Some pictures we remember. Most we don’t. They goin one eye and out the other, to steal a phrase. Still fewer open our eyes and change our perceptions.
As an illustration professor, I’m often advocating for pictures that are more resonant. I’m looking for deeper images – ones that are more than a just a pretty picture. So to help make my point, I’ve been trying to picture how images can deliver more for the viewer. I tell my students, that the more you put into a picture, the more a viewer can take out. But I’m not talking about more details, or more complication. Confusion and exhaustion are not good ways to communicate. It’s what’s behind the image that counts – the depth – the layers of meaning.
Imagine that there are three levels of engagement that a picture can offer, and that the very best illustrations reach all three.
Sensory
In a flash, the combination of good art-making and a well-chosen subject grabs a viewer. We first find something appealing, cool or attractive. While most things we see in a day are instantly dismissed, or not noticed at all, skillful images attract viewers on a sensory level in a flash.
But while good pictures succeed on the surface, they can offer more. Surface attention can be fleeting. An artist can take a viewer beyond just looking. For illustrators, that’s a requirement. Illustrators are the writers of pictures who use communication concepts to connect more deeply.
Conceptual
The concept of an image, at its most basic, is the thing the we remember about it. Concepts are all those personal decisions that an artist makes in order to be seen and heard beyond a glance. Those decisions may be of content or form. Either way, a viewer soon understands that this is not just a picture, but a message or an expression – it is something to read and to understand. The image is saying something and they come to recognize it. Illustration is a form of communication, and when illustrations work, viewers get them.
But then there are images that engage even further with the viewer. The late-great illustrator Milton Glaser used to say that there were three possible results to seeing an illustration: “Yes” (I get it), “No” (I don’t get it), and, “Wow”. For me, the next step of engagement is Wow.
(Bob) Dylan by Milton Glaser, 1966
Intellectual
The deepest engagement a viewer can have with an image is to think about it beyond the actual viewing. An intellectual engagement leaves a lasting impression. Imagine someone carrying a picture around in their head because its so insightful, innovative or truly artful that it can’t be unseen. Those are the illustrations that captivate – the ones that intrigue. Those images are so clever, wise or wonderful that other images are trite by comparison. Some are so persuasive as to change the we see or think. Some capture something so meaningful as to become emblematic of a time, place or person. Regardless, these are the rare images that we hold, and because we’ve engaged with them at the deepest level, they are part of us now. They are worth the extra efforts of the creator.
Professor Martin Salisbury of the Cambridge School of Art recently found a nice quote from the great mid-century modern illustrator, Austin Briggs. A founder of The Famous Artists School – a popular illustration correspondence school, Briggs would get inquiries from his students. In the 1961 issue of Commercial Art (now CA) he shared some thoughts on “style”.
Almost every month we have a comment from someone on the (current) “trend.” A trend is almost always a stream of imitation.
The manner should be an integral part of the message the artist delivers – and an imitation of a manner (on the plea that one is being contemporary) is a superficiality imposed upon a picture without enhancing its capacity to communicate. It is a cord around the neck with strangles the voice.
R. O. Blechman is a renown illustrator and animator. It’s easy to recognize his thin wiggley line-work and quietly clever concepts. He’s won all the awards, written a number of books and succeeded for a very long time in the fickle business of commercial art. That’s why his wisdom is so welcome, and in his slim book, Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator (2009, Simon and Schuster), there are plenty of useful nuggets. The premise of the book is a fictional correspondence exchange, just as the title says. Here I share some of my favorite passages. Buy the book and you can share your own. I categorized themes below myself.
Photograph of R.O. Blechman by Maria Spann
Times have Changed
A while back I wrote of the unequal relationship between writer and illustrator, and I can do no better than to repeat myself. If a text read, “Bill kissed Sally in a hammock as it swayed gently between the hemlocks,” the illustratorʼs job is to strictly render Bill kissing Sally in the hammock as it swayed gently (no vigorously!) between the hemlocks (not pines!).
It was not for the illustration to aspire to the status of literature, as Anton Chekov described it: ‘The moon reflected in a piece of glass at the bottom of a stream.ʼ Illustration was the moon, period. Or the glass, period. Nothing less, nothing more – no reflections, no distortions.
