John Cuneo’s illustration clients include Esquire, Rolling Stone Mother Jones, Entertainment Weekly, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and quite possibly every other high-end glossy magazine on the planet.

His wonderfully lose, sketch-like pen drawings, enlivened with deft applications of watercolor, are a visual treat.

Cuneo is a wonderful caricaturist, capturing the essence of his subject with a few seemingly casual lines an deceptively simple watercolor washes. His ink lines seem to squiggle and jump across the page, almost as if making an image was a byproduct of their travel.

His watercolor tones similarly have a feeling of light, almost incidental additions to the drawings, but if you slow down and examine them, they are applied with a keen sense of form and contrast.

Like many artists, Cuneo likes to sketch and paint amusing subjects that are not part of any project or assignment, simply for his own enjoyment. Also like many artists, some of these images are off-color, sexually frank and sometimes even disturbing. Artists like to let their demons and muses alike come out and dance on the paper.

Unlike most artists, Cuneo allowed some friends, illustrators Tim Bower and Joe Ciardiello, talk him into showing some of these not-for publication drawings to a publisher, and the result is a delightfully naughty and refreshingly politically incorrect collection called nEuROTIC (more details here).

You can see some of these drawings in the Personal section of his web site, which is prefaced with an “inappropriate for children and may be offensive to some” style advisory.

His site also contains some (not enough!) of his professional illustration work, divided into sections for People and Situations, along with a section of abandoned drawings called RIP.

There is an additional portfolio of his work on illoz.

Note: Some of the images on the sites linked here are NSFW and inappropriate for children.

Barbara Bradley’s brush was stilled on Friday when she was killed in a car accident at the age of 81.

Bradley, née Barbara Briggs, was a member of the Charles E. Cooper Studio, a highly influential commercial art and illustration studio prominent in the mid 20th Century.

The illustrators that Cooper attracted were among the best of the best; and in an era when the printing of color photographs had become inexpensive enough to be commonplace, used their clear, sharp, modern styles to entertain the the eye in a way photographs can’t.

Bradley was a shining example of this, applying her refined drawing style and keen color sense to delightfully fresh and lively illustrations for a variety of editorial and commercial accounts.

Bradley studied at the University of California at Berkeley and at Art Center before embarking on her career with Cooper in new York. She later returned to California and established herself as a freelancer.

She became an instructor, and eventually Director of illustration, at the Academy of Art University. In that role she became tremendously influential, passing on her extensive knowledge of illustration and technique to a broad cross section of new illustrators.

There is a tribute site, Thank You Barbara Bradley, which has an outline of her career, galleries of her work and a series of comments and tributes form her associates and students.

Leif Peng, who maintains the terrific blog Today’s Inspiration, which focuses on illustration from the period in which Bradley was most active, has written a particularly touching tribute to the influence she had on someone who never even met her in person. Peng also has previous posts on Bradley, Queen of the Perkies and Cutes and The 70’s, the 80’s… and the Academy, in which he posts additional examples of her work.

There was an article on Bradley in issue #21 of Illustration Magazine, part of a continuing series on the artists of the Charles E. Cooper Studio, which showcases some of the best examples I’ve seen of her illustrations.

In addition to her other awards, Bradley received the 2007 Outstanding Educator in the Arts Award from the Society of Illustrators.

A small portion of her teaching legacy was condensed into her book Drawing People: How to Portray the Clothed Figure.

[Thanks to James Gurney for passing on the notice]

In 1938, while researching derivatives of the fungus ergot in search of pharmaceutical applications in the treatment of migraines, Swiss scientist Dr. Albert Hoffman synthesized a chemical called lysergic acid diethylamide-25, which came into common parlance, and common use, in the early and mid-1960’s as LSD. It was a few years later before Hoffman, reportedly accidentally, discovered that the chemical had remarkable psychoactive properties.

