Landscape Painting by Christopher Davis

Two weeks ago I was way up north, nearly an hour's drive above Manitoulin Island, on my summer vacation with a group of friends who are also artists. We spent a week up there at a camp in a tiny community called Whitefish Falls, painting landscapes 'en plein air.'

 I brought along the two Grumbacher Library 'How to Paint..." books I mentioned a little while ago, when we looked at the work of Albert Pucci here on Today's Inspiration.


 

Pucci was not the only artist featured in those two volumes... there are also quite a few pages devoted to artwork and instruction from an artist named Christopher Davis. Since landscape painting is very much on my mind at the moment, I thought maybe I'd share some of Davis' work from those Grumbacher books with you this week.

 

The book explains how these paintings were achieved with a limited colour palette. I found it reassuring that our instructor up at Whitefish Falls, Richard Edwards, taught us to use exactly these same limited colour palettes when we did our paintings each day.

 

Over the last couple of years, I've been very inspired to watch the progress of a couple of friends, Michael Cole Manley and William Wray, both of whom have been doing some really fabulous painting - often landscapes. (I strongly encourage you to click through the links and have a look at their work!)

Both these gentlemen have given me some excellent advice about how to learn to paint landscapes.  Just the other day Bill wrote about the importance of doing many small sketches before actually beginning to paint the subject, and that advice is confirmed and demonstrated beautifully by Davis in his Grumbacher lessons:


 





Here are a few more pieces by Davis... describing how to paint specific elements within various landscape and seascape settings.

Whew!  Maybe some day I'll learn to be this good!  Tomorrow we'll look at one of Davis' step-by-step demonstrations and some examples of his finished paintings from the two Grumbacher books.
Excerpted from The Art of Seascape Painting and The Art of Landscape Painting, © 1965, '66 M. Grumbacher Inc.
And in case you're at all curious, here's a link to my own meager offerings from my trip up north.  

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Charlie Allen's final CAWS ~ Part 3

* Although Charlie intended this to be one long post, I've split it into three parts and presented one part each day this week. This is the concluding installment ~ Leif


Finally, a couple of Gallo color ads, again I believe, slated for Sunday newspaper distribution.  They may have been for magazines.



These both display Gallo's penchant for product up front and center... and the art set up and photographed with and through wine glasses and bottles.



Foote-Cone was the agency, I believe, and the art suffered, to put it mildly.  But, hey....we're selling wine here, aren't we?

Finally, finally... I'll include three Olympic Club February covers.  Their bi-monthly magazine, and on each, a portrait of the new year's next president.  The lady illustrated was the very first woman president in the club's long history!



The original scan, as printed on the magazine, was strange... quite grainy.  Evidently the pixels didn't get along with the texture of the charcoal drawing.  The older two covers were printed in the regular 120 line screen.





Finally, finally, finally... a couple of State Fund 'local office' brochures in ink line and one color.



These would have looked less hard and mechanical had they been done in charcoal pencil.



I believe in this case I was trying to vary the style from what I'd been doing before.



Anyway, none of these are exceptional... just the workaday world of this old San Francisco illustrator. Enough old Allen ads that they could make a one-shot CAWS.  I label them 'also rans'... but it really is just some neglected stuff from way back.  



A couple not found earlier, a couple of 'rejects' that I'm willing to expose for some reason (hopefully to a forgiving bunch) and maybe a repeat (I just can't remember).



I really did have the advantage of variety in my assignments... and it kept me alive and interested.

Enough of this. Cheers ~ Chas.

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Charlie Allen's final CAWS ~ Part 2

* Although Charlie intended this to be one long post, I'm splitting it into three parts and will present one part each day for the rest of this week. ~ Leif


Following... a couple of Chevrolet ads definitely not seen on previous CAWS.  The first, a B&W full page news ad... ice boat sailing on a frozen Minnesota lake.  My idea of it anyway, not having witnessed the sport.  



