In 1958, when nine-year old Connie Mierzwiak was belting out Brenda Lee songs, she actually had designs on kicking rock and roll’s ass. A little girl with a giant voice, she was signed to a recording contract and released her first album in 1971 under the name Ruby Jones. She performed regularly in her native Toledo, …
This week’s challenge word on the Illustration Friday website is “perspective”. Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-surrealistic painter and an early influence on Salvador Dalí. His works from the early twentieth century were jumbled assemblages of shapes and arches and empty buildings and mannequins in skewed perspective and random placement. As his career progressed, he adopted …
On this date, February 21, in 1958, Gerald Holtom was commissioned to design a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ upcoming march in London against nuclear war. The march was scheduled for Easter 1958, a little over a month away. Holtom, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, combined the semaphore sign for “N” …
The Monday Artday current challenge is “caricature”. I’ll be honest, I went the easy route and drew two famous people who are pretty easy to caricature (because they are almost caricatures themselves), George Burns and Jack Benny. Despite the on-stage jabs at each other, George Burns and Jack Benny were the best of friends. George …
Remember Saturday afternoon kiddie matinees at the movies? Thank K. Gordon Murray. Murray, an entrepreneur as early as his teen years, set up a makeshift bingo game in one of his funeral director father’s cemetery tents. He took his game on the road with a carnival, eventually becoming the traveling show’s manager. In the late …
Barbara La Marr had a whirlwind, but brief, career. She began performing at an early age. She married at seventeen, the first of her five marriages. She became a screenwriter and then an actress appearing in over thirty films in six years. Barbara was given the nickname “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World”. She …
Gail Russell got an “introducing” credit in the 1944 supernatural thriller “The Uninvited” with Ray Milland, although she had made two earlier films. “The Univited”, one of the first Hollywood movies to present a ghost story in a serious manner (as opposed to comedies), made Gail an overnight star. She starred in a host of …
Elvia Allman had a long and productive career and, most likely, you never heard of her. Elvia made her debut on Bob Hope’s radio show in the late 1930s, portraying the man-crazy character Cobina, a parody of Cobina Wright, a society debutante of the time. Wright sued over the portrayal. The case was settled out …
The weekly challenge on the Illustration Friday website is “focused”. Andy Warhol fooled everyone. The iconic pioneer in pop art and experimental film was fully focused on one thing, and one thing only — making money. He took everyday objects Campbell’s soup, flowers, knives, Coca-Cola, Brillo scouring pads and forced the public to view …
This week’s challenge word on the Illustration Friday website is “clumsy”. Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American playwrights. He wrote The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose Tattoo and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, to name just a few. Williams used eyedrops on a daily basis and had a ritual …
