Saturday, April 6, 2019
Fun with Vamps-- and More Vamps!
Actually it's Fun with a Pencil, a "how to draw" book by Andrew Loomis, and first published in 1939. I found this for a quarter the other day at a salvation army style store and immediately grabbed it, not only for the fun art styles inside, but also because I know this book in hardcover format can actually fetch some pretty penny prices on eBay. Lots of basic, illustrative ground is covered in 120 pages, and whether or not "everyone" can actually "easily" draw when you reach the end of the book remains to be seen. There's a variety of styles depicted as well, funny, cartoony, realistic etc... but my favorites are from the few pages I've posted below.
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4 comments:
She was a scamp, a camp, and a bit of a tramp.
She was a V-A-M-P...Vamp!
It seemed like the heads grew more and more proportionate as I scrolled through the post. The first ones are grotesque and strange, then somewhere in the middle we hit "Wally Wood Mad satire style," and then, by the end, they were pretty much normal. Neat stuff. 120 pages, wow. I guess at least some of them are the typical art steps, right? "Draw a circle one-sixth of the way up the page, then a parenthesis, then a rectangle; add hair and detail and, poof, you have accidentally drawn a pirate!"
I wonder how many would be artists were encouraged (or later discouraged) to attempt to become artist because of this book and others like it. Would be artists would end up being too hard on themselves when the finished product was less than perfect.
Today there are books and online tutorials that teach art or cartooning. I wonder what Andrew Loomis would think of the modern art courses available today.
I saw a newer edition of this book in my public library, but I'd like to find an old and well-worn edition, because then I would know someone had studied it. I had a copy many years ago; I wore it out!
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