Blast from the Past #497: "Copyrite" logo design

I can't remember exactly what this was all about, but I suspect it was something I did for a client of a small local design firm in Northampton, for whom I did some graphics and illustration work back in the late 1970's.

What I do remember about this one is having fun with it. I enjoy trying to develop logos, and this one in particular was fun because I liked using the three-dimensional pencil forms twisted in various ways to make the letters. -- PL

Blast from the Past #380: "Iceworms"

This is one of those drawings that I like a lot, because I feel it was almost completely successful in its execution... but like many of my drawings from the period of the late 1970's and early 1980's, I don't remember exactly what it was done for.

It is likely a drawing done to illustrate a story or column in "Hampshire Life", but it also just weird enough (worms in ice...?) to have been one of the drawings I produced for various horror/science fiction fanzines back then. Maybe someday I will stumble across the printed version and know for sure.

This was one more example of using the shading film which had opaque WHITE dots instead of BLACK dots. I found it a nice way to produce a muted effect when laid over black line work -- here it works to sell the idea that the worms are inside the ice cubes. -- PL

Blast from the Past #368: "Thrilling Hepburn Tales"

A few months ago, in "Blast from the Past #352, I posted a cartoon drawing I had done of John Morrison, then-owner of the Pleasant Street Theater in Northampton (I'm not sure if he still owns the place) flying with some reels of film in a biplane. In that post I mentioned "Thrilling Hepburn Tales", one of the posters I'd drawn years ago for a series of Katherine Hepburn movies John was showing at his theater.

Well, I managed to find it in my files, although -- truth be told -- if I'd really wanted to post it sooner I could have taken it down from the wall where it hangs in our house, in the passageway between the front door and the kitchen. It's one of the things I've drawn that Jeannine really likes, and we have had it hanging there for quite some time. I think we've even had it hanging in previous places we've lived, but I'm not completely sure about that.

In any event, I could have taken it down, gotten it out of the frame and photographed it, but I guess I was too lazy to do that.

I did several hand-drawn and hand-lettered posters (some of the lettering on this one I did with "PressType", but the logo is hand-drawn) for the Pleasant Street Theatre, and this is one of my favorites. I am pretty sure that I came up with the concept for this one, which is a riff on old "Golden Age" comic book covers... with maybe a bit of old "pulp" magazine covers thrown in for good measure. I think it worked pretty well. -- PL

Blast from the Past #366: "Clubs" minicomic

I recently ran across a small stash of these mini-comics in my files -- about a dozen copies, though I think I may have more somewhere. I wrote and drew this sixteen-page (of which the last two pages are text) mini in 1982, back when I was involved with the local Nuclear Freeze movement in the Northampton/Amherst area.

The comic measures about 4 1/4" by 2 7/8", and is printed in black and white. I can't at this time, recall if this was something that I printed on my own (and when I say "printed", I mean "Xeroxed") and donated to my local Nuclear Freeze group, or if the group paid to have it reproduced. In any event, I don't think many of them were made… and I have never seen one turn up in the years since.

The story is about proliferation, and while it is a simple tale, I have always thought it was one of my best efforts in comics, in terms of telling a story efficiently. I'm thinking of asking Dan to put some of these up on eBay to see if they would sell. -- PL

Blast from the Past #364: Unfinished drawings

Here are a group of unfinished drawings, all done on similarly-sized pieces of Bristol board -- and I can't remember why I drew them. They are most likely from the late 1970's or early 1980's. There is a clue to the "why" of one of them -- in the drawing in the lower lefthand corner, there is a handwritten caption reading "The student Anselmus sees the snakes in the elder tree…" I believe this is a reference to a character in E.T.A. Hoffman's "The Golden Pot", a book I read and liked after hearing it read on the "Reading Aloud" program on NPR, which I often used to listen to as I drew.

There is something about the sizes of these things that makes me think I had a plan to use them for some project, but for the life or me, I can't recall what it might have been. (I hate that.) -- PL

Blast from the Past #363: weird skull

I can't recall why or exactly when I drew this, but I suspect it was in the early 1980's. I'm not a master of skulls like my friend Eric Talbot, but I think this one came out okay. -- PL

Blast from the Past #357: Triceratops logo image, airbrushed version

I have posted a couple of different versions of this image I'd drawn for self-promotional purposes, but just recently came across what I think was the final version. I am pretty sure this one was never actually used for anything -- it was just an exercise to see if I could work with an airbrush. -- PL

Blast from the Past #355: MSC logo designs

I've always enjoyed trying to come up with interesting logo designs, though I am not terribly good at it. I think my best one may have been for the "Scat" comics magazine I helped to found with some artist friends years ago. I have always been impressed with people who can come up with clever variations on a theme (the theme being, typically, letters and/or numbers in the name of a business or organization). One of my favorite logos of all time is the one that you see on the hoods of Toyotas -- I never knew until a few years ago that that simple symbol, if broken down properly, reveals all the shapes of all the letters in the word "Toyota". And right behind that one is the logo for Acura, Honda's luxury car brand, which is essentially the famous "H" used on all Honda cars, but with the top corners of the "H" pivoted slightly inward to form an "A" for Acura.

