Headless Portraits from the Victorian Era

We have a lot of photos with the heads cut off in our family albums but nothing like these found on Flavorwire!

Go to Flavorwire and see them all!

Illustrative Cartoonist, Jack Davis

This won't take  long because all I have to do is gush like a smitten fan about my favorite cartoonist, Jack Davis.

You won't have any trouble identifying his work from Mad magazine, magazine ads, Raid television commercials, famous movie posters, album covers and sports cartoons, especially for his Alma mater, the University of Georgia. Many bloggers have published thorough and excellent biographies of Jack and I have published those links below so do what I did, click through and enjoy!

"About Jack Davis" Crazycampsongs.com

"The One, the Only... Jack Davis!" DrewFriedman.com

Jack Davis (Cartoonist) Wikipedia

 

Evidence of the Human Hand

There certainly are a lot of beautiful, realistic illustrations being produced today, especially in Fantasy and Science Fiction illustration. The anatomy is correct, the skin is perfect, the shadows and color are convincing. Just look at a Spectrum publication, all of that fantastic art is the result of much hard work and planning by award-winning illustrators. The pictures are photographic in appearance, some are the result of photographs and computers.

As for my tastes I am drawn to artwork that shows evidence of the human hand. I like to see some raw pencil shining through watercolor or some crooked ink lines or an unintended splotch of paint. The handmade art seems more personal to me and I find that sort of thing very comforting to look at. Often, if a picture is too perfect, I give it a quick look but my eyes tend to move on in search of another subject.

Edward Ardizzone

Joseph Munaini

Ronald Searle

Rowland Emett

A Sketchbook is a Beautiful Thing

Yes, a sketchbook is a beautiful thing and I don't just mean "aesthetically". As a matter of fact, I don't mean "aesthetically" at all! You've probably seen fantastic, inhumanly good sketchbook pages on blogs out there. You can search the phrase "my sketchbook" and you'll find drawings that make you want to give up altogether because they are so fantastic, but please, if you take my advice about anything at all, please don't be intimidated by anyone.

I used to feel put upon to make every page in a sketchbook interesting and "artistic" in case someone looked inside my sketchbook and saw some wonky-looking drawings. Now I keep sketchbooks going for myself, they are just notepads filled with "notes" to myself. Mine have many, hideous, awful drawings where the eyes aren't even or the ears on a person are too low or (this is a big problem with my sketches) I don't give my faces nostrils! So the people I made on paper are going to suffocate!

Keep a book going, it's awfully entertaining. You'll find that you like waiting in line because you can play in your little sketchbook. You can practice drawing people in the grocery store, in church, at the school board meetings (it definitely makes those more tolerable). I made a deposit at our bank one day and the teller smiled and showed me the picture I had drawn on the deposit slip without thinking. Now she asks me if I have any new sketches to show her when I go there.

Your sketchbook can be anything. It can be something you bought at the art store that says "Sketchbook" on it or a single subject spiral notebook from Walmart. When I was in college I was so broke (how broke were you?) I was so broke that I made my own sketchbooks out of computer paper. I took an old book apart and used it as a pattern to make sketchbooks... they were hideous! I was surprized lately when one of my sons found one of the old books and told me how much they meant to him sentimentally and how cool he thought they were.

Get something you are not afraid to mess up and mess it up! Then get another, and another. You'll improve, you really will! I need to mess up many more too. I remember when I had 1 or 2 sketchbooks and I could never imagine filling them up.

My Tiny Sketchbooks

If space or anonymity are an issue you can carry a very small sketchbook. I made the little sketchbooks below to make secretive little sketches then to easily pocket the sketchbook. The flip side of possibly eluding attention is getting attention you don't want because, let's face it, a full grown adult passionately sketching in a book so small looks like a character from Alice in Wonderland. Children are bewildered by the little books!

Haunted England

Below are a pencil sketch and a finished "Haunted House" for a homeowner in England.  The picture has Marley's Ghost, Sweeny Todd, the Baskerville Hound and other famous,scary personages from Britain.

From the Dust Returned

A few years ago I was commissioned to make an illustration of the Elliot home from Ray Bradbury's From the Dust Returned, it was a real treat! Below are some of the inspirational sketches I made to work up to the painting and a shot of the finished piece. The person I made the picture for gave me a lot of great suggestions that I worked into the painting that really improved the piece.  He was a great natural art director and fellow Ray Bradbury fan! The illustration was done in watercolor and ink.

Faces from the Past

These are photos of the faces of men my father worked with in the 1950s.  I discovered a whole deck of these when I went through some of his things this past year.  I immediately thought that they wouldn't belong in 2012. Each face is distinct with unique lines that can be read like a story.
It seems that the faces around me now are mostly smooth and unchallenged, maybe some lines around the eyes and forehead.
Norman Rockwell explained, in Arthur Guptill's book Norman Rockwell: Illustrator, that his rural neighbors made good models because they were proud of who they were and would "die before trying to be like anyone else", and therefore have an "individuality unmarred by attempts at imitation".  I like that phrase.
I love what he says about city folks, "City people, on the other hand, are ridden by all sorts of strange inhibitions about appearance and tend thereby to lose their distinctiveness".
I feel convicted. I live in a small city but I believe the unceasing campaigns by internet, television and magazine whip us into a homogeneous mixture wherein unique, naive  faces with character are hard to find.





