Society of Illustrator's prize reception dinner on June 22nd, 2017. The walls are covered with art from Stephen Korshak's collection of illustration art, here including two works by Gustaf Tenggren. (All photos in this blog post except for the Tenggren paintings by Jason Goodfriend, courtesy of the Society of Illustrators.)
For once, the event reception was held in the exhibition area, which turned out to provide a spectacular environment for the venue, hosting parts of Stephen Korshak's amazing collection of illustration art as it was. Very appropriately, two works by Gustaf Tenggren were included in the show, both of which from his early artist years.
Gustaf Tenggren: Trolls walking downhill, 1915.
Gustaf Tenggren: Witch. From Bland Tomtar och Troll, 1922.
Receiving the award on behalf of Gustaf Tenggren was Barbara Wells Fitzgerald, daughter of Gustaf's younger brother, Gunnar. Her son Christopher and Nhu Tran accompanied her at the event.
Gustaf Tenggren's niece Barbra Wells Fitzgerald, her son Cristopher Wells and Nhu Tran on the Hall of Fame red carpet.
Barbra Wells Fitzgerald sharing her memories of her uncle Gustaf Tenggren to the reception audience.
Barbra Wells Fitzgerald and Cristopher Wells holding the awards.
Gustaf Tenggren sure was in good company: the other illustrators awarded in 2017 were:
Mort Drucker
Bart Forbes
Burne Hogarth
Anita Kunz
George Petty
Ralph Steadman
From the impressive list of awardees, three were present at the reception. Ralph Steadman, who had provided the event logo, could unfortunately not make it but was participating through a video.
Ralph Steadman, participating through a video link, holding the symbols of the event.
Anita Kunz
Bart Forbes
Anita Kunz and Bart Forbes both held acceptance speeches to the audience from the stand, while the reception's grand old man, Mort Drucker, preferred to thank for the award more briefly. After all, this gentleman, born in 1929, is in his right to go easy after a 60-year career as a cartoonist.
Legendary MAD illustrator and Hall of Fame awardee Mort Drucker enjoying the company at the Society of Illustrator's prize ceremony.
All in all, this induction ceremony consolidated Gustaf Tenggren's repute as one of the important early New York illustrators during the years when the Society of Illustrator were still in its bud. I'm so happy that his niece Barbara was able to attend the venue, accepting the prize on his behalf. It would have made him proud, entitling himself an artist as he always was throughout his career.
Black, red and white chalk on buff paper, roughy 7 x 10 inches (19 x 25 cm); in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum. Use the Zoom feature or download link.
Watteau was noted for his "trois crayon" drawings, in which black, red and white chalks are used on toned paper, usually buff or cream, to great effect in quickly rendering figures or faces.
Here, he has succinctly captured the likeness of his subject with gestural lines, a bit of hatching for shading and some quickly noted white highlights. For all of their simplicity, the drawings have a remarkable presence.
These are Wilhelm M. Busch lithographs which are currently being offered on Ebay. The first two images are observations during Busch's life drawing classes. Boy, what would I give to have been one of his students way back. If any German reader had that experience, please leave us a comment on what that was like!
I do prefer this approach to drawing the human figure over the popular US style that is being taught in many art schools, which layers flashy shadows and highlights over the body like a special effect.
With Busch (as well as with Kley) the economy of the line rules.
Being a 2D animator my preference shouldn't surprise you.
This sketch had to be inspired by Heinrich Kley, because of the fantasy aspect.
A farmer on a wagon that's pulled by a donkey making his way through the the legs of a giant nude woman. I leave any sexual innuendo for you to interpret.
If you use the phrases "dark side" or "light side" in casual conversation, people may think you're making a Star Wars reference. But if you're among artists, the phrase may mean something else entirely.
I sometimes think of drawings as belonging to two camps: light and dark. It's a question of whether a work is more governed by light or dark tones and whether the drawing tries to bowl you over or to hold your hand and calmly pull you into its world.
Sometimes one side dominates the other; other times the balance is more subtle. Below you can see a few drawings I think fall on one side or the other—it shouldn't be hard to guess which is which.
Eye of the Beholder, by Tara Merkt, 2016, scratchboard, 14 x 11. Honorable mention winner in the 2016 Shades of Gray Competition.