(Actually, I am not sure if these symbols are, technically, logos… but that's how I have always thought of them. If anyone knows a better term, please feel free to enlighten me.)

I found the following  page in an old sketchbook, where I was apparently trying to work out a design for some outfit called -- or with the acronym of -- "MSC". Do I know now what "MSC" is/was? No. That memory has vanished. I don't even remember WHEN I did this, though from the looks of it, I'd say some time in the early 1980's.

Looking at this, I am reminded of how much I have admired the work of illustrator and graphic designer David Suter. Don't get me wrong -- I am not at all equating my work with his brilliant stuff. But I see some of his influence here in my attempt to play with three dimensions and the classic "three-quarters view" while working out this design.

I can't recall if I ever even came up with a finished logo design for "MSC", or -- if I did do a final design -- if it was used. But I can see that I was having some fun with it. -- PL

Blast from the Past #353: Illustrations for "Dan Gabriel Real Estate" ads

(I apologize in advance for the "sketchy" quality of these images -- when I photographed this art last year, I didn't light some of it properly. I tried to tweak it in Photoshop to get it to look good, but realized pretty quickly that it would take hours to do that, so I just decided to use them as is. -- PL)

Back when we were living in Dover, and the TMNT comic had yet to bring in enough money to allow me to focus on that and not worry about getting other illustration jobs to help pay the bills, I got a number of gigs doing stuff for local businesses. The Dan Gabriel Real Estate company had offices on one of the main streets in Dover, and as I recall, they were going through some kind of big change in their business -- I think they were becoming associated with Coldwell Banker, or moving to a new location, or both, or something like that. Anyway, they wanted to do a series of ads which would announce this change in an eye-catching way, and for some reason, they hired me. (I cannot at this point remember HOW I got the job -- did I approach them? Did they approach me? If it was the former, how did I know they needed some illustrations? Who knows? I wish I did.)

Anyway, this turned out to me a lot of fun to do. And I am pretty sure it was my idea to do the ads this way. The basic concept was this fanciful notion of elves carving the new offices of Dan Gabriel Real Estate out of one huge solid block of wood, and I drew four stages of this activity, starting with the block just slightly carved, and ending up with a fairly accurate rendition of what the Dan Gabriel office's facade looked like. (Unfortunately, I have not been able to find that last drawing.)
Here's the first one…

… the second…

… and the third.

I also drew some small images which were to be used as "teasers" to get people to wonder what was going on with these wacky little elves showing up in various spots in local newspapers.

And I did keep one tearsheet from a local paper -- the Rochester Free Press, I believe it was called -- in which the ads were run.

In my experience, it was rare to get a chance to draw something for a client like a real estate agency which had any kind of whimsical elements, and this one was just about ALL whimsical. -- PL

[10-18-14: UPDATE -- I've been reading some old letters that I wrote to my parents during the period when Jeannine and I lived in Dover, NH, and I discovered the reason why I got the gig doing the artwork above. Apparently, I had made a contact with Terry Dunn, the editor of the "Rochester Courier", the local newspaper in Rochester, NH, two towns away from Dover. I had forgotten that he had helped me connect with various local business who needed artwork for ads and such, providing me with much-needed opportunities to make some money. Thanks, Terry! -- PL]

Blast from the Past #352: John Morrison in a biplane

I can't remember exactly WHY I drew this, but I do seem to recall that it depicts -- in a somewhat unrealistic, cartoony way, of course -- an event in the life of local theater owner John Morrison. The details are, at this late date, pretty vague in my mind, but I think it had something to with his having to get on a small plane to bring a print of a certain movie to show in his independent movie house, the Pleasant Street Theater.

John actually gave me several of my best gigs as an illustrator back in the late 1970's and early 1980's. I got to do several posters for his theater, including my favorites, "They Came from the 50's!" and "Thrilling Hepburn Tales" (I'll have to dig that one out and post it sometime). The Pleasant Street Theater still exists in downtown Northampton, showing movies you usually can't get to see at the bigger cinemas. I am not sure if John is still associated with it.

One fun thing about this drawing that I realized as I was getting it ready to post here is that there are some Northampton-specific details in the background which are fairly close to reality. That's the Coolidge Bridge over the Connecticut River, and I even got Route 91 and the exit from it onto Route 9 in there, along with some of the buildings just over the bridge. (I somehow missed the railroad bridge -- which is now a key part of the bicycle path to Amherst -- that lies just north, almost within a stone's throw, of the Coolidge Bridge. D'oh!) -- PL

Blast from the Past #349: "Dear Mr. Laird..."

