Following up on yesterday's post, here's a preliminary sketch in gouache and ink by John Gannam of polo players.
The book Forty Illustrators and How They Worked
describes how tireless he was with these sketches, which were created quickly out of his imagination from the moment he read the story he was asked to illustrate:
"At the outset we find John engrossed in his manuscripts, a pad and pencil handy for notations of illustrative possibilities. Then comes the graphic struggle with countless pencil and brush sketches. First ideas are as likely as later ones to be the best, but he won't be satisfied until he has worked all around the problem. He says he spends far more time in preparatory study and gets more fun out of it than in the execution of the finished painting."
Resources
There's no Wikipedia page on John Gannam. Would someone out there like to start one?
Flickr set: collected by Leif Peng
Online bio: He was honored in Society of Illustrator's Hall of Fame.
Book: Forty Illustrators and How They Worked
Magazine: Illustrators 51 with article on John Gannam (free digital preview with option to pay for download)
Previous posts which mention John Gannam
My book Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist covers the sketch process.
6 comments:
I learn something from every one of these illustrators and grateful that you continue to highlight them and their work. Amused to read a couple of the reviews of the Forty Illustrators book on Amazon...complaining that the book is "old" and that the readers, who are presumably artists themselves, say that they "can't relate to these old guys". Good technique is timeless. Maybe there's a generation out there who live on Manga and everything for them is computer illustration and work done with markers but there are a lot of us who still appreciate technical mastery of traditional materials and techniques. Hope that those who don't appreciate it now will come to as they mature.
Gronk, wow, that's funny. If anyone thinks that '40 Illustrators' is old or unrelatable, they should check out some of the Victorian era books on drawing and painting, which discussed art theory with remote, flowery language, with no illustrations, and no practical advice. But still, I can get something out of those too, it just takes more digging. My own obsession is to try to understand what was in the mind of people who created art that I admire. What were they actually thinking? What was their strategy of picture-making? Very few artists in the 19th century and earlier verbalized such things in concrete terms, and when they did, it's like gold to us.
He was chasing his dreams to come true.
And sometimes he succeeded with one or two of those eloborate sketches.
That must have been the fun he's speaking / verbalizing of.
"My own obsession is to try to understand what was in the mind of people who created art that I admire. What were they actually thinking? What was their strategy of picture-making? Very few artists in the 19th century and earlier verbalized such things in concrete terms, and when they did, it's like gold to us."
Well, that's what you do for us. Even digging I wouldn't have run across all this.
"He says he spends far more time in preparatory study and gets more fun out of it than in the execution of the finished painting."
Such an enthusiasm for the preliminary work can do wonders—it did for him.
You don't know how many great artists, books and texts I've discovered through your blog... and how much that has helped me grow... for which I'm ever grateful.
These are timeless. Check out Robert McGinnis—one of my favorites and still painting at 93.
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