Hoffman died on Thursday, at the age of 102, and though his legacy includes a number of other useful pharmaceuticals, it is the synthesis of LSD, and it’s impact on the culture, for which he will be remembered.

There is no doubt that the explosion of frenetic creative activity in music and the visual arts that occurred in the 1960’s owes much of its impetus, directly or indirectly, to the influence of LSD and related psychotropic compounds on the artists and musicians active at the time; an influence that continues to this day and has been absorbed into the fabric of mainstream art and entertainment.

There are a number of artists who are associated with the array of visual art styles that came to be called “psychedelic art”; for some examples, see my articles on Rick Griffin, Robert Venosa, Martina Hoffmann, Alex Grey, Andrew Gonzales and Peter Max. (For a clearer perspective on the influence of consciousness altering chemicals on artistic pursuits, separate from both the overreaching hype and anti-drug hysteria that ensued, see Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception.)

Though he stated that it was not his primary source of inspiration, one of the prominent artists most often associated with the visionary and spiritual aspects of that style is the German painter Mati Klarwein.

Klarwein had been established as a gallery artist for some time, but he entered the popular consciousness when several of his hallucinatory paintings graced the covers of popular progressive rock and jazz albums in the mid-60’s. His painting Annunciation, reproduced on the cover of Santana’s Abraxas LP, and his commissioned cover for Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew became cultural icons of the time.

Born Matias Klarwein, and reportedly named for German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, himself something of a visionary painter, Klarwein studied with Fernand Leger and attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, before encountering the influential fantastic realist painter Ernst Fuchs, who would have a dramatic impact on his path as an artist.

Klarwein’s paintings also show the influence of the Surrealists, notably Salvador Dali, with whom he studied at one time, and share the ability to reinforce fantastic visions with startlingly precise realist painting technique.

His sometimes complex panoramas of bizarre imagery, reinforced with patterns of intense colors (often juxtaposing high-chroma colors with their compliments for the added intensity produced by optical effect), are rich with intricate detail, often carried to extreme levels. His circular composition Grain of Sand is particularly striking in that respect.

Less well known are his sometimes straightforward landscapes and still life paintings.

There are several collections of his work, some of them out of print but often available used, God Jokes: The Art of Abdul Mati Klarwein, Inscapes Real-Estate Paintings by Mati Klarwein, Milk n’ Honey, and a very nice volume that I particularly like, Mati Klarwein: Collected Works 1959-1975.

[Note: the sites linked here contain images that should be considered NSFW.]

Philip Burke is another of those artists whose images are more commonly known than his name. Whether you’ve heard of Burke or not, you’ve probably seen his his wildly exaggerated portraits of rock stars, splashed with lurid colors and jumping out at you from the pages of popular magazines with expressionistic abandon.

His work has been on the covers and interior pages of publications like Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Vogue, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, TV Guide, Fortune and, of course, Rolling Stone, where he was the featured artist for several years. You’ll find a major section devoted to his work in the collection Rolling Stone: The Illustrated Portraits.

He has received awards and notice from the Society of Illustrators, the Society of Publication Design and the Society of Newspaper Design.

Burke’s portraits cover a range of public figures from entertainment, sports and politics, but his real love seems to be those in the music culture, from James Brown to the Beatles to David Byrne to Miles Davis to Carlos Santana (above).

If you go to www.philipburke.com, it resolves to the “official” site of L.B. Madison Fine Art, presumably his rep. There is a broad cross-section of Burke’s work here, arranged in various ways, along with a bio and other information. Unfortunately the images are watermarked; though most of them are not defaced to the point where you can’t at least get a feeling for the original image.

There is also an unofficial gallery on A Feast of Crumbs on which you can see the images without the intrusion of watermarking.

Burke does more than take the usual caricaturist’s license with the shape and placement of his subject’s features. Though his portraits can sometimes be less exaggerated, they are often wildly sculpted into outrageous forms, giving a real push to the psychological implications that you can read into some of them.

