That Man From Ventura

A Norman Mallory self-portrait and a watercolor of his sweet wife Mary's garden.

  For this week I thought I would do a dual post of some of the recent paintings that I've been working on and also some of the work of my friend Norman Mallory, who's been a great inspiration and better friend over the past few years. I first met Norman when he wrote to me about the Robert Fawcett illustrations I had on my website. Discovering we lived close to each other, we decided to get together. "You met this guy on the internet- what if he is a psycho killer? " asked my lovely wife. Norman's wife was even more caustic: "What if this guy is a Bushy?"

Portraits of Neil Gaiman and Miles Davis

 Well, Norman was no psycho killer, though like all good artists he is a bit mad. And no one has ever accused me of being a Republican, let alone a Bush supporter. So we hit it off fine. Here are just of a few of the goodies that Mr. Mallory has turned out recently. You can see a ton more of his work at:http://www.flickr.com/photos/7511675@N06/

Pencil drawing of Ralph Steadman and watercolor of Irish coast

   Norman was gracious enough to give me lots of helping (for free) editing the Retrowood material and offering me lots of sage advice on that project. What really astounds me are Norman's portraits and his command of the water color media. His self portraits would probably get a second look from Rembrandt. He's motivated me to try my hand at a couple which I've included below. I am also an influence on Norman as he has recently started painting some cat portraits, and they do have a definite psychotic look to them.

A couple of my kitty cat pictures, a couple self-portraits, and a self-indulgent pinup

Days at Charlton

Mike Vosburg Interview

CS: Please tell us something of your life before Charlton. Things like where
and when you were born, early comics you read, artistic aspirations…

I read all kinds of comics as a kid. There weren’t a lot of superhero titles other than Superman,
Batman and Wonderwoman when I was growing up. There were lots of westerns, funny animal books, Classic Illustrated (my favorites) and lots of mystery comics. These especially appealed to me.

I was never very interested in science fiction, so most of the outer space monster stuff and the majority of the super hero comics that starting appearing in the 60’s had little appeal for me. If I liked the artists, I’d follow the strip, but the stories themselves had little appeal.

After I was about 13 or 14 I don’t think I ever read my comics, certainly none of the Marvel stuff which truly bored me. I was much more interested in reading books. For me comics were essentially a visual medium, so I loved looking at the illustrations and emulating them.

My favorites artists were Joe Kubert, Russ Manning, Al Williamson and Kurt Shaffenberger in comics and Leonard Starr and Hal Foster in the newspapers. Steve Ditko was the Charlton artist who really appealed to me. I loved his otherworldliness.

CS: Can you remember your first Charlton comic? Any particular titles,
characters or series that stand out in your memory?

My first Charlton story was “The Arena of Lost Souls.” I was working for DC or Marvel at the time and there kept me fairly busy pencilling, but they never let me ink the work.

Al Milgrom, (who very kindly always let me stay at his place when I was in NYC) and I took the train up to Connecticut to meet with Nick Cuti, who was the editor then. I’ve worked with Nick since on a few animation jobs here in LA...always a great guy. We also met George Wildman who looked over our work. I think we both got a couple scripts to work on. The attraction for me was that I could ink the work myself.

Looking back on my beginnings in comics I always had good people inking my work, but the end result was always so foreign from what I was attempting that I can never look at it enthusiastically. When I look at the work I inked myself I see a completely different artist. When I failed, I failed utterly because there was no seasoned inker to correct my mistakes. But I found that when I inked my work I took the pencils to another level. I pretty much knew what I wanted in terms of style, but lacked the drawing skills and technical tricks to get there. Because I wasn’t finishing the majority of my work, I wasn’t aware of the problems I was causing for the inker...once I had to do the work myself I had a much better understanding of how to resolve the problems.

As a result, the Charlton stories I did and the Star*Reach stories were my favorite stuff from that period of my career.

CS: At the time of your work for Charlton, George Wildman was the editor.
Can you describe your contact with him and any other persons associated with
the Charlton outfit?

MV:

I did a total of four horror stories, two romance stories and two covers and three separate one page fillers. I also did the one war story. I was (and still am) very anti-war and not very enthused about doing the war story. I think Nick asked me to do it as a favor. I wound up doing the entire job with swipes from Joe Kubert’s Sgt. Rock stuff, so at least it had some appeal.

Ironically, the most financially successful comicbook I’ve been connected with is G.I. Joe. When people joke with me about drawing pornography because of my Lori Lovecraft stories, which are truly innocent and inoffensive, I always like to point out that the only REAL pornography I’ve worked on is GI Joe.