That has changed. In the mid-fifties, a revolution occurred and a new word entered the vocabulary of commercial art. Concept. Illustrators asked themselves, “Whatʼs the idea behind the text? How can we express an idea, and express it in a novel, and maybe even startling way, that will expand, or comment upon the text?” In jazz parlance, a theme had become the occasion for a riff. Pranksters with our pens, we had become so many Charlie Parkers.
But the change was not entirely good. Our gain was a loss.
The literal approach to text implied a literalness of technique and a high level of draftsmanship. There was great value in something well observed and carefully delineated. If the head and heart were often absent, there was something to be said for presence of hand.
Where to Get Ideas
A great deal of A.E. Housemanʼs poetry was composed when he was away from his desk. He habitually took a stroll for two or three hours a day. It was then, he remarked that “sometimes a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza at once,” would spring int mind. Montaigne also found that many of his ideas occurred when he was away from his worktable. However, he complained, his best ideas came when he was on horseback, far from quill and parchment. You’ll find… that when you’re most relaxed, which is to say the least self conscious, you’ll be at your most creative.
Day Job and Artist?
Anton Chekhov, a practicing doctor and writer expressed his double life in a charming manner:
“I feel more contented and more satisfied when I realize that I have two professions, not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I grow weary of one, I pass the night with the other. This may seem disorderly, but it is not dull, and besides, neither of them suffers from my infidelity.”
Committing to an Idea
An admirer of Goethe, W.H. Murray had this to say about the importance of beginning a project:
“Until one is committed, there is a hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Connecting all the acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.”
Goethe himself wrote:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius power and magic in it.”
Finding Opportunities
Waiting around to get a commission is not the best way to get one. A person has to move around to see people, to speak to them, and then – just maybe-something will happen, somebody will be interested in what you have to offer. It’s the accidental encounter, the happenstance that moves a ball to those high-number bulbs in a pinball machine.
Style & Substance
An old vaudeville act would have two men dressed in a horse’s costume. One would be in front, the other in back. The two vaudevillians would then act bin tandem. Illustration is like that. The idea is only one part of the “horse.” The other is the rendering. They have to act in unison for the art to work.
Finding a Style
When I started out, I worked in several different styles – a cross hatch, a tight line, a stitched line (an innovation of Ben Shahn’s, incidentally, who had a had a great influence on illustrators in the 1950’s. Andy Warhol, for example, when he first entered the illustration field, used a stitched line in his work), and, yes, in addition to this stylistic approaches, I used a shaky line. That last look was the direction I liked best, and that’s what I chose to develop. So, you see, it was both something natural and artificial. It was nothing that I was fated to use. It was something I preferred to use.
Art vs Illustration
This distinction would have seemed pointless, if not absurd, to a Renaissance artist. Botticelli’s contemporaries admired his illustrations no less than his canvases – and no wonder. His drawings for the Divine Comedy were…well, Devine. To an artist of the sixteenth century, the scale and use of his work were irrelevant. Only the visual; quality mattered.
How damaging, how destructive, this culture gap between the art forms! It drove a supremely gifted Maxfield Parrish from the sublime illustrations of his books to the kitschenware of his paintings. It occasionally turns an Andre Francois away from his natural bent as a superb illustrator to the sometimes pretentious one of a gallery artist.
The unique advantage that an illustrator has over a painter is the illustrator has the gift of boundaries. A text limits an illustrator’s options, and this can be liberating, not restricting. “(Nothing) is harder to bear than complete freedom,” remarked to art critic E.H. Gombrich.
Be Human
Did you know that the human face is not symmetrical? One side is slightly (but imperceptibly) different from the other. That might be God’s way – or nature’s as you wish-to tell us something. Carpet weavers in the Near East know that. Their carpets are always slightly asymmetrical. A color or a pattern is never repeated exactly. That puts the human signature to the work. It’s not any different from the signature that you find in a drawing when a line is crooked or broken., or a blob of paint forms, but failing in just the right place. The “flaws” are what connects us to the work – that say “a person has made this.”
