My Earliest Art
My Earliest Art Cartoons and Pen-and-Ink
Drawings
 rt
was everything to me in my teenage years. I did well in my other
classes at Minneapolis Central High School (I was valedictorian
of my class of 385) but I felt that art was the only way I would
be able to distinguish myself. I was not an athlete, and I was by
nature shy. So I devoted every spare moment to creating art. My
theory was that the harder I worked at a project, the better it
would turn out. I drew cartoons and comic strips and made enormous
drawings in India ink, working with a tiny little fine-point croquille
pen. I drew a regular cartoon strip for the Minneapolis Star &
Tribune which ran in a paper they published for their army of newsboys
(I was one of them). I remember trying to make the strip look as
though Milton Caniff had done it (of course it was not that good).
Gradually, I became aware of the limitations of working only in
black and white. That was when I discovered the work of the great
illustrator Albert Dorne and began working, as he did, in colored
inks. Oil painting still lay in the future.
Me, about 15 years
old.
I bought the windsor
chair in a junk store because I had seen pictures of Norman
Rockwell using one. My mother made the white curtains
to add to the studio effect. On the drawing board is a
pen-and-ink of the three ships of Columbus — a summer-long
project. I was very serious about it all. |
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Senior
Scholastic Magazine Cover, 1952
I was 16 when this
was drawn in India ink, using a croquille pen. I was trying
to emulate my new hero, Norman Rockwell. In fact, there
is one of his Saturday Evening Post covers tacked to the
side of my taboret, and a book about him, with his picture
on the cover, can be seen on the shelf of the taboret.
Pen-and-Ink
Drawing, 1952
I had not yet begun
to paint in oils when I made this unflattering drawing
of my father and brother. I was fascinated by the challenge
of making huge drawings using a tiny fine-point pen. I
tried to load in as much detail as possible. Later, when
I began to paint in oils, I had to "unlearn"
this approach. |
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