The horror stories were always great. The first was  “The Arena of Lost Souls” about a doomed businessman (the character was actually a swipe from Mary Perkin’s agent from the Leonard Starr strip) who tries to cheat the devil in a fight to the death. He picks out the puniest guy in the place. As they fight a full moon rises...of course the guy is a werewolf. Where the art works, it really works. Where it doesn’t, it’s really amateurish.

In “A Nice Place to Die” an old couple saps the life from a worthless young couple. (Ghostly Haunts #39.) My favorite was in Ghost Manor #23, “It’s a Gas”, written by Nick, about a young girl and a con man named Calabah Quint. I think Nick wanted to do more stories with the character, but nothing ever happened.

The last horror job was certainly my best effort. I remember the late Grass Green gave a me a hand lettering the job and ghosting some of the pencils...and the story was appropriately titled  “The Grass is Always Greener.” (Creepy Things #3)

When I was doing the romance stuff I was very much influenced by Frazetta’s “Untamed Love” stories and a Spanish cartoonist named Carlos Jimenez (Dani Futoro and Delta 99), a more unlikely combination you couldn’t imagine. The Frazetta stuff was so rendered and realistic and Jiminez's work was always so cartoony and stylized.

 I really enjoyed drawing pretty girls, so the romance stuff was always fun to do. My first samples for comics were actually romance pages I showed up at DC to Vinnie Colletta....but that’s another story. The one painted cover I did was perhaps the only painted cover I ever did for comics. I remember
using markers and it looked like it. Not a bad design but the color and execution left a lot to be desired. (Secrets of young Brides #5.) The cover to “I Love You” #120 was inspired by Bob Peak...still one of my favorite early efforts. I think I was probably getting a lot of input from Howard Chaykin and Walt Simonson at the time.

MV:
My other Charlton memories are designing a character (a woman with a short shag haircut, abbreviated leather outfit and whip) for a strip Nick was planning. It eventually went to another artist and Nick apologized profusely. My attitude was if there was a better artist for the job, they should go with him. This is not a business to be in if your feeling are easily hurt.

I also remember doing a short story for Bob Leyton’s Charlton fanzine in early seventies. I forget the character’s name, but I do recall it had a lot of Jiminez and Ditko influence. And Bob has always treated me wonderfully- so it was a pleasure working with him. I remember at the time his ex-wife commenting that if Bob spent a couple weeks practicing, he could probably get a job in comics. I was probably a little skeptical of that time frame, but I recall the next time I saw Bob he was a working professional.

Life After Comics

"…the occupational hazard is my occupation's just not around…"
Jimmy Buffett- A Pirate Looks at Forty

I really love comics; they're what made me want to draw. I've never thought of myself as an artist, always a cartoonist- a storyteller.

For the first time in my adult life I don't have any kind of a comics project that I'm working on in any form. The irony is that when I was younger and wasn't very good at what I did, I always had lots of work, but as I acquired skill and taste, the jobs got harder and harder to find.

Part of that is the reality of working in any form of the entertainment business. A bigger part is that commercial comics as an industry died in the early 80's. There are still a lot of folks living off the carcass ( especially in the movie industry), but no one does comics just to make money off comics- because there is none. It's all in the ancillary income.

I don't think I've had half a dozen paying jobs in comics in the past twenty years, but I still remain enamored with the art form. There isn't an instant's regret for the all the unpaid time I've spent on my Lori Lovecraft and Retrowood projects. Most of the commercial books I worked on in comics I always thought were crap- but I'm extremely proud of my independent work.

But the work is intensely demanding. And my energy level isn't what it used to be. If I continue to work on comics, the reality is that I don't have either the time or energy for anything else. And the bottom line has really nothing to do with money. The reality is that I simply don't have the passion required to produce the material anymore, or the outside stimulus to keep at it. I don't want to just do comics; I want to do  better comicbook work than I have ever done before. I just can't see that happening in the current circumstances.

While I never say never, I am hoping to take a bit of a sabbatical from comics and work more on my illustration- which is another labor of love with a minimal monetary return.

But it sure is fun!

So here are my latest finished pictures. First there is George Sanders as Gay Falcon, as I mentioned previously the first adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel (Farewell my Lovely) for the screen. It's always a bit of a problem doing color versions of characters who were filmed in black and white (although it was a process that was used all the time for lobby cards and movie posters). And likenesses are also tricky. It's not enough that your drawing/painting looks like the person, it also has to be immediately recognizable as the person. And the best part of George Sanders was that wonderful voice, which you can't draw or paint.

There is also my homage to Jon Hamm as Don Draper of Madmen. It might have worked a bit better if I had Mr. Hamm in a 60's Brooks Brothers suit. But the tribute is as much to the wonderful ad art of that era. It gave me a chance to do some studies of  Al Parker, Coby Whitmore and Bob Peak for the background. I kept the overall color scheme (which I worked out in Photoshop at an early stage) very warm, with a few cooler neutrals, similar to the Sanders picture.

