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Cold Comfort 2--2013

More abandoned furniture on the sidewalks of Los Angeles

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Cold Comfort, 2013

Abandoned seating in the Los Angeles area.

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Get an extra one for Mum!

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Weisz, Robert--Four Steps in a Scraper Board Head

Well into the 1960s specialists in scraper board illustration (known in the US as scratchboard) were in demand. Scratchboard was a clay-coated card stock which would be covered with Indian ink, Using special tools the artist modelled his subject by scraping away the ink. The engraving-like white-on-black result was striking., However scratchboard's main appeal to advertisers was practical. Scratchboard drawings gave a photographic effect but they reproduced well on cheap papers (e.g. newsprint) on which real photos came out dull and muddy. Cars and machinery looked especially good in scratchboard. This four-step tutorial by Austrian commercial artist Robert Weisz appeared in Scraping Technique by Oskar Vangerow (Vienna, Josef Eberle KG, 1959).

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Anonymous Artist--Lux Ad, Ladies Home Journal, May1937

From the mid 1920s through the 1940s the back pages of women's magazines teemed with these hybrid advertisements. A large, rather hokey photograph with a dramatic balloon introduced the subject, and the rest of the pitch played out in a comic strip. Lux commissioned tons of these. Gosh knows who the artist was.

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I generally don't re-blog stuff, feeling a duty to upload new material. But I had to respond to this item. I have a Voice-o-Graph disc like this, a greeting my late father sent to Mom in the early 1940s. It's comforting in a way to hear Dad's voice again, but eerie, too, because the voice is Dad as a very young man (about 24), which of course is not how I knew him. I offered to send the disc to Mom when I discovered it amongst a bunch of old photo albums, but she declined, saying she wasn't sure she'd want to hear it.

"Mad Fad — Teenagers are now using voice-o-graph recordings for sending messages. The kids think these are practical for retaining as souvenirs… If the old saying is true, ‘write and fear no man, don’t write and fear no woman,’ then it seems this would be good advice in respect to making a verbal record of poems and teenage jive talk."

From “Teen Talk” column, La Crosse (Wisconsin) Tribune, Sunday, August 24, 1947

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Here we go again. A cartoon which derived its strength from being brief, quiet, dry and simple, is turned into a long, over-produced and bombastic feature complete with new "just like every other animated feature"-style characters and of course the obligatory (yawn) salvation of the universe. Pfui.

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Tummy Bear!

Just in time for Halloween: a killer robot Teddy to scare the dydees off your toddler.

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Frank Godwin--Studio Clinch

An unidentified magazine illustration by one of the kings of pen and ink. Found in an Italian fan magazine.

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1953 Buick sales brochure

The 50s through the mid-60s were the Golden Age of automobile painting. There was no photography at all in this 16-page brochure, just dozens of paintings making the cars romantic beyond belief. No credits, of course.

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Millard, C. E.--RCA Speakers poster (mid-late 1930s)

I found this beautiful deco-style poster in C. E. Wallace's book Commercial Art (revised edition, 1939, Whittlesey House)

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Frankenstein goes green.

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Ron Harris: Frankenstein Advertises Coffee (2010)

A Halloween-themed in-store ad for coffee. Markers on three joined sheets of card stock, appx. 14x38 inches.

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Arthur DuVall and Herb Simpson: Theatrical lobby cards ca 1935

These were one-off advertising posters produced by artists working for the theater that showed the movies. Read about the lost occupation of theatrical sign artist here. From the book Martin's Complete Ideas, Vol. 4 by H. C. Martin (Dick Blick, Inc. n.d. circa 1936).

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The Romance Is Gone

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Wise Advice from a Grocer

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What every lonely G.I. needs, from the pages of The Bouncer.

As written the dialogue sounds like those computerized drop-in voices: "Wow! These sure are some [click}++love letters++ in this book!" Other choices: ++funny stories++ ++great recipes++ ++dirty pictures++