My 'Canadian' daughter lives in similar winter conditions in Ontario where 20 to 30 degrees below zero are normal temps in January.  



The second Chevrolet example, a color magazine ad, is one I've kept under cover for years.  A 1957 Chevrolet sedan in the improbable moment of passing an oncoming tour bus, whose passengers are all admiring the Chevrolet in the mili-seconds of visual contact!  



The car is an unfortunate color of yellow green.  



To top it off, the figures in the car were the last to be completed, and therefore the most rushed.  Not my favorite Chevy ad.



After Chevy, we go to the Walker Deluxe whiskey ad... I'm pretty sure scheduled for a Sunday supplement ad in newspapers. Scanned in two parts, and I believe from the late 50's, this could be a repeat.  



The  characters in this case had to be so 'cool'...





... reminding us that ads and human nature never really change.  



I think it's called snob appeal.  

* Concluded tomorrow

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Charlie Allen's final CAWS ~ Part 1

* Although Charlie intended this to be one long post, I'm splitting it into three parts and will present one part each day for the rest of this week. ~ Leif


"SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES, HAVING YOU TO TALK WITH...."


There we go again....back to songs and nostalgia. A great tune nevertheless....going back to Guy Lombardo and others. By the way, I've no doubt inflicted a word-study on 'nostalgia' before on the viewers....but hang in, cats! Age deserves tolerance, or so I'm told, and where else can we get a brief art and English lesson so conveniently? From the ancient Greek, 'nost' means 'a return' or 'to return'. In ancient Greek it means 'pain'. A 'painful return'. Not the way we think of 'nostalgia' is it? Think about it though... if it's a happy memory, you can't go back and and repeat it. If it's an unhappy memory, you can't go back and fix or change it. So much for language lessons! But.... each one of the old proofs has a lesson or two to offer.

This CAWS is an eclectic group... I told Leif they could be called 'also-rans'.  Mostly from the 50's.  Some, I just didn't want to show anyone... but maybe I've mellowed or softened up.  There may be a repeat or two, not sure, and a couple of ads overlooked in the overloaded proof drawer.  Nothing outstanding... that's a given.

The first is one of the combo ads for Mercury...



... whereby the car art was generated in Detroit...



... and I was to add figures in a different, more contemporary style.  



A strange concept, and the ads look that way.

The second (a repeat?), one of our intrepid 'lady of steel' ads.  



This time standing bravely on a freeway shoulder in high heels, admiring a luminous steel highway marker. What a gal! 



Next, a PG&E line ad from the consumer series in the 50's.  Many have been posted on earlier CAWS's.

 

For some reason, this one escaped me... I don't think I liked the look of the mom.  Or maybe the ball is too large for such a young baby... whatever.



After that, a Koch Luggage ad showing an instrument case designed for the military, strong enough to be dropped by parachute.  



Of interest... the B-36... a postwar bomber oddity.  A very large, six engined pusher with added outboard jet pods.  



I saw one in the air in the late 40's or early 50's....a sight and a sound to behold.

* Continued tomorrow

In Memory of Charlie Allen (1922 - 2011)

I'm returning from my summer vacation 'off the grid' with some sad news: Charlie Allen passed away on July 11.



If you've followed Today's Inspiration for some time you'll remember Charlie. He and his career as a West Coast illustrator were first the subject of a week-long profile in September 2007. In that first post, Tom Watson wrote, "Charlie Allen was one of the top illustrators in S.F., when I started my career in '63. His reputation was huge for his incredible craftsmanship and draftsmanship. His pen and ink drawings were unsurpassed by anyone in the business."



After that week concluded, Charlie continued to correspond with me and quickly became a valuable resource of information and a generous contributor of artwork scans from his clipping files. He and I also shared many personal anecdotes and he frequently gave me the benefit of his advice on matters both personal and professional - something I am most grateful for.



