Leif Peng: An Illustrator You Should Know?

Well, I dunno. The jury's still out on that.But Thomas James, the genius behind Escape from Illustration Island, one of the best illustration resources on the Net, seems to think so. Thomas interviewed me recently for his excellent, ongoing EFII podcast series. If you haven't had enough of my blather here on Today's Inspiration (or if you're just curious to hear what I sound like) then go on over to Escape from Illustration Island and click the...

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Harry Beckhoff: An Illustrator You Should Know

I was going to show some work by David Grove today, but when Howard Chaykin leaves a comment and asks for Harry Beckhoff, what choice do I have? I've been following this guy since I first read Cody Starbuck at age 14 in an old 'ground-level' comic called Star*Reach. But back to Beckhoff. Howard is absolutely correct that he is an illustrator you should know.Above, a Beckhoff illustration from a 1936 Collier's magazine, courtesy of Heritage Auctions....

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Bob Abbett: An Illustrator You Should Know

Here's a crazy concept for a story: What if a black man became president of the United States? Oh, how absurd! But that's exactly what Irving Wallace proposed back in 1964 with his book, "The Man."When I discovered this story in a recently acquired volume of Reader's Digest Condensed Books I couldn't resist including it this week. Not only because it just seemed too, too perfect that this should fall into my hands during Black History Month.........

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Ted CoConis: An Illustrator You Should Know

In one of our correspondences, David Blossom's son Peter wrote, "Back when we were growing up all the area artists knew each other and seemed, to us kids, to have a real social connection and (at least in our case) used each other as models. Ted CoConis (do you know his work? If you don't, you'd surely recognize it) was a close neighbor and my father used him in a number of illustrations and I used to model for Ted a lot as a child."When I began...

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David Blossom: An Illustrator You Should Know

Last week's guest series by Tom Watson on his teacher and friend, Bob Foster, was certainly very well received. Many readers commented that there are so many great illustrators of the mid-century who are (too often) overlooked. As much as it has been the mission of Today's Inspiration to showcase the giants of the industry, its even more important to me that you discover all the other great illustrators who are, perhaps, less well known. One...

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Bob Foster: "... a gentleman (with) personal high standards of integrity, as a teacher and a friend."

By Tom Watson Part 5Bob explained to me an amusing account of how he was able to read the time consuming manuscripts of stories to be illustrated and still meet his deadlines. He explained that he didn’t read them, instead he hired prostitutes to come to his apartment / studio, who would read to him while he painted (I imagine at perhaps a lower rate than their normal fee).He said they had time during the day, since their normal working hours were...

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