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 #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 #342: "Hampshire Life" garden chart cover, printed color version

Some years ago -- I can't remember if it was while we lived in Sharon, CT or when we moved back to the Northampton, MA area -- I decided that it would be a good idea to get more organized with the clippings of my published work. This was mostly the stuff I did for "Hampshire Life", with some other work mixed in.

So I made a folder. It measured about 15 inches by 20 inches, and I used cardboard cushioned with some kind of material the nature of which I cannot at this time recall, and covered it with fabric. I glued a somewhat fancy foil-type paper on the inside.

Then I took large sheets of some fairly heavy paper -- I think they came from a cheap sketchbook -- and proceeded to cut out, trim, and glue down all of the printed samples of my work that I had saved, ending up with about 80 pages like this. Then I stuck it in a cabinet and rarely looked at it. I think the last time I took it out was when Emily was somewhat younger and I was trying to show her what her Dad did before the Turtles took over his life. (As I recall, she wasn't that interested.)

Recently, though, I had call to pull it out again, when I was trying to find the image of Dr. Martin Luther King and Archie Bunker's stuffed chair for this blog post. I knew I had done that drawing, and I knew I had seen it recently. I thought that was when I was going through some of the photographs I'd take in my old studio last year when I started (but still have not finished) my "digital art archive" project… but I was wrong. I went through all those files and could not find the image. But I thought it was very likely that I had a printed version in my pasted-up clipping files, and so I did, and that's what I used for the blog post on MLK, Jr. day.

(Curiously, two days later I found the original for the drawing sitting on top of a pile of stuff in my very messy room… I guess that's where I'd seen it recently and then forgotten about it.)

Anyway, when I went into that old folder to look for the Dr. King drawing, I was pleasant surprised to see that at least for some of the pages, I had actually taken the time to write down next to each piece where and when it had been printed. And as I went through the folder, I saw quite a few things I'd forgotten I'd drawn.

A few days ago, I spent a couple of hours taking photos of each of these pages. It is not the greatest quality for a digital archive, but it's something. And the way these clippings are yellowing (they were almost all printed on newsprint), I think it is better to have even a low-quality set of images of this stuff than let it go to the point where they will have changed so much that it would require huge efforts in Photoshop to bring them back to a reasonable facsimile of how they originally looked.

So now that I have this new group of images, I may be pulling stuff out for this blog, and if they look a little funky, that will most likely be because of the aforementioned process of slow decay of the medium on which they were printed. But it's kind of fun to look back and see how some of these things were actually printed -- I'd forgotten some stuff, especially with covers I did for "Hampshire Life", where someone in their in-house art department would add mechanically-separated colors to the art. I never had a hand in this, and I think for the most part whoever did the colors did it well.

One of my favorite "Hampshire Life" covers was the "garden chart", which I have already posted in its black and white form here. And now, the art as it appeared when printed.

-- PL

Happy Thanksgiving!

"The turkey's in the oven… now let's hope it cooks!"

So sayeth my wife a half hour ago, expressing a small amount of anxiety about the traditional Thanksgiving meal, which she has always successfully prepared. We're having a smallish Thanksgiving crew this year -- seven, I believe. Emily has other Thanksgiving plans, so while we might get a text or a call, we will not be sharing her delightful company.

Jeannine made the stuffing and the cranberry sauce, and has loaves of bread ready to go into the oven, while I made juice (apple, strawberry, cranberry and raspberry) yesterday and will be making the salad and a fruit dessert today. So I think we have things covered.

I tried to find a Thanksgiving-related drawing in my digital archive of old artwork, but could only come up with the drawing above, which is one that I did for "Hampshire Life" years ago. I'm not sure if it was done around Thanksgiving time, but it certainly could have been. You know, I could have sworn that I had some others, but then again, I haven't completely finished that archiving project -- there are still a bunch of drawings that haven't been digitized, so who knows? I should probably get back to that sometime soon.

But it won't be today. Today is for eating and drinking (juice, for me) and giving thanks for stuff. And I'll give thanks right now, before the turkey is even out of the oven, before we can even smell its tantalizing aroma, for (and to) the wonderful woman who is my wife, sharing our twenty-ninth Thanskgiving together. Thanks, Jeannine -- I love you! -- Pete

Blast from the Past #328: Pumpkins under the bed

We're a little past prime pumpkin season here, but I ran across this drawing today and liked it enough to use it for a "Blast" post. This is another one of my drawings for "Hampshire Life" from back in the late 1970's or early 1980's. Like some of the drawings I did for that paper way back then, I look at this one and wonder "Why?"