Tastes Change
The problem with being a freelancer in any of the creative fields is that taste changes, and with it styles. In our field, art directors and creative heads are always on the move – in one day, out the next – and the new guy wants to put a fresh stamp on the job by finding something and somebody fresh on the page. Not always the worst thing. After all, the point of any drawing is be looked at, and if it’s something you have seen before – and seen again and again – the ho-hum factor kicks in, and that most dreadful closure takes place:a page, barely danced at, is quickly turned. (I’ve even done that with one of my favorite artists: Steinberg. I once caught myself all to quickly flipping over a spread of his New Yorker drawings.. Been there, seen that, But Steinberg, it seems, feels the same way about his own work. He can be bored with his own stuff, so he’ll move to another look, another medium, always one step ahead of his audience.)
In 1884 the literary journal North American Review published a screed simply titled, Over-Illustration by Charles Tabor Congdon, a New York journalist. To read it is be brushed back by a swinging fist. Perhaps it should read by all illustrators as a provocation.
The essay offers criticism, or better yet, an attack – on the then growth of elaborately illustrated books and periodicals – presumably for adults and specifically fiction. In the late 19th Century, newly developed printing methods were facilitating an explosion of illustration and a became showcase for artists like Winslow Homer, Thomas Nast, Kate Greenaway, Howard Pyle, Gustave Doré and A.B. Frost, to name a few. What’s not to like? Plenty, according to Congdon. He names names and is not afraid to be harsh. He takes a big swipe at the illustrations of Shakespeare by John Boydell (shown below). He punches at William Hogarth and Doré as well. To me, those were irrefutable masters of the genre.
Below are a few quotes which spoke to me. Maybe you’ll get your ire up from others from the full essay. I welcome the attack as it provokes me to defend illustration. The genre will always feature positive and negative elements, and it’s instructive to to occasionally reassess its function.
Romeo & Juliet by John Boydell
The ordinary purpose of an illustration is to explain, to elucidate, to render clear what is obscure or abstruse; and this is doubtless the secondary object of the pictorial embellishment of works of literary character. Used in this way, it differs from pictures designed to enhance the sumptuousness of a volume, and to increase its typographical elegance and bibliographical value, which now appears to be the primary intention.
A picture might be made from Shakespeare’s description of the Cliff of Dover, but no picture could add to the sense that he awakens of its loftiness.
Not (William JMW) Turner himself could have added anything from his palette to the exquisite opening of the Fifth Book of “Paradise Lost…”
Most illustration has the demerits of miniature painting without its merits.
It is a remarkable fact that no painter has ever won enduring fame by working from writers, if we except the Bible, which is so much more than any book.
Charles Tabor Congdon
Half of illustration is impertinent. It is a suggestion from somebody who is perhaps less fitted than the reader to judge of what he shall admire the most. It is like the irritating comments that stupid folk scribble upon the margins of the novels. “Is not Jane lovely?” “Beautiful!” “How brave Charles is!”
A scene, an action, an event vividly described by a writer, ought of itself to make a picture in the mind of the reader, and each ought to make his own. They might differ in details, but these are of no importance if only the general spirit of the text be observed. But here the illustrator steps in and makes originality of impression impossible. He takes the work out of the hands of the writer, and dictates to the reader what he will see. No wonder they’re that writers are often ill-content with the illustration that has been vouchsafed for them. The picture can only be one man’s notion of what has been described. It is not a translation: it is not even a paraphrase; it is simply a commentary, wise or unwise, which, even if one had been needed, has not supplied the need: and any literature stamped with such characteristics can only enfeeble the mind and pervert the judgement and diminish the ability to read to any purpose.
We understand perfectly well the innocent pleasure that cheap pictures give: but we understand, also, the the indulgence in this taste may be carried too far and may work harm both to the illustrator and the illustrated. We are living in a time remarkable for a want of great writers in several departments of literature, and it may be questioned whether this unpleasant state of things may not be attributed, in part, at least, to the intellectual indolence that a habit of indulgence in mere picture-gazing may have originated and confirmed.
“People are always asking about my style,” says Steadman. “’Where did you get this style?’ I say, it’s not a style, it’s just a sequence of elements that I work with.”
