Category ArchiveRowland B. Wilson



Bill Peckmann &Comic Art &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 13 Jul 2012 08:46 am

Whites of Their Eyes

A couple of years ago I’d posted some cartoons from Rowland B. Wilson‘s 1962 book, Whites of Their Eyes. (You can see two of them at: part 1 and part 2.) However these posts were from a xeroxed copy of the book and the quality was a bit shabby.

Bill Peckmann now has a copy of the book and has sent me new scans of these great cartoons. Bill writes:

    It’s kind of hard to believe that this 1962 collection of Sat. Eve. Post, the New Yorker and Esquire gags are from the beginning, formative years of Row’s early career. He was only 32 years old when this book came out. Most of us would be happy to top off a career with this kind of exceptional work.


The book’s dustcover


The actual book’s embossed hard cover.

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Here is an upbeat ’1984′ happening. Two legends in their own time, Carl Barks and Rowland Wilson, got to meet each other for the first time in Carl’s home town of Grants Pass Oregon. It was definitely a mutual admiration society!


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left to right, Gare Barks, Rowland, Carl and Suzanne Lemieux Wilson.

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The Barkses were then kind enough to introduce us to their good friend,
cartoonist Russell (Broom-Hilda) Myers and his wife.

L. to r. Gare, Mrs. and Mr. Russ Myers, Carl, Suzanne and Rowland.

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L. to r. Bill Peckmann, Russ and wife, Carl, Suzanne and Rowland.

Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 06 Jul 2012 04:29 am

Rowland Wilson’s Tubby & the Poo-Bah 2

- Last week I started scans of the 1972, Rowland Wilson book which featured his character, Tubby. Bill Peckmann sent me scans from the second in the Tubby series of books called Tubby and the Poo-Bah.

To see Part 1 of this book go here.

Here’s the remainder of that great children’s book
which begins where we left off: pages 32 & 33.

pg.46

pg.47

pg.52

pg.53

pg.58

pg.59

pg.64


Inner Back Cover


To complete the post, Bill Peckmann sent some photos from Rowland Wilson‘s California studio. He had a series of small figurines which he used to help in the design. Bill writes:
    “Rowland also had a way with an X-Acto blade, he was a master model builder and mixed media sculptor! These are studies he did to help him realize his cartoon characters.”


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Should you want to see my post of the first Tubby book go here.

Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 28 Jun 2012 06:24 am

Rowland Wilson’s Tubby & the Poo-Bah

- In 1972, Rowland Wilson published another book featuring his character, Tubby. (We’ve posted the first here.) Bill Peckmann surprised me with scans from the second in the series, Tubby and the Poo-Bah. Here’s what Bill had to write:

    Here is Rowland’s ‘Poo-Bah’ book. Lots of good news here, Denis Wheary‘s copy is almost in mint condition, the spine seems to be laying very flat for the scanner and RBW is really getting in the groove on this his second ‘Tubby’ book from 1972!

    I would also say that the editors let Rowland run with this like the art directors did in his early print ads and TV spots and because of that, we all came out winners!

Here’s the first half of the book. The second half will come next week.


The book’s cover

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This double page spread is beautiful in it’s simplicity. The three levels
of foreground, middle ground and background are very neatly realized,
especially the up front wave swell with it’s sculpted boy and boat,
all those different shapes singing!

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Bill Peckmann followed up this first half of the book with this:

    Suzanne Wilson and I were admiring Rowland’s deft handling of water in ‘Poo-Bah’ and she was kind enough to send me these two ‘Mermaid’ pieces that RBW did. Add ‘em to your collection!

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Bill Peckmann &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 22 Jun 2012 05:40 am

Another RBW assorted

- Suzanne Wilson has sent me some scans of beautiful artwork by her late husband, Rowland B. Wilson. What magnificent draftsmanship. His compositions are extraordinary and his color design is just beautiful. I takes my breath away to see how simply these are composed, yet the drawing is just so expert.

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“Jean and Stephen are a loving couple–she loves the Yankees
and he loves the Red Sox”
Sunday News Magazine, New York, August 6, 1978

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Old Style Beer
“…and I downed this one at the corner bar!”

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“All my elephant chairs are upholstered with fabric made of “Belviva” yarn.
Under a sun like this, we need all the fade resistance we can get.

Collins and Aikman
HFD, Retailing Home Furnishings April 3, 1978

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“Forget that, Sherlock. International just found the rig
we need on their truck distribution computer.”

International Trucks, The Wall Street Journal, September 21, 1976

“Yes, I think we have enough Corny-Snaps and Cracklin’ Bran. Why do you ask?”

Ad text: “The customers are coming! Don’t get caught with your stocks down.”
Kellogg’s for magazine ads, 1977

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Way before Indiana Jones!
The Saturday Evening Post, May 19, 1956


Esquire Bourbon Dog
This was obviously a header for an Esquire article.


