"Tom, Jack and Harry" - or - Three Freds and a Len Beats a "Royal Flush"

I wish I had a button I could hand out to every artist who feels helpless about the relentless erosion of our profession. It would say "Adapt or Die"Half a century ago, a lot of illustrators found themselves in the same situation. It must have felt a bit like watching a slow-motion train wreck. The problem being, you're on the train. The train is your career.This is the story of three artists who didn't need a button to remind them of the law...

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The Fine Art of after Illustration

Here's a pretty typical weekly issue of the Saturday Evening Post from 1954. It's 170 pages long (not including covers) and 102 of those pages utilize illustration in some capacity. I have not included single panel gag cartoons (of which there are many) in this total; only story art pages, full page or double page ads, ads that use photography as their main art but include illustration for products or other insets or as supplementary design elements,...

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Stories from the End of "The Last Golden Age of Illustration"

Some time ago I presented the following minutes of a 1936 Society of Illustrators meeting. My friend Murray Tinkelman, Director of the MFA Illustration program at Hartford University, graciously sent this along - thanks again, Murray! Minutes of a 1936 Society of Illustrators Meeting"From $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 a year is being paid to illustrators by these ten mags:SEP, Collier's, Liberty, Cosmo, American Mag, Good House, Ladies HJ, McCalls, Womans...

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Marvin Friedman: "You had to do what you had to do to get the work."

Last week we looked at a few examples of some pretty incredible financial scenarios for illustrators in the first half of the 20th century. In broad terms, it seems fairly evident that the profession of illustration was - at least potentially - an extremely lucrative field for many artists who worked at the upper levels of the business during those years. Circumstances seem to have changed dramatically as the 1950s drew to a close.Below, a piece...

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