This sometimes includes his “dirty water technique”, where the artist recycles the dirty water from the pot he cleans his paintbrushes in, splats it on to paper, and allows it to dry for several days before using it as a base to draw images. –from The Guardian, 11/25/2020
The celebrated English artist, J. M. William Turner (1775-1851) was not only painter; he was also an illustrator. He created images for a number of books of poetry and literature by such writers as Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and John Milton. Most successful perhaps, were his books by Samuel Rogers, which drew on his sketching practice and travel experience.
The esteemed art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) received one those books, Italy (1830) for his thirteenth birthday and later wrote, “There can be little doubt that the illustrations to Italy and the Poems first made Turner known to the vast multitudes of the English people. One of the most vivid recollections of my own boyhood is the wakening up of a new sense of an ideal world of beauty as I lingered over the lovely landscapes on these delightful pages … there are many whose recollections of these two volumes harmonize with mine, to whom they were an education, and who learned from them to admire Turner before they had actually seen one of his paintings”
While Turner’s illustrations were created with paint and pencil, they were all translated into engravings by other artists, as needed for publication back then. Turner was known for working closely with the engravers, asking for multiple proofs before approving. Turner knew what illustrators know: that the printed piece was the finished piece – the public saw the book, not his watercolors. Both Turner and the engraver of each image signed the illustrations.
Rome (Castle of St. Angelo)
All the illustrations were designed as vignettes– irregularly shaped art without hard borders, which was popular in that booming era of illustrated books. Vignettes, like letters, interact with the white of the page.
The author of The Engraved Work of JMW Turner, R.A. (1908), W.G. Rawlinson described Turner’s illustrations this way:
“Of all the artists who ever lived I think it is Turner who treated the vignette most exquisitely, and if it were necessary to find some particular reason for this, I would say that it may have been because there was nothing harsh or rigid in his genius, that forms and colours melted into each other tenderly in his dream world, and that his sense of gradation was the most delicate ever possessed by man. If you examine a vignette by Turner round its edges, if you can call them edges, you will perceive how exquisitely the objects come out of nothingness into being, and how cautiously, as a general rule, he will avoid anything like too much materialism in his treatment of them until he gets well towards the centre … Turner’s [vignettes] never seem to be shaped or put on the paper at all, but we feel as if a portion of the beautiful white surface had in some wonderful way begun to glow with the light of genius.” -from the Tate.org
Walter Molino (1915-97) was an illustrator of the worst possible circumstances. In image after image, and in precise frozen detail, he pictured mayhem and madness, and desperation and destruction. His illustrations are so extreme that they’re hard to look at, never mind think about. Most are examples of gratuitous violence, serving no purpose but for lurid entertainment. However, whether you love them or hate them, they are very successful in their intent—to shock. They are effective designs of gasping awe. By examining some of his less extreme images (believe it or not), we can learn from his strategies for success.
First comes concept—always. Molino had a vivid imagination. His stories he creates connect with viewers at a sensory level. Viewers identify with the subjects and situations, even though they were so over-the-top.
Molino’s style and substance match perfectly. His very realistic style and his cinematic way of picturing things are well connected with the storytelling. The flawless anatomy, extreme foreshortening, and difficult perspectives are masterfully done and are far more effective than a cartoony, or less vivid alternative.
The images present a clash of the ordinary and the extraordinary— of fact and fiction. In an ordinary town, on an ordinary day, a truly terrible or dramatic thing happens. This is not sci-fi or fantasy. We recognize these to be of our world, as we see it and fear it.
Finally, these are very illustrative. They speak to the power of drawing and painting. An illustrator should always be offering an alternative to photography and these “realistic” images do just that. The pictures are created from scratch and designed for maximum effect. The images are extreme reality. While Norman Rockwell created heightened “realistic” images of warmth and sentiment, Walter Molino created them for drama and destruction. Comparing their concepts, colors, and compositions can teach you a lot about illustration.
Further Observations
Often, I recommend that my students avoid placing their main characters in the center of the picture because it creates a dull image. Molina reminds us that no rule is universal. He centers things often and very effectively—by exploding the action from the middle of the picture with lots of diagonals.
This final image is an exception and more in line with my teachings. The artist hangs the sympathetic character from the top of the page, and we feel the space below by anticipating the fall. Viewers read all pages from left to right and but from top to bottom, and in this case the read is designed to heighten drama. We travel with our eyes from the balconey in the top left, down to the recuers in the bottom right.
