Famous Illustrators' Work at Wall Drug

If you're an illustration fan and happen to be driving on Interstate 90 in southwestern South Dakota close by the Badlands, either coming from or going to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore, do not fail to stop in at Wall Drug, a long-time major tourist attraction.

There, scattered along various walls in the restaurant area you will be able to spy illustration art by a number of well-known artists from the 1920s into the 1950s.

Below are some photos I took. Due to placement, lighting conditions and such, they serve as highly rough documentation. Go to Wall and see the real things.

Click on images to enlarge.

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Harvey Dunn -- "The Gray Dawn"

Harvey Dunn

N.C. Wyeth -- "The Devil's Whisper"

Dean Cornwell "The Train Station"

Dean Cornwell -- "The Man You Plan to Hang" -- 1924

Harold von Schmidt

Unknown illustrator

John La Gatta -- "Cowgirls"

Keith Ferris: Disciplined Aviation Artist

If you have visited the Air and Space Museum on the Washington DC mall, you probably viewed the huge mural (above) of U.S. Army B-17 bombers under attack. It was painted by acclaimed aviation artist Keith Ferris (1929 - ). His Wikipedia entry is here. A series of images of his studio begins here.

There are three basic approaches to depicting the shape of an aircraft. One is to copy a photograph or use a photo as the basis and make slight adjustments to compensate for camera lens distortion of the subject. The second approach is to "eyeball" the subject, either by observing it in person or making use of reference photos so as to understand the subject's shape from differing viewpoints. This runs the greatest risk of creating an unrealistic depiction. Finally, the artist can make use of descriptive geometry to construct an image derived from two or more scaled profile of plan views of the subject airplane. Absent computer imaging software, description geometry is time-consuming, but yields proportionally accurate results (given the degree of perspective forcing used).

Keith Ferris preferred to use descriptive geometry, combining that with a good sense of composition and scene-setting.

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Dawn of a New Era - No. 504 Squadron Meteor IIIs over central London - by Frank Wootton - 1945
First, I contrast Ferris' work with that of another famous aviation artist, Frank Wootton (1911-1998). I might be wrong, but I think Wootton either never used that approach or else did so seldomly. The Gloster Meteor jet fighters in the image above do not quite seem realistic to me. This might be due to a lack of photos of them at the time he made the painting not long after the war had ended.

First of the Few - test flight of first production Spitfire - by Frank Wootton - 1980
Wootton painted this scene many years later. I need to note that most of his images were realistic views of the subject aircraft. But this Spitfire's wings seem out of proportion -- granting that "Spits" are difficult to draw properly. This is clearly a "freehand" job by Wootton.

Spitfire - by Keith Ferris
Now a Spitfire depiction by Ferris.

Spitfire workup - by Keith Ferris
It seem much more realistic because he did this workup before creating the final image.

Descriptive geometry detail of F-4 Phantom - by Wade Meyers
I include this as another example of a descriptive geometry based illustration in process.

Keith Ferris doing a workup at his drawing board
Photo from Farris' Web site showing him at work during an early stage of a project.

Farmer's Nightmare - Curtiss P-3A from Kelly Field, Texas
Ferris was the son of an Army Air Corps pilot who was stationed at Kelly Field (the main AAC training base during the 1930s). Keith would have been very young when P-3s were flown there, so this painting and the one below are more a tribute to that era than any distinct childhood memory of such planes.

Curtiss P-3As over Kelley Field

Real Trouble - Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf Fw 190 interceptors
One of many World War 2 images painted by Ferris.

Test of Courage - Fw 190 attacking a B-17
The same squadron attacking B-17s. The Fw 190 was firing at the bomber and the B-17 was spitting back 30 caliber machine gun fire from two positions, each using two such weapons. In such a situation the German fighter might have been shot down instead of the bomber.

To Little, Too Late - showing one of the few Army P-40s that got airborne during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Russell J. Brown shooting down a MiG-15 in the first jet-to-jet air combat, 8 November, 1950

Battle of Bien How Air Base - F-100 scramble

Saul Tepper Vignette Illustrations

Saul Tepper (1899-1987) is one of my favorite illustrators who worked in thick oil paints during the 1920s and early '30s. A number of illustrators used that style -- two of the best known being Dean Cornwell and Mead Schaffer, both of whom I've written about here.

I wrote about Tepper here and also mentioned him in other posts: use the search item on the right side to find them.