Photos copyright 2013 by John Randall York

  

Drawing in Church

I know, I know, I should be paying attention but sometimes it's easy to sketch people around you in church. Often you are provided with paper and a ballpoint pen is never far away.  The sketches are always small and fast but they are fun to look at later. I mostly have sketches of the backs of heads!

The Artist's Guide to Sketching

In the early 1990s I was working for a grocery company making many hand drawn, cut and painted signs using fomecore board , Crayola markers (off of the shelf) , giant Pilot sign markers and Design Master floral spray paint. I routinely travelled to about 15 different stores with a case of fomeboard and my bag of markers and made whatever signs each store needed for displays and promotions. You could tell when I was in a store by the smell of the markers and spraypaint!

One day, during a lunch break, I stopped at a yard sale and some painter was selling many nice art books.  One that attracted me was The Artist's Guide to Sketching by James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade and what a prize it turned out to be!  I had never heard of either artist but their generous information and practical instruction allowed me to learn things that had seemed out of my reach prior to that. I started carrying a sketchbook all of the time and enjoying the world in  new way. Later I was introduced to the Dinotopian art of James Gurney and to the nostalgic images of Thomas Kinkade.
Now James Gurney carries on his great tradition of learning and sharing n his wonderful blog, GurneyJourney.

Clown White

Wow! What do they put in "Clown White"?
The picture below is of me about 30 years ago. The picture below that is me today with the same can of Clown White I used in the early picture. It still smells the same too! I love grease paint!

Fred Banbury

When I was a kid I happened to spot a copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful in a downtown news stand. I was struck by the creepy, gloomy haunted house on the cover with Alfred Hitchcok's likeness on it. Eventually I checked the book out from the library and was 
mesmerized by the moody, scary, suspenseful illustrations throughout the book. The artist was Fred Banbury. Mr. Banbury seems to be most known for his artwork in the Paddington Bear children's books but I was forever influenced by his spooky subjects done in watercolor washes and pen & ink with heavy, black pencil textures and stark highlights in chalk or white pencil.

A Recent Haunted House

 Here is a recent house I "haunted" for some friendly folks in Pennsylvania. They furnished me with some pictures of the farm house taken with their iPhone and provided me with a list of creatures and items  they  wanted to be in the painting, it was a fun assignment. This is watercolor on watercolor paper.

A Winter Halloween Tree

I get a lot of inspiration from Ray Bradbury's short stories and books

A Winter Halloween Tree

The Halloween Tree

Multicolored Halloween Tree

All 3 Images Copyright 2013 by John Randall York

Crowns of the Three Wise Men

The crowns on the left were my first successful giftware design. They were produced by Faroy, a company in Houston, Texas. I wanted to design Christmas decorations that people would collect and cherish.

I was proud of these because they sold as a set and were Christmas tree ornaments. This is a scan from a 1990 Neiman Marcus catalog that featured them.

The crowns below were Limoges boxes I designed, they were supposed to be famous crowns of great kingdoms. I liked the fact they were produced as a collectible group of three and I thought of them as Christmas decorations, as the crowns of the "Three Kings". 

                               

Christmas Giftware

I  used to spend a lot of time contacting giftware companies and selling my designs. These little pictures are from a sketchbook I kept for a particular client. I would sketch several ideas and she would, sort of, shop from the sketches and focus on what she wanted to develope.
The Santas in the sketch didn't go very far but the tiny elves eventually became Limoges porcelain boxes that sold very well.

 

Christmas Ghost Stories

ANTON PIECK

Anton Pieck was a Dutch illustrator who lived from 1895 to 1987. Pieck made some beautiful illustrations for Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol". His work is described as "nostalgic" and "fairytale-like".  He was also responsible for designing most of the fairytale park Efteling in Kaatsheuvel, the largest  theme park in the Netherlands.

The Old Chilton House

 My name is John Randall York. I'm a an artist and illustrator.  If you get to know me you'll see how much I love "Haunted Houses", ghost stories and old fairytale illustrations from the 1950s and 1960s especially.

 In September I stretched a pretty big canvas (5 x 8 feet) and began painting a "Haunted Dream Home". That's a picture of it on the left, "The Old Chilton House".

I didn't have a plan in mind besides the thought of a creepy haunted mansion so for a couple of monthes I built my haunted house in oil!  It was a real treat and I truly missed hanging out at the Old Chilton House when I finished.  I am planning to make one a little larger now, either 5 1/2 x 10 or 12 feet horizontal or perhaps a 5 by 9 (or 10) ft vertical!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I hope you have a great Christmas and Holiday season!

Book Announcement

Stone Garden Publishing has extended and offer to publish a book that I will write and illustrate.