After several months of regular correspondence, I proposed to Charlie that we start a blog where he could go into greater detail about the wealth of old artwork scans from the various periods of his career that he had been sending me privately. At first Charlie was skeptical, saying he could hardly manage the technology of scanning and emailing, let alone how to blog. But when I suggested he simply send everything to me to assemble and post, Charlie agreed to give it a shot. Charlie Allen's Blog debuted on July 1, 2008 and ran weekly instalments through December 2009.



During that time, Charlie continued to correspond with me privately on many topics and very generously shared countless scans of artwork by mid-century greats like Robert Fawcett, Al Parker, Bernie Fuchs and many, many others that would eventually end up being presented on Today's Inspiration. Charlie's descriptions of his own work were often maddeningly abbreviated - he simply was not one to brag.  But he was never short on praise for the greats of the mid-century whom he admired.   Even after Charlie Allen's Blog concluded its run, Charlie regularly provided insightful comments to the posts I wrote for TI.



I had the utmost respect for Charlie. Although our relationship was through correspondence only he was a great friend, a steadfast supporter and a mentor to me in many ways. His honesty, common sense, and great advice - always based on his personal and professional experience - affected me profoundly. I will miss him very much.


(Charlie in 1946 and in 2008)

Today I'd like to re-present the first of that week-long series of posts on Charlie's career to begin. As this week progresses, I'll share one final batch of artwork Charlie sent to me which was never previously posted... "The Final CAWS" as he liked to call it. Charlie was, as they say, "a man of few words," and would not want a long a sentimental memorial from me. So, instead, I'll let his artwork do the talking. I think Charlie would like that. As he often wrote in his posts and his emails; "Eee-nough!"

"From the git-go I enjoyed drawing."
(Originally presented on July 2, 2011)

"I was born in 1922 (85 this year) in Fresno, CA", writes Charles Allen. "From the git-go I enjoyed drawing. A couple of efforts, at age 9 when I was fascinated by comic strip artists, are enclosed."


"Like Chet Patterson of P&H (whom you've covered recently) I enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1942 while in college. Served for three and a half years as a pilot during WWII...but unlike Chet, shot down no enemy aircraft. Hard to do in an unarmed PBY Catalina in an air-sea rescue group, Pacific theatre. Main accomplishment, surviving."


"Returned home in 1946, finished college, got married, worked as an ad illustrator for the Fresno Bee, a McClatchy newspaper. Attended Art Center College in L.A. for a year, got a job in 1948 at Patterson & Hall in San Francisco as an illustrator, at the princely salary of $275 per month. In those days, a new car ran about $1,200 and a new home, $10,000 to $12,000, so all was in proportion."


"I learned all along the line...high school, college, Art Center, an ad agency job during college, the newspaper job, and a crash course at P&H in San Francisco, where competition with 'the best in the west' was very, very real. The 'crash course' was actually learning on the job...and in between jobs, practicing on samples. Busy times."


"One of the many reasons I decided to remain in the west with advertising illustration, instead of heading east and editorial illustration [was that] there were so many good illustrators back there, all wanting to do editorial. Advertising actually paid better, and if you could stand the deadlines and pace, almost as much fun. Well, sometimes as much!"


Patterson & Hall was a great learning place and launching pad. I worked for the first ten years at P&H offices in San Francisco, then moved out to my small home studio, mainly to avoid the two or more hours of commute each day."


"Over a roughly 45 year career, about two thirds of my work came through Patterson & Hall, the rest freelance, but P&H was always a loyal sales, support and promotional group over those years."


"I did no editorial or story commissions.....all corporate ads from ad agencies or direct with the company. I was impressed by all the good illustrators and tried to 'think' like Al Parker, Rockwell, Jon Whitcomb, Austin Briggs, etc. Found it way too tiring, and with short deadlines, just did what came naturally. That way you develop a style all your own."

* All of today's images can be found in my Charlie Allen Flickr set.

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