War Draw - Ivor Hele - Aussie Artist 1912 - 1993

self portraits

 

Ivor Hele is one of those great draftsman that you probably never heard of...An Aussie that served in the war and chronicled daily drudge.. He was also enormously prolific and completed more commissioned works than any other artist in the history of Australian art. His front-line responses to war, sketched and painted for the Australian War Memorial, the portraits that won him the Archibald prize an astonishing five times during the 1950s, his exuberant nudes (Ivor and his wife swam nude at Maslins beach long before it was fashionable or legal to do so) and his magnificent landscapes of that rugged coastline south of Adelaide - where he lived as a recluse - combine to make up a prodigious body of work.
Read more about Ivor Hele here.

red crayon on toned paper

Fred Pfeiffer - Illustrator - 1940 -1995

      Fred was a close friend all through our training at The Art Center School now known as the Art Center College of Design.  We remained close until his untimely passing in 1996. We shared a studio in NYC for several years where he executed beautiful covers for a number of top publishers notably Bantam and Dell.  He took over the Doc Savage covers from James Bama when Jimmy left for Wyoming and a terrific second career as a chronicler of western life.

You can view an enlarged view of each painting by clicking on the image.

I started a search for anything that I could find on the web and came across an excellent dedicated site http://fredpfeifferartist.blogspot.com/  by two true fans Courtney Rogers and Scotty Phillips.  I have been in contact recently with them and submitted whatever I had in my files re: correspondence, photos and anecdotes.  Fred had a great sense of humor and a very dry wit that could cut to the quick.  His life ended much too soon for all of us.

 I have included a few of his covers generously provided by Mr. Rogers in this post including this promo rendering from a publicity still which I animated to show the transition from the file shot photo to Fred's finished sample.

 

 This is Fred using an opaque projector to transfer and refine the model shot for the cover below.

If you look closely at the projected image you will see Steve Holland with his foot on a few books to replicate the rock below.

 Here is the finish from the model shot (superimposed on the above to show the garment refinement and character changes to suit the story line.)

Myself posing for the model shot