THE ANVIL OF ART

Young Norman Rockwell dreamed of the day he would paint as well as his idol, the great illustrator J.C. Leyendecker. Rockwell spied on Leyen...

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part four

Last year I described the life of Ivor Hele, the great Australian war illustrator. Hele painted front line combat in Africa, the Middle Eas...

HOW MANY LINES DOES IT TAKE TO DRAW A BLUE SKY?

How would you draw the sky if your only tool was a black line? Outline a few fluffy clouds perhaps? Add some cross hatching at the horizon? ...

I JUST COULDN'T HELP IT

I usually try to limit myself to updating this blog once a week. However, I could not let the 400th birthday of Rembrandt-- one of my favori...

ALBERT DORNE

Albert Dorne had a wretched childhood. He was born in the slums of New York and grew up in poverty, suffering from tuberculosis, malnutritio...

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part three

Eugene von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) was a small, quiet man who worked the night shift at a bakery outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He and h...

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part two

Before Hollywood began making pictures that moved and talked, illustrators who created the still pictures for popular magazines were nation...