 "Why is this person putting pumpkins under his bed?" Sometimes I wish I had saved all the text from the columns I illustrated, instead of just the illustrations, so that I could remember this stuff. -- PL

Blast from the Past #324: Farmer, cover for Hampshire Life

I can't recall if I found a magazine photograph of someone in overalls to use as reference for this drawing, or took a photo of myself (I had overalls just like this at that time) or just drew it from my head -- I suspect it was one of the first two options. But this is one of my favorite cover drawings that I did for "Hampshire Life" back in the late 1970's/early 1980's.



Earlier this year I decided that I would finally start hanging some more of my artwork up on the walls of our house, and this was one of the pieces that I chose. There is something about the line work that I really like. And it is also unusual (at least for me) in the use of the black border tape as a design element -- that's something I rarely did. -- PL

Triceratops no more!!!

Well, no... not really. But I thought I would employ the same type of sensationalist headline which caught my eye about this recent paleontological discovery. Here's the story from the online new source nationalpost.com:

"Triceratops never actually existed, scientists say

Brace yourselves. The famous triceratops dinosaur never actually existed as a separate dinosaur species, paleontologists say.

Known for its three horns and the bony, frilled ridge around its head, the triceratops was most likely just a younger version of the rarer torosaurus, say researchers John Scannella and Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies in Montana.

The species were very similar. Both had three horns and each had the distinctive head frill that makes the triceratops famous. But in the torosaurus the horns and ridge were shaped differently, with the ridge appearing smoother and thinner. It also had two holes.

After studying 29 triceratops skulls, the scientists discovered the bone was thinning in the same area where the torosaurus’s holes were. Evidence began mounting as they counted the growth rings in the bones and discovered all the triceratops skulls were from young dinosaurs. What’s more, juvenile specimens of the torosaurus have never been found. They concluded the dinosaurs were actually the same, with the horns and ridge changing shape as the lizard matured.

Triceratops fans shouldn’t despair at the finding, though. Scientists will now reclassify all torosaurus as triceratops."

So if you read down to the last line, you see that it is Torosaurus fans who should be bummed out.

Whew. -- PL

P.S. The artwork here is something I did many years ago for Hampshire Life, and as you probably guessed it was drawn on coquille board.

Blast from the Past #320: Hampshire Life Fourth of July cover drawing

I generally don't post twice in one day, but just as I was finishing up the "flame sword" post, I noticed this piece in the same folder... and seeing as it is July 4th today, thought I'd put it up too.



This is one of the many covers I did for Hampshire Life back in the 1970's and 1980's. I can't recall in which year this one was done.

I went a little crazy with the white-out spatter and cross-hatching in an attempt to get a particular lighting effect. I'm not sure if it worked as well as I'd hoped, but I guess it's okay. -- PL

Blast from the Past #292: Hot air balloonists

I probably drew this one back in the early 1980's for "Hampshire Life", but -- from the "not used" note written on the side -- I guess it never saw print. I'm not sure why.



I find this piece interesting because it incorporates a technique I employed only a few times -- using a manipulated photo as a background for drawn art. I'm not sure where I first saw this technique -- probably in magazine or newspaper advertising, but possibly in those cool photo collages Jack Kirby used to do in some of the comics he drew in the late 1970's.

For this one, I used the trick of copying a photo, then copying the copy, then copying the copy of the copy, and so on. This had the effect of enhancing the contrast and removing most of the lighter grey values, until you arrived at a point where the image was almost completely black and white. And if it worked properly, you would end up with something that retained enough detail to be readable, while having the added benefit of not needing to be screened or halftoned.

These days, with the aid of computers, this is no longer a problem. Creating a printable halftone from a photograph is a snap, and if the higher contrast effect is desired, it's a lot more easily done with various controls in Photoshop. -- PL

Blast from the Past #290: "Chickens" cover for Hampshire Life

This is another piece done on coquille board, in this case as a cover for "Hampshire Life". I like the egg-shaped doorway to the chicken coop.



Although it's difficult to see in this image, I also used a small piece of Chartpak pattern film -- the kind with opaque white dots instead of black dots -- to fade out the silhouette of the trees in the background. I usually didn't combine media like this.

I also found in my archives these rough sketches I did while trying to work out the idea for this cover drawing. (Don't ask me what that strange face in the upper right hand corner is doing there -- it's probably just a random doodle having nothing to do with the work I was supposed to be doing.) -- PL

Blast from the Past #287: Gourds on coquille board

I recently found this piece in my files, framed it, and hung it on the wall in our kitchen. It's almost certainly something I did for "Hampshire Life", but there is a remote possibility that I drew it for a "Big Y" advertisement.