His colors are also “pushed”; brilliant contrasting hues seem to fight amongst themselves for dominance in their attempts to define the forms, each pulling their own way but somehow working together in the final image to snap into the clear focus of of the portrait. Remarkable.

Addendum: Thanks to Dale Stephanos for a link to this post from Stephen Kroninger’s blog in which he posts a wealth of early work from Philip Burke.

In some ways Robert McCall is an inheritor of the mantle of pioneering space artist Chesley Bonestell, continuing to document the space program and visually forecast its future, as well as the future of mankind as we step off our little blue island into the vast sea of space.

McCall first gained notice for his illustrations for a series on the future of space travel in Life magazine in the early 1960’s. McCall began documenting the US space program for NASA, chronicling many of its major achievements in dramatic paintings. His visions of spacecraft, both existing and projected, and scenes of space and the surfaces of other worlds are on display at a large scale in murals for the National Air and Space Museum in Wasington, D.C. the Pentagon, EPCOT Center and the Johnson Space Center.

His work is also in the collection of the National Gallery of Art and was on a series of stamps for the US Postal Service commemorating the space program, as well as gracing emblems worn by astronauts.

His conceptual and poster art for films includes titles like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Black Hole and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

You’ve probably seen McCall’s work many times without realizing it, both in famous posters and accompanying articles in popular magazines. His poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey has become something of a cultural icon.

Even if you’re passingly familiar with McCall’s work, you’re likely to be unaware of the range and variety of his paintings, from accurate representations of existing technology and real events to imaginative projections of visionary futures.

McCall’s site has nicely extensive galleries of his work in several categories. When viewing the thumbnails, rollover the “i” symbol for information about the dimensions, medium and publication of the image, and click on the text link for a larger version (thumbnails are not linked).

The site also has biographic and background information on the artist, as well as information on sales of original art and limited edition prints. There is a collection of his work, The Art of Robert McCall: A Celebration of Our Future in Space, with an introduction by Ray Bradbury, that is out of print, but may be available used. McCall’s site has a limited number of signed copies for sale.

[Link via Randall Ensley]

I love pen and ink drawing. It has a visual charm and character unlike any other medium.

I assume that I came by my affection for it from realizing as a teenager that pen and ink drawing was the basis for comic books and cartoons, but I was also exposed at a pretty early age to the amazing pen and ink illustrations of Howard Pyle and other illustrators of the Brandywine School in my visits to the Delaware Art Museum, where I also encountered beautiful pen drawings by some of the Pre-Raphaelite artists.

It’s medium that doesn’t get as much attention as more colorful forms of expression, but it’s still there as the basis for much illustration, comics, cartoons and concept art, as well as standing on it’s own as a method of sketching or creating finished drawings.

There are some good resources out there on pen drawing if you dig for them, and you’ll occasionally find some for free.

A case is point is the Project Gutenberg eBook version of Pen Drawing by Charles Maginnis. (Amazon listing here)

This is a relatively short treatise published in 1903, at a time when pen drawing was in its heyday as a ubiquitous method of drawing that could be easily and inexpensively be mass reproduced as illustrations in books and periodicals.

The tone and attitude of the text are a bit dated, but is fascinating as a bit of history for that, and the instruction is basically sound.

The illustrations are not reproduced well, one of the frustrating things about Project Gutenberg that I’ve railed about before, but some of them fare better than others and can give you a taste for some of the excellent pen and ink artists featured from that era, including Joseph Pennell, Daniel Vierge, Herbert Railton, B. G. Goodhue (image above, top), Martin Rico and Maxime LaLanne.

Author Charles Maginnis was a noted architect and the book is slanted a bit toward architectural rendering and supplemented with the author’s own drawings (image above, bottom), but he also includes examples from more figurative artists like Howard Pyle, Will Bradley and Alfonse Mucha.