Calypso

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Over the Moon

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The Olympic Torch for
The Saturday Evening Post

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Leopard AHS

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Carl Jung used this cartoon in “”Man and His Symbols”

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The Wilson Studio

Bill Peckmann &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 15 Jun 2012 06:52 am

Rowland Wilson Calendar

- Continuing with the odd jobs posted yesterday.
In 1987, Rowland B. Wilson released a calendar called Murphy’s Law.
Bill Peckmann has forwarded the illustrations from it, and I’m posting them here.


The cover and June


January


February


March


April


May

June is already visible as the cover.


July


August


September


October


November


December

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The following are some additional rough pieces by Rowland.

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A Xerox of Row’s line drawing before the color elixir was added!
Great posing!

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Unfortunately this is an old faded Xerox, but here is a New
England Life ‘Dog Show’ gag. I’m sending it because of all
of the dogs in it, man, you can’t shake a stick at them,
they are just phenomenal! Catch all of the different breeds.

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A TV Guide rough.

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Another TV Guide rough.

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Two small thumbnail sketches before
starting to paint Playboy ‘Robin Hood’ gag.

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For gags that were extra special to him, Rowland would
pre plan and work out the color shading on a Xerox of
his line drawing. Here again is ‘Robin Hood’.

Rowland would usually discard his roughs after finishing a job,
but for some reason he kept a small stash of them at PK & A,
so when the studio finally closed it’s doors and we asked Row
what to do with them, he said dump ‘em. Which I promptly did
into my attache case! Since then I’ve found out from Suzanne Wilson
that for what ever reason, RBW did not hang on to his roughs,
much to her dismay. So what we see here is something on the rare side.
It’s ironic because Rowland always understood the passion and
vitality of everyone else’s roughs.

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– Finally, Trade Secrets : Rowland B. Wilson’s Trade Secrets: Notes on Cartooning and Animation has had a release date changed. Amazon is promising it’s pre order customers that we should get our copy the beginning of Aug.

Rowland Wilson‘s journals, in which he wrote about illustration and animation, have been gathered by Suzanne Wilson and are collected in this book. The information must certainly be very informative to students; the book seems to offer quite a bit of attention to Mr. Wilson’s animation art, just as it does his brilliant illustration and cartooning. I’m looking forward to seeing the book and will certainly make sure you know what I think of it when it does come out.

Bill Peckmann &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 12 Jun 2012 06:39 am

Rowland Wilson Assortment

- Rowland B. Wilson did many different types of illustration over the years. Thanks to Bill Peckmann and the loan from Denis Wheary we can post some of these oddities.

Here is a 1962 book from the Columbia Record Club titled ‘Musical Cartoon Album’. It included cartoons by an assortment of the well known cartoonists of the day. Rowland had his gag in there, fortunately for us.


Front Cover / Back Cover

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There is the prestigious job of doing a book for Colorforms. I’m not sure if they even have Colorforms today. It was a shiny plastic/rubberized sort of cut out doll that you’d pick up and place on the other pages of the book to form your own pictures. There was even a set in the Museum of Modern Art that just dealt with abstract shapes that you’d recreate into your own 20th Century Art Form. Bill Peckmann writes:

    ‘Wizard of OZ’ is a super find that Denis Wheary made. Both Suzanne Wilson and I were not aware that Rowland had done the book. We’re both trying to come with a publishing date, but the nearest we can come to is probably the very early 1970′s. It was definitely before Row went to Richard Williams in 1973. Those were the years RBW was very hot in the print world and a had an ace sales rep, he did not get much sleep in those days.

This is The Wizard of Oz, drawn and designed by Rowland. To get the sense of the book, I’ve posted small thumbnails of the images so they can sit side by side. If you click on any of the images it’ll enlarge to a good readable size.


Front Cover


Inner


Colorforms page


The card with the Colorforms on it came in a sleeve on the title page.

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Back Cover

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Here from 1977, is an editorial illustration Rowland did for the Sunday supplement of the New York Daily News. The yellowing of the newsprint paper is starting to show, but that seems to work with the subject matter of the illustration.

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Since you’ve already posted art from Rowland’s 1970′s Utica Club’s ‘Mountie’ TV commercial a number of years ago, I thought you might like to see the original thumbnail, production storyboard of that spot.

It’s a collaboration between Rowland and Phil Kimmelman done at Focus Design Studios.

Rowland always knew how to make a person feel good, even years later after working at all of the different animation studios that he did, he would tell us, that he always remembered those early animated commercial days as some of his most favorite, he just loved those ‘jam sessions’, and man, so did we!. It also helped that ad agencies picked Rowland to do the spot, which meant he was given carte blanche!