One way to classify illustrations has to do with whether or not they completely fill a square or rectangular framed space. Those that do not are call "vignettes." They include the subject people or objects often with a bit of environmental detailing. But there is much blank "white space" that sometimes would be filed with text when published.

Tepper made a number of vignette style illustrations. Some can be found in the link above. Others are presented below.

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Ray Prohaska's Multiple Styles

Ray Prohaska (1901-1981), was born Gracia Josef Prohaska near present-day Kotor in Montenegro. At that time, the city was called Càttaro and was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Prohaska family moved to the USA when Ray was eight years old.

This Leif Peng site has his Today's Inspiration blog posts dealing with Prohaska, and probably is best for dealing with his professional career. Prohaska's son Tony has this site which focuses more on Ray's origins. Some of the same information can be found on the Society of Illustrators site.

For what it might be worth, it seems that Prohaska was interested in fishing about as much as he was in art and illustration.

His career was successful. I credit this to his strong abilities that included the capacity to change his style to suit illustration market fashions. One item in the first link above is a statement that art directors would sometimes tell illustrators what style to use. For some reason, this hadn't occurred to me, even thought seems perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, given Prohaska's chameleon stylistic capability, perhaps that was more his experience than a general case. Most of the time, I think, artists with known styles were selected because art directors wanted an illustration in that particular style.

The downside for Prohaska, in terms of illustration history, is that his lack of a distinct style makes him less noted or memorable than the likes of Normal Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker and Jon Whitcomb.

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Aerial view of a harbor - c. 1930
I don't know where this view of various modes of harbor transportation was used.

Camel cigarettes ad - 1933
Watercolor was displacing oil paint as the fashionable illustration medium by the early 1930s.

Good Housekeeping editorial art - 1940
This was true at the end of the decade. Here Prohaska did considerable modeling of surfaces, unlike the later style in the previous image.

B.F.Goodrich tires ad - 1943
Now for five illustrations made in 1943 or thereabouts. During World War 2 rubber was diverted to the war effort, so here Goodrich is publicizing an alternative.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 14 August 1943
A Post cover slot was catching the illustration gold ring. This image demonstrates that Prohaska had hit the Big Time.

Whitman's Chocolates ad - 1943
Whitman's was a major brand in those days and advertised heavily. The battleship in the background appears to be of the New Mexico class or possibly a Pennsylvania.

Goodyear Aircraft ad - 1944
Goodyear built blimps and aircraft (the latter of other firm's designs) during the war.

World War 2 poster
A "Loose Talk can Lose Lives" themed poster.

Editorial art - 1950
Here Prohaska combines conventional illustration (the lady) with items featuring drawing.

Beer industry promotion ad - 1952
Conventional 1950s illustration with no sense of distinctive style.

Parents Magazine editorial art - December 1950
From shortly before, Prohaska is in a light form of David Stone Martin scratchy-pen mode.

Good Housekeeping editorial art - November 1959
Back to more thinly-painted conventional illustration.

Hicks Island
Prohaska did Fine Art and portraiture. This abstraction is a pretty good example of its type.

Ellen, Another Pyle

Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle (1876-1936) was a highly successful illustrator whose career mostly took place 1920-1935. My criterion is that she illustrated around 40 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, America's leading general-interest magazine in those days. For an illustrator, getting even one cover assignment for the Post marked entry into the big leagues of the field.

Ellen was not a birth-relation of Howard Pyle, the famous illustrator and teacher. But she was a student of his at Drexel in Philadelphia (her home town, she came from the upscale Germantown area). More important, she was one of his select group of students at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

She became a family member of Howard Pyle via marriage to his younger brother Walter Pyle (1859-1918). Ellen dropped her illustration career to raise their children, but resumed it upon his death.

Background on Ellen Pyle can be found here and here. The second link has Walter dying at age 42 when in fact that was Ellen's age when he died.

Below are examples of her Post cover art.

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Saturday Evening Post cover - 21 January 1922
She mostly painted attractive young women as subjects.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 10 July 1926
This cover marked the 150th anniversary of America' independence.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 11 June 1927
She included men as needed to set the scene.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 8 October 1927
Until the early 1940s Post cover art was vignette format, often with a geometric device as can be seen here and in the first two images above.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 17 October 1931
An unusual cover format (for the time) that is more framed art than vignette.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 9 January 1932
In real life, a roadster driven in January would have the car's top raised along with the side curtains -- so here Ellen used some artistic license.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 24 November 1934
This is a study for the final cover that is essentially the same.  Her car is convincing, which to me is a sign that the illustrator knew her stuff.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 21 September 1935
One of her last Post covers.