If this whets your appetite and you want physical pen and ink instruction books with high resolution images of great pen and ink drawing, look for copies of Joseph Pennel’s Pen Drawing, Pen Draughtsmen and Arthur Guptill’s Rendering in Pen and Ink.

[Link via ArtDemonstrations.com]

Martin Wittfooth’s paintings draw on both industrial and natural elements, often displaying an intersection and clash of those worlds.

Rusting hulks of buses (school, public and VW) sink into the ground in barren landscapes, and occasionally sprout new growth; disarmingly fish-eyed cats swim in drainage channels with bobbing warheads while silver zeppelins glide over concrete aqueducts; wild dogs prowl at the perimeters of fire-belching furnaces; and a gas pump sits amid tree stumps while WPA mural style trains ride high trestles through the smoke and haze of indistinct industrial forms.

Wittfooth uses almost iconic bits of industrial effluvia, and combines them with sometimes malformed or even composite animals, including odd combinations of birds and squirrels, dogs and frogs, and monkeys and butterflies.

Instead of the more common photo-realist approach many artists might take when exploring this territory, Wittfooth approaches his subjects with an eye to texture, almost impressionistic brushwork and a muscular definition of forms; sort of Magritte meets Pissarro meets Thomas Hart Benton.

He paints both gallery works and illustration, and the pieces displayed in his online gallery are often shown in their elaborate frames.

Wittfooth’s commercial clients include Playboy, Victory Records/Silverstein, O’Brien Wakeboards, Sims Snowboards Ltd & Lamar Snowboards.

The “Shop” and “News” sections of his site (I can’t give you direct links because the site is hampered by frames) mention a new limited edition book of his work, Melting Season, Paintings by Martin Wittfooth. There are also limited edition prints available.

The Canadian born artist studied at Sheridan College in Canada and the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has exhibited at the La Luz Jueus gallery in Los Angeles, The Conference Room gallery in Beverly Hills and Galerie d’art Yves Laroche in Montreal.

Whenever the topic of political cartoonists comes up, the question of political bias raises its smirking little head and I get comments about “How could you feature this flaming liberal terrorist sympathizer?” or “How could you showcase such a right wing fascist nut case?”.

I’ll start out by saying that RJ Matson is unabashedly liberal, unabashedly a Bush basher and also unabashedly a Clinton basher. Either he likes Obama, or simply doesn’t find him a very interesting character to skewer.

Of course, any editorial cartoonist worth their salt will go after the people currently in power, they’re the ones stirring things up, after all, and the ones we need to be reminded to keep our eye on.

While politicians who do bad and/or stupid things make life difficult for the rest of us, they’re paydirt for political cartoonists and satirists.

Regardless of whether a particular cartoonist’s political leanings match our own, we should be able to look at them for their drawing style.

Matson, particularly in the past couple of years, has been working in a line and color style that owes more to the simplicity of classic newspaper comics than to the pen and ink crosshatch style usually associated with political cartoons.

In his older cartoons, he employs a style more in keeping with that tradition, but even there he is somewhat eccentric, and you’ll find stylistic references to other cartoonists like William Stout, Ron Cobb, New Yorker cartoonists like Jack Ziegler, even the historic political cartoons of Thomas Nast.

You’ll also references to 50’s EC horror comics, 60’s superhero comics and other pop culture visual landmarks.

It’s his current, open, line and color style that I particularly enjoy. Though he draws the cartoons so they will be effective either in black and white or in color (as you can see in the R.J. Matson archive on Cagle Cartoons), when reproduced in color, they have a nice feeling of direct drawing, and intentional coloring. It’s hard to put my finger on what it is about the style, but it just feels like Matson has utilized just the line work and just the color elements that he needs to nail his subject, with nothing included that doesn’t add to the effectiveness of the image; which is, of course, the essence of good cartooning.

Matson is the editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The New York Observer and Roll Call. In addition to his editorial cartoons, his gag cartoons and comic illustrations have appeared in many other publications, including The New Yorker, The Nation, The Daily News, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and MAD Magazine. He has done cover art for the Capitol Steps comedy group and has illustrated several books.