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Finally, here’s a piece of RBW spec art done to land a TV spot at PK&A. Sadly the ad agency’s brains were out to lunch and the job never happened. (Circa 1980)

We’ll continue this post on Friday.

Animation Artifacts &Bill Peckmann &Illustration &Layout & Design &Rowland B. Wilson 26 Apr 2012 05:49 am

Rowland Wilson Scrapbooks – pt.2

- Last week, we offered some pages from the scrapbook of Rowland B. Wilson. This was graciously loaned to the Splog by Suzanne Wilson, and we have a treat this week. A second installment. these pages were a source of inspiration for Rowland, and the clippings, for us, are also a remarkable view of the animation and illustration product of the time.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for initiating this and to Suzanne for sending it.

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Animation &Animation Artifacts &Bill Peckmann &Disney &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 19 Apr 2012 07:18 am

Rowland Wilson Scrapbooks

- Suzanne Wilson sent me some pages from the private scrapbook that Rowland B. Wilson kept for inspiration and reference. Seeing these pages, I was a bit surprised at what he collected. When I was a kid, I kept a scrapbook of everything – and I do mean everything – that was printed about animation. Remember, there were few books about animation back in the 60s; I had to hold onto everything available. I found looking at Rowland Wilson’s scrapbook not too different from my own, except that he kept material about the “Golden Years”. It gave me a smile.

Here are some of Suzanne’s comments:

    Rowland B. Wilson, ever the contrarian, once said when speaking of deciding one’s future “Why should you expect an eight-year-old boy to decide what a grown man should do?” He may have been a bit older than that (dates of the periodicals suggest age 12 through 15) when he assembled scrapbooks of his favorite subjects and illustrations from Disney, Life, Collier’s and Look magazines and the Dallas newspapers, but one look shows the premonition of a later artistic sensibility. He zeroed in on what exactly appealed to him visually and subjectively and never deviated. The influences were taken to heart and incorporated into a personal recognizable style.

    For example, “Speaking of Pictures”, a Disney spoof on the Old Masters (Image 15) clipped from Life Magazine in 1945 can be compared to The Sneezenfitz Gallery, drawn in 2005 for the cartoon novel “Cloak and Pistol”. One only has to look at “Casey at the Bat” (Image 16 to see a gestalt that was to emerge in the definitive baseball players in TV Guide. (See Rowland B. Wilson TV Guide Originals-1, posted February 16th.)

    The clippings can also be seen as interesting ephemera. Those from wartime show aircraft insignia designed by Disney, aviation gremlins and advertising of the time.

Here are some comments from Bill Peckmann, who requested Suzanne send me the material:

    I have to admit it’s been over 35 years since I last laid eyes on them when Rowland brought them in to PK&A for show and tell. He had just returned from a trip to his hometown of Dallas, Texas and couldn’t wait to show us what he brought back with him. This was just about the time in the 70′s when Disney was starting to come back into the good graces of the art world again. (Think Lincoln Center.) I remembered there was Disney and other great stuff in there, but couldn’t quite remember exactly what. Seeing the collection now after all these years, it feels like I’m looking at a precursor to the SPLOG. One can see now what a terrific eye and good taste Rowland had as a young teenager, and it’s also neat to see that animation was in his blood at such an early age, he just got a little sidetracked with very successful advertising, cartooning and illustrating careers before he went back to the first love of his life, animation. Lucky us!

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Suzanne Wilson is about to have a new book on the market: Rowland B. Wilson’s Trade Secrets: Notes for Cartooning and Animation.

It’s obvious that this book is directly related to this post. Rowland Wilson obviously kept journals in which he wrote about illustration and animation, and the information must certainly be very informative to students; some of these journals are published here. Presumably pages of the scrapbook may have made the book.

The book seems to offer quite a bit of attention to Mr. Wilson’s animation art, just as it does his brilliant illustration and cartooning. I look forward to getting my copy.

Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 18 Apr 2012 06:33 am

Tubby and the Lantern – pt. 2

- Here’s the conclusion of Tubby and the Lantern, the children’s book illustrated by Rowland B. Wilson and written by Al Perkins. Bill Peckmann has kindly sent scans of the double paged art of the book. We pick up where we left off . . .


The book’s cover

Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 10 Apr 2012 07:42 am

Tubby and the Lantern – pt. 1

- Tubby and the Lantern is a book illustrated by Rowland B. Wilson and written by Al Perkins. It was recently sent to me by Bill Peckmann. Here’s Bill’s comment on the book:

    RBW’s book was very good when it came out in 1971, but I’ve got to say that looking at it today, it has a much richer texture to it because we now know what Rowland did with the rest of his life and career. Row’s work is/was always so well thought out, whether it was done in a simple or more robust style.


Book’s cover


Title page

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To be continued.

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