I especially like the "flying saucer"-shaped gourd on the lower left -- not sure what kind that is. -- PL

Blast from the Past #286: Homeless man making coffee

I can't recall exactly what publication I drew this piece for, but I suspect it was "Hampshire Life".



It's one of the few times I used ink wash for grey tones in an illustration. -- PL

Blast from the Past #283: Fire tower

This is another drawing I did back in 1980 for "Hampshire Life", and this one was printed on the cover page. It's an illustration of a tower in a local state forest employed for scoping out forest fires. (I think I used the one in Goshen, at the DAR, as the model for this piece.) I'm posting it without cleaning it up, so the things done to the original for purpose of pasting up (this was pre-computers, remember) are visible. You can see that some of the paper around the top bits of the drawing was actually cut away -- I'm pretty sure that was to allow the drawing to be superimposed over the "Hampshire Life" logo. I wish they'd done that to a stat of the artwork instead of the artwork itself, but -- such is life.



As I recall, this was not a fun drawing to do. Getting all those skinny girders to line up in proper perspective was a real pain. -- PL

Blast from the Past #282: Early Duo-Shade drawing

I think this may have been my second attempt to employ the Graphix Duo-Shade art board -- the stuff Kevin and I used for many of the early TMNT books -- to create an illustration back in the early 1980's. I'm pretty sure it was done for Hampshire Life.



I'm showing this one in its "raw" form, just at it looked in the photograph I took of the original, so that the odd contours of the piece of Duo-Shade are clearly visible. I do this to reiterate how -- because this stuff was so expensive -- I would try to maximise the use of every single square inch of a sheet of it. -- PL

Blast from the Past #268: Foot soaking feet

This is one of the many drawings I did for "Hampshire Life" back in the early 1980's. It's one of my favorites -- I like the cartoon absurdity of it. And I liked that my editor at "Hampshire Life" let me get away with stuff like this. -- PL

Blast from the Past #256: Pasta Claus

Seeing as how we have entered "Christmas Month" (hard to believe the holiday is little more than a mere three weeks away), I thought I would pull out some old Christmas-related artwork. First up is this drawing that I am sure I did for "Hampshire Life" back in the late 1970's or early 1980's, but I don't remember what the article it illustrated was about.



Maybe it had to do with serving spaghetti for Christmas dinner...? -- PL

Blast from the Past #253: My first Duo-Shade drawing (I think)

I'm pretty sure this was the first illustration I ever did using Graphix Duo-Shade board, the paper on which Kevin and I would later draw most of the early TMNT comics. The tones -- especially the light ones -- on this particular drawing have faded somewhat, as they sadly tend to do on Duo-Shade originals. I think it has something to do with the nature of the chemicals which combine to make the tones.



I think this was probably done in the late 1970's, and quite possibly for "Hampshire Life". -- PL

Blast from the Past #251: "Vegetable Wheel" Hampshire Life cover

This is one of my favorites of the covers I did for Hampshire Life, and if memory serves it was one of my editor's favorite, too. I like it for the drawing, which I think came out well, but also for the fact that it was one of those rare times when the art was meant to be USED.



This was intended not only as a cover illustration, but as the front of a practical "wheel"-type guide for planting and harvesting vegetables. The black rectangles in the drawing, labeled "Type of Vegetable", "Time to Plant" and so on, were meant to be windows through which the appropriate information could be shown. The second part of the "wheel", containing that information positioned so it would appear behind the correct window, was printed inside Hampshire Life, as were the directions for making the "wheel". (Those were basically to mount the two pages on two sheets of stiff cardboard, then cut them out -- including the windows -- and join them together in the center with a paper fastener. In the printed version, I think a small dot was added in the exact center to make assembly easier. Note the small indent on the right hand side -- this was meant to be cut out, along the dotted line, so as to make turning the wheel with the instructions on it a bit easier.)

I've always wondered how many people actually put this thing together. -- PL

Blast from the Past #250: Chickpeas and lentils

Here's another pen and ink stipple piece (with a little bit of white-out) from the late 1970's/early 1980's. It's one of a number of vegetable drawings I did back then for "Hampshire LIfe", some of which ended up being used on the menu of one of my favorite restaurants in Northampton, Paul and Elizabeth's.



This was drawn from life -- I bought some dried chickpeas and lentils for reference. I remember being amazed at how convoluted the surface shapes of the chickpeas were. -- PL

Blast from the Past #249: Tea party

This is another piece I did for Hampshire Life, back in the late 1970's or early 1980's. -- PL