This is a nice editorial written by my editor at "Hampshire Life", Nancy Frazier, for the March 8, 1980 edition of the publication. (It was mentioned in the "Hampshire Life" TMNT cover story in the post I put up here last week.) I think Nancy got an even bigger kick out of that letter the computer club sent to "Hampshire Life" than I did.

Dig the groovy beret I'm wearing in the little self portrait in the lower right corner. I actually did wear one of those for a while -- not so much to look like an "artiste", but because these somewhat stretchy hats actually fit my over-sized noggin pretty comfortably. -- PL

Blast from the Past #348: Fanzine drawing -- "Four-armed assassins"

This is another drawing I did for a fanzine in 1984, and I think it may have been meant to go with the other one I just posted recently. I say this because there is a tiny thread of memory drifting around in my head that links them, and because the inking styles are so similar, and also because the thing that one of the assassins is sculpting -- a mask, perhaps? -- looks suspiciously like it might be intended to replicate the look of one of "Star Trek"'s well-known alien species.

And that would be a Tellarite, first seen, I believe, in the "Journey to Babel" episode of the original "Star Trek" series (one of my favorite episodes, by the way). I could be wrong about the provenance of this drawing, but it feels right to me. -- PL

STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.

Blast from the Past #346: "Dragon with mushrooms" (black and white version)

Back in November of 2008, I posted this "Blast from the Past", number 120... and today I just came across my original black and white inked version.

I like this dragon's expression and its body language -- I think this may be my favorite of all the dragons I've drawn. -- PL

Blast from the Past #345: Fanzine drawing -- "Klingon shopping with Vulcan"

Just got in from about an hour and a half of snowblowing and shoveling (and a little bit of plowing) -- the big winter storm that was predicted DID in fact drop quite a bit of snow on us. Right now, it seems to have stopped, and I am hoping we don't get more today. I am definitely tired of New England winters.

Anyway, back to warmer pursuits -- like blogging.

This drawing is another one I did for some fanzine sometime in 1984, but that's about all I can remember. It is so specific in its details that I am almost certain it was drawn to accompany a piece of "Star Trek" fan fiction. -- PL

STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.

Blast from the Past #344: Falling Robot

I have already posted two versions of this "falling robot" drawing, back in September of 2008 (my first blogging year), but when I ran across this version today, I thought it might be worthy of posting. It's not terribly different from the black and white version I posted a few years ago -- the main difference is that there is no grey tone on the robot.

 

The other difference is that it is upside down, and that's how I saw it this morning when looking through some digital files. I actually think this orientation works better than the originally intended one. -- PL

Blast from the Past #241: Videogame controller illustration, two versions

I believe these were done in the early 1980's, but I'm not sure if I did them for fun or for a job. It was probably the former.

Another example of adaptive reuse, I first used the basic drawing as an experiment with my airbrush, in gray tones.



Later on, I thought it might be fun to try doing a color version of the piece. It's possible that I intended these to be portfolio samples. -- PL

Blast from the Past #240: "Proliferation"

This is another piece of art from the flipchart I illustrated for the Nuclear Freeze group I worked with in the early 1980's. The glare on this art at the top and bottom comes from the fact that some of the lettering was done on an acetate overlay, and that reflected the lights I was using to take the photo of this art.



The text on this piece is a little dated, as I'm pretty sure several of these countries now have nukes.

I always liked this one -- especially the pose of the sower of the nuclear seeds. -- PL

Blast from the Past #239: Dragon's Dentist (two versions)

(Once again, I have the feeling that I have posted an image before, but a quick search of my blog indicates that I am mistaken.)

This is a drawing I did back in 1983. I was inspired to write a children's book story based on this, but never did anything with it.

Here are two versions of the drawing. I probably have a third or fourth somewhere, but these are the only ones I could find right now.

This first one is all black and white inking, using a variety of hatching, cross-hatching and stippling techniques to achieve the desired texture and lighting effects.



The second one is one of my early experiments with airbrushing, and not a very successful one. (That, sadly, was typical of most of my attempts at airbrushing.)



You may note that I must have made copies of the basic inked version prior to doing all of the hatching, cross-hatching ad stippling, so that I would have an "open" version of the drawing on which to try airbrushing. I believe that there is a color variation done over the same "open" inked art. Maybe I'll come across that at some point and add it to this post. -- PL

Blast from the Past #238: Fantasy castle

There is no date on this piece, but I think it's probably from the late 1970's, and done just for fun. It was one of those rare times when I played around with watercolor. -- PL

Blast from the Past #237: sample comic book page

This one puzzles me. I don't think it is one of the pages I did as samples to try to get work doing comics. I do have a vague memory of drawing it as the first page to a story which I never finished, but that's about all I remember.



In any event, I kind of like it. -- PL