Matson has been the Secretary of the National Cartoonists Society and is on the Board of Advisors of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York.

His web site includes a selection of his illustrations, as well as an extensive archive of his cartoons. The latter can be viewed by publication, selected “Greatest Hits”, or in total. Greatest hits can give you a quick overview of some of his most popular cartoons, but if you like his work, the “All” choice makes for a nice mixture of national and local cartoons.

Timothy Brush is a children’s book illustrator originally from Pennsylvania and, after living in Illinois, Ohio and Texas as well as Vienna, Rome and the Greek Islands, is now settled in New York City.

Bush studied literature in college and is self-taught as an artist. He points out (jokingly, I hope) that he is “completely unqualified to do what I do”. Were he serious, I would have to disagree, of course, as I think he is admirably suited to his role as a children’s book illustrator; both because of his delightful illustrations, and because of the way he describes his school visits.

Not only does he take the time to talk to school classes about the process of illustration and the creation of books, he makes a point of showing them that the real world process of being an artist or writer isn’t a fantasy story, and that professional artists have difficulties, setbacks and disappointments, as well as successes, just as kids do. His talks usually include reading aloud and sessions with everyone drawing together.

Bush’s illustration style varies from simple, almost cartoon-like line and color drawings, to more elaborate and textured watercolor paintings.

You can view his online portfolio either by category, such as action, animals, landscape, etc, or by book title. The two viewing paths are only partially redundant, and there are images to be found in both areas that are not repeated in the other.

In referencing his illustrations by book title, my favorites are Grunt! The Primitive Cave Boy and Benjamin McFadden and the Robot Babysitter (image above). These are some of his more detailed illustrations. The former leans more toward adult book illustration, with realistic landscapes as a backdrop for cartoonish characters and nicely rendered prehistoric mammals. The latter is a visual treat, with lots of rich details, textures and fanciful designs. Robot Babysitter has just been optioned as a feature film by Walt Disney Pictures.

I was also struck by his illustrations for Janey and the Famous Author, in which he again blends somewhat stylized characters with realistic backgrounds, in particular nicely rendered watercolor landscapes and architecture. In these, Bush uses texture and lighting in the backgrounds to create an effective emotional tone for particular points in the story.

[Link via Ann Marshall (see my post on Ann Marshall)]

George Gardner Symons was an Amreican painter active in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He was born in Chicago and was one of the early artists to live and work in California in the 1890’s, after the trans-continanal railroad made the previously remote section of the U.S. more accessible (see my posts on Guy Rose, Granville Redmond and Hanson Puthuff).

Symons studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and later extended his studies in London, Paris and Munich before returning to the U.S. and California.

He also maintained a studio in New York City and another in the Berkshires, traveling between there and Laguna Beach, where he was an active participant in the thriving art community.

He worked as an illustrator for a time and was commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1914 to create paintings of the Grand Canyon for promotional campaigns.

Symons’ exposure to Impressionism in Europe has a lasting influence on his work. He painted “en plein air” and his is generally classified as an “American Impressionist”. Though he is noted in particular for his scenes of New England in the Winter, he is considered a member of the California School of American Impressionism.

Confusingly enough, you might also find him associated with the Impressionist influenced painters who worked in New Hope in Bucks County, PA; and labeled as a Pennsylvania Impressionist (see my posts on Daniel Garber and Fern Coppedge).

Though there is obvious commonality in his approach and subject matter, the definitive book on Pennsylvania Impressionism says there is no evidence for this; and all of his known winter scenes were painted in new England. (The upside of this is that Encore Editions includes him in their catalog of images and inexpensive prints.)

Wherever he painted, Symons rendered his landscapes in clear, strong compositions, with a vibrant color sense, and the kind of crisp, deliberate brushwork that makes the work of so many American Impressionist painters wonderfully appealing.