Finally, notice too, that there is more than one kind of perspective at work here. In addition to traditional perspective, Molino uses “atmospheric perspective,” too. The forground character (the boy) has darker and lighter tones than the rescuers below. That helps our brain to understand that the boy is closer to us (and not simply a giant), and that those below are further away (rather than tiny people). The atmosphere has that effect on our perception, and replicating it in a picture helps communicate distances clearly.
In 1940 the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York staged an unusual competition exhibition – The Artist as Reporter. It was co-sponsored by the soon-to-debut PM newspaper as “a search for artists who could report the news with brush and pen.” A call for entries went out to 10,000 artists in New York and beyond, and the best entries were to be selected by a jury of distinguished artists including John Sloan and William Gropper. $1750.00 dollars in prizes were offered ($30,813.00 in today’s dollars) including one prize was chosen by visitors to the exhibition.
In the press release, Nelson A. Rockefeller, president of the Museum of Modern Art, said in announcing the competition, “The Museum of Modern Art is always eager to encourage new avenues of opportunity for the American artist. That is why we are delighted to cooperate in this competition, which promises to open up new possibilities for the artist and to expand the field of journalistic art. In this connection it is interesting to recall that the work of Winslow Homer, one of our greatest artists, first came prominantly to public notice when he was a pictorial artist for Harper’s Weekly. And the tradion of journalistic art (which one gave employment to hundreds of artists) has associated with it the names of such outstanding American artists as George Liks, William J. Glackens and John Sloan.”
Call for Entry
In the call for entries, Journalistic Art is defined:
“What is Journalistic Art? It may be a drawing or painting of some violent or dramatic action, a rescue at a fire, a strike scene, a police raid, a prize fight. And certainly the whole world of sports. Or it may be a sketch of faces in the news: well-known faces of politicians, criminals, attorneys, theatre people; or of unknown faces, of people the news affects – wives waiting at a mine rescue, men on a picket line, children on the impatient line for “Pinocchio.”
Or a picture could be a record of contemporary scenes that will one day spell 1940: workman patching the Trylon at the World’s Fair; a man selling “Confucious Say” handbills on Broadway. It could be, too, a purely descriptive picture of a parade, a horse-race, a crowd in the bleachers.
These then would be journalistic pictures, with the Artist as Reporter. And there are many others. The news-minded artist will discover them for himself.”
1,926 entries came in for the competition (1,463 from New York) and approximately 200 were chosen for the show. Familiar names (to me) among the included artists were artists Ben Shahn, Philip Guston and Reginald Marsh along with New Yorker magazine cover artists Arthur Getz and Garrett Price. Abraham Jaffee (better known as Al Jaffee of MAD Magazine fame) was also in the show, along with Richard Scarry, the legendary children’s book artist (the creator of Busytown).
There was a descent number of women in the exhibition as well, for the time: Nan Lurie, Elizabeth Olds, Lisa Rhanna, Wilma Riley, Doris Rosenthal, Julia Rogers, Georgette Seabrooks, Bernarda Byson Shahn, Helen R. Stoller and Sylvia Wald.
Opening Night
PM went on to be a very influential but short-lived newspaper. The very visual paper featured over 400 comics by Dr. Seuss, and also a comic strip (Barnaby) by Crockett Johnson, who later wrote Harold and The Purple Crayon. Another contributing artist was the abstract expressionist, Ad Reinhardt. Among the many photographers who published were Margaret Bourke-White and Arthur Felig – better known as “Weegee”.
More information can be found at the MoMA website.
Further Observation
At the end of the Call for Entries comes this curious addition: “P.M. doubts that staff jobs with salaries is the best way to employ artists. Rather it believes in finding and knowing 30-40 artist whom it may call on.”
I wonder if the participating artist would agree with that.
“I remember a story that my father used to tell of a traveller in 13th-century France who met three men wheeling wheelbarrows. He asked in what work they were engaged and he received from them the following three answers:
The first said, “I toil from sunup to sundown and all I receive for my pains is a few francs a day. ”
The second said, “I’m glad enough to wheel this wheelbarrow for I have been out of work for many months and I have a family to support.”
The third said, “I am building Chartres Cathedral.”
-from The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn, 1957, Harvard University Press
Picture It 