Norman Saunders

One of the greatest commercial illustrators and painters, Norm Saunders work spanned decades and inspired untold numbers of artists. While most of his work was for hire and commercial, some of his originals catch up to $50,000-100,000 at auctions. I had looked for an original a few years back to find that I couldn't come close to affording one.

His early work had included pulp and book covers but some of my favorite stuff was his Mars Attacks and Wacky Packages art he'd done.

Comic-Con 2010

Some photo highlights from the greatest show on earth!

Bill Graham Presents

Big fan here of Bill Graham Presents posters (Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin, Jim Phillips etc) and every once in a while I come across one that still blows me away:

I even painted a homage a while back to this stuff:

Stencil

Here's an old image from the archives I found from a few years ago:

Saul Bass

A video was posted on Google that reminded me of Mr. Bass' work. Saul was a pretty influential typographer/designer who would go on to re-invent the art of movie titles. He would come up with a letter style for the poster, and work that into the entire film titles and promotion. But don't take my word for it, read more details here.

Below are a few examples of his more notable work.



Also there's a great site here that someone put together to celebrate his title works.

And finally nerds, here's that video someone made as a tribute.

1985 Volume 3 Page 26

Almost there. Page 26 pencils about wrapped up. This is what's known as the 5 page slog. With 5 pages remaining, pencil production seems to last as long as the first 24 pages combined.

Goodbye Harvey!

We'll miss you!!

The Commissar Vanishes

I have this pretty incredible book that involves some of the earliest 'photo manipulation'. It's called 'The Commissar Vanishes, and it's a collection of photos dated back to Stalins purges of the 1930's and 40's.

Basically, if you were a member of the Soviet Politburo, and you were on the 'outs' with Stalin (probably headed to the Gulag or executed) your image in a photo would be erased along with any memory of you. It was the ultimate form of damage control.


This picture below shows how the state would alter images for publication. In this case, creating a 'crowd' shot for Lenin, that appears 3 times as big as it actually was. Recently, FOX News had been caught doing something similar in it's footage of one of the 'Tea Party' protests.

1985 Volume 3 Page 20