Folks who clearly fall in the "dark" camp might include scratchboard artists who begin with a pitch-black surface, which often remains a commanding force in the finished image. A dark artist might also start with a white page but fill it with broad swathes of intense charcoal strokes, producing dramatic chiaroscuro effects.
Artists on the "light side" might use a gentler touch, for instance using a hard, light graphite pencil on white paper. And there's also everything in-between; many artists use a full range of grays, and some drawings truly fall right in the middle.
Shades of Gray
I've been thinking about the two camps of drawing because the Shades of Gray Competition is currently open. I've helped to judge all five installments of this drawing competition so far, and I'm looking forward to judging this year's entries after the competition closes on September 8.
One of the things I enjoy the most about the contest is getting to see how different artists approach this light/dark divide. When you're working in grayscale, your approach to that question becomes a huge part of how you approach your subject.
So—which type of artist are you? Do your drawings lean light or dark? Or are you one of those rare birds who fall exactly in the middle?
Let us know what you think. And, if you're up to the challenge, please consider entering the 6th Annual Shades of Gray Competition. It's a great way to show off your skills and get your drawings seen by a wide audience. (Cash prizes, too!) We can't wait to see what you've created.
Stacy in Profile, by Laura Tundel, 2015, graphite, 10 1/2 x 9. Honorable mention winner in the 2015 Shades of Gray Competition.
Verge, by Loren Miller, 2015, charcoal and ink, 30 x 22. Honorable mention winner in the 2015 Shades of Gray Competition.
Ascend, by Katherine Young, 2015, graphite, 48 x 48. 1st-place winner in the 2016 Shades of Gray Competition.
Hauling West, by John Sanchez, 2015, charcoal pencil and white pastel on gray paper, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2. Honorable mention winner in the 2015 Shades of Gray Competition.
Meg here with this weeks TUTOR TUESDAY (I'm a broken record I know it's Wednesday, sorry for the delay) I just wanted to show you guys some exercises that I do all the time and that I think are a bit more fun than what I usually teach! If you have any tutorial recs send 'em in here or to my personal! Now go forth and I'll see you next Tuesday!
Here are a couple of examples that show the graphic influence T.S. Sullivant had on the design of certain Disney animal characters.
The first one is the brown cow from the 1950 short film The Brave Engineer. The train had to come to a sudden and abrupt stop because the cow happened to stand on the railroad tracks. With a nonchalant attitude she turns away and moves on. Milt Kahl animated this scene with all the comedy you can get out of a Sullivant design. Oversized muzzle, and hip bones that stick out for days.
This sketch by story artist James Bodrero depicts a young Gauchito on a horse. The final 1945 short film The Flying Gauchito includes a flying donkey instead. There is a certain size and shape Sullivant applies to a horse's head, and you can clearly see the influence when compared to Bodrero's beautiful sketch.
Most artists working in the animation industry during its golden age just loved Sullivant's work.
There really is nobody like him.
Now who is going to publish that coffee table book on his work?!
When Dr. Sigmund Rascher of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a paramilitary organization of Nazi Germany, started conducting his merciless medical experiments at the Dachau concentration camp using prisoners as guinea pigs, he sent for a prisoner, an artist, to document his work. His assistant Walter Neff, a former camp inmate himself, approached Georg Tauber, a Bavarian advertising illustrator. Lured by the prospect of a reduced prison term, Tauber took the offer in 1942. However, unable to stomach the barbarity on display, he showed up at these sessions not more than three times.
One day, he told Neff that he had had enough. As Tauber recalled later in a 1946 letter to the Munich Public Prosecution Office, "Neff said to me, 'Don't be so stupid, he can get you released in a few months and you're free.' 'Walter,' I said, 'even if I have to stay here for another ten years, it's alright. I can't watch that again, I just can't.'"
Today, almost 70 years after Tauber's death from tuberculosis in 1950, his heartrending sketches and paintings of the medical experiments and the horrors of the camp have become the subject of an exhibition at the very site where he was held as an "asocial" prisoner between 1940 and 1945.
Dachau was the first concentration camp ever built by the Nazis, weeks after Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933. There were about 32,000 documented deaths, and thousands more undocumented, at this location. (Numbers here, and in the rest of this article, have been provided by the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.) It set the template for others that followed.
Apart from the Jews, the Nazi regime also imprisoned those who did not fit its ideal of Volksgemeinschaft (people's community). In the eyes of the Nazis, this included those who repeatedly broke the law as well as members of the LGBTQ community. Another category of persecuted people was the "asocial prisoners." These were mainly the homeless, drug addicts, people with mental illnesses, beggars, sex workers, as well as the Sinti and Roma.
