Brain Droppings, as a term, was originally coined by the comedian George Carlin and he used it as the title of his,"first real book",
in 1997.
I always liked the mental image that those words, in combination, evoked. That ideas are the excreta of the brain, often
coming after a period of ingesting and digesting a diverse banquet, of all that life presents us with.
That should give any potential reader an indication, that this posting is likely to be fragmented and scatter-shot!
A very long time ago, I bought a couple of small paperbacks that collected the socio-political cartoons of Ron Cobb. This would have been around 1978 and I had no idea of who Ron Cobb was but I was very taken with the radically edgy humour and the line work employed in the images.
Mister Cobb went on to have a stelar career as a movie concept designer and worked on Star Wars, Aliens, Conan the Barbarian and many others; look him up, it is quite a list.
I always loved his colour sense and it is a great shame that "Colorvision", published in 1981 by Australian publisher Wild & Wooly, is the only coffee table style book about him.
The wonderful pen and ink drawings above, are the work of Charles Dana Gibson, one of the best artists in that style. He was also, in the late 1800s one of the stars of the the newly burgeoning magazine industry and his depictions, of the 'pretty young things' of the day, made the 'Gibson Girl' part of the language.
As a gateway 'drug' into the artists of that age, he is probably the most accessible to cartoonists and comic book artists but there are many, many more. Do yourselves a favour and look into the other great artists of that time, Howard Candler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg and Arthur Burdett Frost;
to name just a few.
The pages above are borrowed from the one and only, slim, volume about an artist that I admired.
Ken Barr first caught my attention, as the cover artist on the influential (?) fanzine, Phase 1, that only had one issue and was published in 1971, by John Carbonaro and, I am assuming, the very young, Sal Quartuccio.
I ran across a piece about him the other day and I was saddened to learn that Ken Barr had passed away, at the age of 83, in March of this year. Goodbye Mister Barr, you will be missed.
Frank Frazetta needs no introduction to fans of fantastic literature, after all, his covers for Conan the Barbarian, are legendary.
The interest, for me, in presenting the rough sketch and the published book cover, side by side, is in seeing what Frazetta included in his 'rough', quick, (presumably) sketch because that is the essence of the image.
As small and relatively simple, as it is, the sketch shows us what Frank Frazetta felt was important, as marks on paper, to describe a sexy young woman.
To be quite frank, no pun intended, I would be overjoyed, if my finished drawings, looked as effortless and as good, as a Frazetta sketch.
That's all for now, I think that I will try and concentrate on cartooning and 'how to draw them', in my next post.
People like Ben Caldwell and Rad Sechrist, will figure prominently!
