I have spent 4 days working on 3 journals as gifts for someone. The journals are not fancy, they are mostly just functional, it's what's inside that's important.
3 sizes to suit the items inside and note how thick the red one is. It has 5 signatures. The blue one, the largest is 9 x 12" and had to be to accommodate what went inside. The person these are for inherited artwork drawn by his grandfather and they haven't been stored very well. So I took them out of the ziploc bags and envelopes and out of the shed they had been in and gave them new homes that hopefully will keep them safe for years.
I want to show you some of the artwork done by a man who did them in his spare time as a hobby. The blue journal holds drawings from the 1940's, WWII era.
He used whatever he could find to draw on and used mostly no.2 pencils with the occasional ball point pen, some colored pencils and even a couple with crayon. On this portrait he used tracing paper and it is so fragile the edges are shredding. In case you are wondering about the little strips of paper, they hold the drawings in place without having to glue anything but the strips.
click on the images to see them larger.
He seemed to have loved humor judging from some of his drawings. The cartoon is on a scrap of writing paper, Gussie and many other pieces were drawn on the back of pasteboard signs from the railroad company he worked for. Most of his work from the 40's is full page size and there are a lot of female nudes as well.
The red journal is filled with drawings from the mid 1970s and they are mostly ranch scenes. And it's the same ranch and same lake in each one. The full page drawings are mostly on some sort of cardstock that looks like it might have been the backing to a notepad or something. I believe these were done after he retired.
A handsome cowboy on a random sheet of blue paper.
Some smaller pieces done with colored pencil. You can see here how many pages I had to use.
The green journal is novel sized and I believe they were all done in the mid 1970s also, with a ballpoint pen.
A couple of caricatures.
Neighborhood cats.
And a jogger.
Check out the texture on these and see if you can guess what he used to draw on this time. The answer will be below but try to guess first.
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It's the cut out tops of styrofoam egg cartons. I wish I had met this man.
I know his grandson is going to appreciate the journals which make it easy to look at the art without it falling to pieces anymore.
1 comment:
What a very cool gift to give your friend.
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