Tauber fell into the latter category, the turbulent arc of his life mirroring the choppy trajectory of the early 20th century. As a 17-year-old, Tauber volunteered for military service in World War I. Two years later, as he lay injured in bed after a street fight in Berlin, he was given morphine as a pain reliever. This was the beginning of his addiction.
Over the following years, his life was interjected with brief stays in psychiatric hospitals, as well as prisons for minor theft charges, fraud, and forgery. In 1929, he joined the Nazi party but left it a year after Hitler got elected. That same year, in 1934, he separated from his wife, the mother of his twins, and began an itinerant lifestyle. Three years later, he was arrested by the Gestapo for a letter he wrote in which he threatened to murder Benito Mussolini. Then, in 1940, because of his morphine addiction, he found himself at Dachau amid 10,000 other asocial prisoners.
Engaging in any artistic activity was prohibited at Dachau, unless commissioned by the SS. And yet, poetry, music, and painting found their way out of these confines as acts of resistance, self-expression, and documentation. Art also worked as a form of currency in exchange for cigarettes or food.
Tauber initially found an ally in Rudi Felsner, who worked as an employee at an SS porcelain manufacturing company. Starting in 1941, Felsner discreetly provided Tauber with watercolors and other paints in exchange for Tauber's drawings. The barter system was busted by the SS not long after; Felsner got conscripted as a soldier and was sent to the Eastern Front, while Tauber was detained in a bunker in 1944.
Tauber's paintings vividly capture the brutality and inhumanity of the medical experiments conducted at Dachau. In one image, he depicts a hypothermia experiment, 300-400 of which were conducted at the Dachau concentration camp, killing about 90 people total. Subjects were made to endure freezing cold water until they reached life-threatening body temperatures. Meanwhile, doctors stood by and recorded physical changes.
"As they were then pulled out of the tank, with a pulley, dead or having collapsed, it needs to be kept in mind that the water in the tank was 8-10 degrees [Celsius] below zero. But that didn't stop them from ridiculing the subjects," Tauber wrote in the 1946 letter.
In another of his paintings, American soldiers are seen vaccinating and disinfecting former inmates after the camp was liberated.
Tauber recorded not only his own experiences, but those of his fellow prisoners. Through his renderings, a viewer sees what happens when humans plunge to the very depths of inhumanness: men march to their deaths as skeletons, they are stripped and crushed, corpses are stuffed in ovens when there is no wood.
For decades after his death, Tauber was forgotten. His art had been in the possession of Anton Hofer, another Dachau prisoner. Employees at Dachau, which is now a memorial site and museum, presume Tauber gave Hofer the artwork himself. It was about six years ago that Hofer's granddaughters chanced upon the drawings in his estate and approached staff at the memorial site with their discovery.
"What was striking about Tauber's work was that not only did it throw a light on asocial prisoners, of which very little is known, but also about life at the camp after the liberation led by American troops," says Andrea Riedle, head of the research department at the Dachau memorial site, who curated the exhibition with her colleague Stefanie Pilzweger.
"After the liberation, Tauber and many other prisoners spent more than a month at the camp," says Riedle. "Due to terrible hygiene conditions and overcrowding, infectious diseases like typhus and spotted fever began to spread. The camp was quarantined. Tauber depicted this period in his work."
At the end of World War II, the asocial prisoners faced stigma. According to Riedle, they were denied the status of victims of the Nazi regime, and thus received no compensation. A few months after leaving the camp, together with fellow prisoner Karl Jochheim, Tauber cofounded "K.Z.-Arbeitsgemeinschaft 'Die Vergessenen,'" an association that campaigned for these "forgotten" concentration camp victims.
While Tauber was inclined to make postcards of his drawings and sell them, other survivors dismissed the idea as unashamedly mercenary. One of them published an article in a newspaper condemning Tauber. Bringing perspective, Riedle says, "Even though he did want to make money, he also wanted to make the drawings public so the people could know about the Nazi crimes."
During his lifetime, Tauber didn't see his work being recognized or appreciated. What he did see was two of his pieces being used as evidence at the Dachau and Nuremberg trials. Today, Tauber's art serves as yet another reminder of the extraordinary cruelty of the Nazi regime.