(Above were the three illustration I copied from Al Parker, Bob Peak, and Coby Whitmore.)

And of course, there is another watercolor- one of my former cats Jezebel and Sand Serif.

Next it's on to a portrait I've started of Bill Nighy, and another of Barbarella visiting Falling Water.  I can't wait; actually I won't. As soon as I'm done typing this blog it's back to the drawing board.


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Practice, practice, and more practice

Lately the job I was doing and a lingering cold have completely destroyed whatever schedule I was trying to keep on this blog. But since the job has ended and the cold is finally not getting any worse, maybe I can get back to posting again on a regular basis.

For now I'm just going to stick up what I've been working on the past couple of weeks. Inspired by friend Norman Mallory, I tried doing a watercolor portrait. Actually, I started this thing four or five years back and it just sat on the shelf unfinished. I finally pulled it back out and jumped in and finished it up. The big thing I apparently learned in that time was start working with a lot bigger brushes.

There are some new kitty paintings. I never get tired of drawing my feline friends. And they charge so little for modeling fees.

There are also a couple of pieces in progress. Here are the pencilled versions of portraits of Jon Hamm and the original Saint, George Sanders, who also was the first actor to play Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Of course he wasn't called Marlowe, but Gay Falcon, in the l940's "The Falcon Takes Over", the initial adaptation of "Farewell, My Lovely. There's also a version of the two pieces at there present stage.

Al Parker (1906-1985)

The invention of the camera shattered art in the western world. For several centuries one of the primary goals of the artist was to reproduce as realistically and objectively as possible life as he saw it. Products of the industrial revolution, artists struggled with the disciplines of draftsmanship and perspective with the ultimate goal a photographic likeness. Cameras made that approach obsolete, and 150 years later the art is still reeling from the fallout.

This same situation happened in the field of illustration, though it took a while until the printing industry could catch up to produce economic photography. As the process began to happen between the world wars, the magazine illustrator - once a celebrity as popular as actors and athletes- has become an endangered species.

Al Parker worked, survived, and prospered through a long period of this upheaval in illustration. Witnessing the changes constantly besetting his colleagues Parker became  the greatest innovator of his era, continually altering and adjusting his style to fit the dramatically changing times. Where others copied the latest trend, Parker created them.

The grandson of a famous riverboat pilot, Alfred Charles Parker was born in St. Louis, Missouri. While still at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, Parker often supported himself playing saxophone and clarinet in his own jazz band on riverboats steaming up and down the Mississippi. Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie were among his friends and although a career in music was an option,  art was his primary interest.

In l935 Al moved to NYC with his wife Evelyn and his family eventually settled near the NY/Conn. border, the home of many of the major contemporary illustrators .He became  a regular contributor to Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and the Post as well as many other magazines working on both story illustration and advertising.

His very early work reflects an art deco influence. His brilliance was in creating “glamour”. In the 1940’s his “mother and daughter” covers, where both wear matching outfits, set a style imitated by women over the next generation.

Parker worked in all mediums from oil to gouache to ink to color pencil; he was fearless in experimenting and trying new and fresh styles with his pictures. His graphic approach to design, mixing his solid drawing ability with the use of negative space and flat color, served as a jumping off point for Bob Peak, Bernie Fuchs, Ted CoConis and so many other illustrators in the 60’s.

But along with the graphic technique, what has always impressed me about Al Parker was his fascinating use of the model’s mannerism and gesture. He preferred to work from life rather than photographs for this reason. His illustrations are filled with subtly positioned hands and half hidden faces, often tightly cropped, always reflecting more emotion than an overtly placed expression.

Along with Robert Fawcett, Albert Dorne and Fred Ludekens, Parker was one of the original founders of the Famous Artists School, still the best compilation of how-to information assembled for the student of picture storytelling. (Originally Parker, Dorne,Von Schmidt, Fawcett and Briggs each did separate volumes which were compiled into the final course. I have copies of the Briggs and Fawcett; anyone out there who can provide me with a xerox of the Parker, I would forever be in your debt.)

 The Parkers moved to Carmel, California in the early 60’s, where he spent the rest of his life continuing to work at his craft. A guiding force behind the establishment of the Monterey Jazz Festival, he also never left his music.

(Thanks to Fred Taraba, Walt Reed, and Dugald Stermer for information from their writing on Al Parker gallery. His magic goes on.

Above is a sampling of some of Al Parker's great illustrations, but don't be afraid to google this incredible illustrator for more images.