringing me the Batman comics. Little did they know they were igniting a very big fire!

So I became addicted to comic books and began collecting in earnest. Batman was huge, and so was Sgt. Rock. Texas in my childhood was full of little boys playing guns. All our fathers were World War II vets and Audie Murphy was our hero. And we all read Sgt. Rock (Our Army at War), The Haunted Tank (G.I. Combat), The Unknown Soldier (Star Spangled War Stories), Enemy Ace, The Losers, etc. All DC Comics books on war.

As I mentioned, those characters were huge to me. They might as well have been real people for the amount of emotional investment I had in them. I followed their exploits like crazy. But at some point I experienced a shift. I must have been about eight years old or so, and though I still loved the characters and couldn’t wait to see what each issue brought, the artists who drew the books, and the writers who wrote them, became real people to me and they became the real heroes, especially the artists. Their work infused me with so much energy, so much love of the graphic arts, even at that tender age. They were teaching me hw to compose, how to see, and, more importantly, how drawings could emote.

They became like the crazy Uncle that everyone loves. There were many for me throughout my childhood: Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, Marshall Rogers, Sam Glanzman, Ric Estrada, Russ Heath, Roy Crane, Frank Frazetta, Jeff Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, Richard Corben, John Severin, Neal Adams, Charles Schulz, Stan Lynde, the list is endless.

And there was Joe Kubert.

Joe was the most prolific, or at least the one name that seemed to be forever and always in my face. Those covers! He did so, so many! I’d buy a comic just for his covers, and did, many, many times. His line, his compositions, everything! He nailed me. I wanted to BE Joe Kubert. He was the place in comics that was the ultimate comfort zone for me. I knew I was home. I knew that there was little better, for me, than where I was right then with Joe leading the way. I copied Joe’s work endlessly, struggling to achieve that incredible effortless feeling of his work.

Joe was working almost at the very beginning of comic books. He got his first paying job as a comic artist when he was eleven-and-a-half or twelve years old in 1938.

So many issues of Sgt. Rock poured forth from Joe’s brush and pen. I had (have) them all. And they are as fresh to me today as they were when I first saw them. I can still get lost in his storytelling. Easy as pie.

And his Tarzan is for me the best ever done in comics. I know there’s a lot of Jesse Marsh fans out there and that’s great. But Joe defined that character for me. I can’t even begin to describe the emotions that ran through me then, and still hit me where I live now. They encapsulate more than just Tarzan to me. So… what can I say?

I remember the day I was sitting on my parents’ sofa reading through the newest issue of Sgt. Rock and seeing this curious advertisement about the Kubert School! My jaw dropped. I got sick to my stomach I was so excited. Here was a school created by one of the people I admired most in comics! I would have killed to have been able to attend that school. But beyond my own gnawing desire I didn’t believe it was something I would be allowed to do. So I didn’t pursue it. But it killed me knowing it was out there.

And of course, comics wise, there was Enemy Ace. Ace was unique to me and in many ways, it seems, to Joe as well. Those stories seem more open, more full of air and light than many others he did. And they’re iconic of reading comics at a time when the Vietnam war was constantly on the news. Rock was too. All those comics. But Ace sticks out. And in the end, years later became my ticket to meet Joe Kubert.

After getting my project green-lighted at DC (Thanks to Scott Hampton and Andy Helfer) I probed about and asked if I could get Joe Kubert’s phone number to show him all the work and to pick his brain about the character. And to my amazement they agreed!

Joe was one of the nicest people I think I’ve ever met in my life. Meeting one’s hero’s is a dicey business. It could go two ways. One could never be sure of what one would find. Joe was incredibly nice, warm and friendly. He was so humble about his work and all that he accomplished. That definitely made a huge impact on me. He looked through the work that I was doing and gave me many, many pointers about how to improve the storytelling and panel arrangements. He talked to me about how he had approached the character and how long he would spend laying out his stories and how long it took him to produce the finals. I was, of course, in heaven.

Joe took lots of time from his hectic schedule to help a newcomer. So gracious with his time and his talent.

Surprisingly, Joe asked me to teach at his school. That was a mind bender for me. I leapt at the chance! Just to be near Joe, really. To be that close to greatness! I would take a bus to my friend John VanFleet’s home in New Jersey where I’d spend the night and we’d catch a movie with his sister. The next morning John would drive me to the train station where I’d ride to Dover, New Jersey. There Joe would pick me up in his truck and we’d head to the school. I was so proud to be able to ride with Joe to the school and to actually be sitting next to him and be able to talk to him about whatever. It was a rare, unforgettable experience.

I loved the meetings all the teachers would have in the office, loved seeing the folders each of the classes were kept in and the doodles that Joe would have sketched on them: Cowboys on horseback, cavemen, etc. Loved seeing the Joe Kubert originals on the walls of the school — Everything about it. The students were wonderful and getting to meet Joe’s family was an honor as well. All sincerely gracious, honest people.

Having lost my father in 1995 I know exactly what the Kubert children are going through. But I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to share their dad with the world as they did. My heart goes out to them. If their personalities are any indication, and I think they are, Joe and his wife Muriel did an incredible job as parents. And it shows the kind of people they were as well.

I miss Joe Kubert.

I miss his bear hugs, I miss his crushing handshake, his ready smile, his kind words of wisdom, and of course, the work. What an enduring legacy he leaves behind, not only in his work, but in his children who are a living testament to the true qualities of the man.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

September 12, 2012 | Categories: News! | 1 Comment »

Greg Irons

I’ve been a guest lecturer lately in Marshall Vandruff’s online TAD Genre class giving my “Short History of Comics” presentation. I make it a point to state that I am no historian in these matters and that what I’m presenting is my own biased love of the history of this medium in the hopes that it will spur viewers on to discover the true breadth of the work of so many wonderful talents. It seems to do the trick, which is great. There are huge holes in my presentation, mostly because what I’ve been interested in doesn’t cover the entire history of the medium. Romance comics are absent, though I could easily scan (and have started to) some of the beautiful work of Frank Frazetta and Alex Toth, to name just a couple of artists. So the holes will get filled in eventually, just so it will be a more representative presentation.

