Without a doubt the most popular blog so far has been my post on the great illustrator Coby Whitmore. So here are a bunch more scans from my huge tearsheet collection of his work.
In the few conversations I've had with Bob McGinnis, he always talks about Coby as one of his biggest influences from the time. Likewise with Joe Bowler, Whitmore's onetime assistant. I'm sure if you talked with more illustrators from that era, many of them would also say the same thing. While Coby Whitmore didn't have the versatility to handle a number of story types like Al Parker, as the boy-girl romance king, he remains unchallenged.
I've been unplugged the last week since my computer died and I had to replace it. Hopefully I'll have a couple more posts following quickly after this one.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vozart/sets/72157627118206312/
Coby's work is genuine time capsule material. Very period specific, especially when one notices the Liz Taylor and Audrey Hepburn fashions and hairstyles. I'm old enough to remember the waning days of illustrated love prose in women's magazines which my mom used to read. I kind of miss that. Artists had more ways of reaching an audience in those days, although their work remained anonymous to the general public much like that of early comic book illustrators.
ReplyDeleteGod, what I wouldn't give for a complete visual archive of all of these great illustrators and their works: Coby Whitmore, Bob McGinnis, Joe Bowler, Mitchell Hooks, Jon Whitcomb, Al Parker, Ernest Chiriaka, Bernie Fuchs, Robert Harris, and so many others who defined romance and the feminine form for a generation. The truly bittersweet aspect to this, is that all of those lovely women have since passed on. Most are likely in their 80s and 90s as is the case with my mother, so it's more like viewing the contents of a time capsule from an era frozen in time long ago. I truly wish that contemporary artists would portray today's young ladies the way these talented gentlemen once did during their lifetimes!
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