I am by nature a pack rat. Always have been. My collection is pretty large and I’ve been doing it for quite a long time now. I love it all, really. Can’t get enough of it. And, though my collecting has slowed considerably, the collection does still grow. Usually in the case of foreign material, which is so hard to find here in the States, but which I load up on when I travel overseas.

Anyway, in the course of presenting this time around I was hit once again by the unusual power of Greg Irons’s work. I was fortunate to have a cousin who was older than myself and one who reveled in introducing me to things I would never have seen otherwise, and probably shouldn’t have seen! My cousin Jake was the wanderer, the experimenter, the loner. He has the greatest sense of humor and an enthusiasm for life that is not lost on me. I lived vicariously through him and his adventures when I was younger. Like when he went on safari through Africa in a van and got lost in the Sahara, evading nomadic tribes on camelback, then had to live on a boat on the Congo for a week until his German friends could air drop him a visa sealed in a tupperware container so that he could safely return home. He could hear battles taking place along the banks of the river; gunshots in the night, screams. It was heady stuff for a young kid and gave me a love of travel, both physically and fictionally. He introduced me to Doc Savage and those incredible James Bama covers! He showed me the Lancer editions of Conan with the Frazetta covers. He collected Creepy and Eerie comics and blew my mind with those too. And he showed me the underground comix. Stuff that I really should not have been looking at, but was so glad to get at that early age. My parents heads would have exploded if they’d known just what he’d handed me. And it was the knowledge of their being forbidden fruit that made the reading of them so much more enjoyable and thrilling.

I was always graphically inclined even as a kid. I was automatically drawn to anything that was printed. I absolutely loved the ben day dots printed on paper. I used to hold paperback covers up close to my eyes and marvel at how that crazy arrangement of colored dots made that image, that painting come alive on the page! I still marvel at it all. It’s still magic of the best kind to me. So this stuff was on an order of magnitude greater than other things I was looking at that were more easily accessible.

I was stunned by the work. Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Jack Jackson (Jaxon), Dave Sheridan, S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez and Greg Irons. I loved/love them all. Even though S. Clay Wilson’s Checkered Demon freaked me out, it was like watching a train wreck. I just couldn’t look away! There was a sense of the covert in looking at all that. That I was seeing things from behind enemy lines, adult stuff that wasn’t being told to us. That same feeling of looking at something I shouldn’t have been looking at that I got from reading Creepy and Eerie and even, to a lesser extent, Mad Magazine. I was in the inner circle thanks to my cousin Jake.

I knew that Don Martin in Mad was clean fun, especially when stacked up against Gilbert Shelton and Dave Sheridan. The Freak Brothers and Wonder Warthog were on a different level entirely. Still funny, just in a dirty sort of way that I didn’t truly understand, but still coveted. There was a sense to all the underground material of having been done in a garage. They were hand made and printed on a shoestring, and that made them more real to me than the regular above ground comics that I usually wallowed in. They had that feeling that I got from seeing the original Batman and Superman comics. They lacked polish, but that’s what made them special. Anyway, a long way to point out how Greg Irons work hit me where I lived, and still moves me.

There was something else about Irons’s work that hit a nerve with me. He did have a certain polish that the others lacked. It was like he sort of knew what comics were all about, or what they “could” be, and took them and twisted them around to suit his own needs and he then spit them back out after wringing them through his wonderfully enlightened self. There was a sense of playfulness that crept into his work, but also a sense of the absurd, and a slowly sinking edge of horror to them as well. It walked a razor’s edge between fun and scary, if that makes any sense.

He was taken from us way, way too early. Killed by a bus in Bangkok in 1985. He was only 35 years old! But he left behind a wonderful body of work that you can love up on in Fantagraphics “You Call This Art?!!” by Patrick Rosenkranz. The book has been out now since 2006 and I picked it up the minute it was released. I constantly enjoy revisiting its pages and getting that familiar nostalgic pang when looking through his work. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, certainly. And there’s quite a bit that’s actually hard to look at. The Time Magazine cover “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” is a brutal condemnation of the Vietnam War.

He didn’t shy away from showing the underbelly of things. And while it may at times seem gratuitous, it really came from a place where he was confronting what he thought were serious demons in our society. It wasn’t something from within him, but what he was seeing in others. The book gives some great insight into his reasons for creating some of the work.

But the work! THE WORK! It’s beautiful! So lively, so powerful! What a talent! I love his lines, his use of black, his characterizations. It’s just a joy to look at for me. It’s like political cartooning thrown on its head with the blinders totally off. No rose colored glasses here. His scathing exposé on Whaling, “The Honour and Glory of Whaling”, in “Slow Death”. The splash page is remarkable. Just a brilliant piece of work. And the story is so dense with facts and information. I think most people at that time would have been (and probably were) sort of shocked at what was being presented in what most considered ephemera for children. They truly were Comix with a conscience. I’ll have to scan more work because what I’ve got here doesn’t quite do him justice.

These things seriously had an effect on me and others that carries through today. That need to not shy away from the unpleasant, or the ugly. To try and make sense of some of it all and maybe even find the latent beauty that lurks in the shadows.

We need more artists like Greg Irons.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

May 17, 2012 | Categories: News! | 2 Comments »