Jon Whitcomb's pretty girls and boys

 

We macho young illustrators used to trash Jon Whitcomb's stuff calling it candy box illustration. For this reason I don't have much in my files. In fact, this is pretty much it. The pages are from magazines my late wife subscribed to: McCall's, Ladies Home Journal, and who knows what else. They all had one thing in common: impossible fiction story lines and articles about oafish husbands.

 

Even the signature was to gag on, with the two little red balls over the lower case j and i. But the guy could paint and I often tried and failed to get those slick flesh tones with Winsor Newton Designer Colors. He had a touch.

You have to understand that these illustrations appeared a decade or so after World War II when millions of returning veterans slept in their underwear all those years, if they were lucky. Maybe Eisenhower and field rank officers had jammies, but the most of the infantry slept in their uniforms. So this Tony Curtis-type must have been known only to Jon and his editors who had intimate knowledge of pajamas and dressing gowns.

This guy is supposed to be a maitre d'? Where on this planet would that occur?

FYI -- this is what maitre d's looked like in those days. A drawing from my sketchbook of one of the more pleasant ones.

Typical Hollywood direction that's obligatory to this day: nude guy, clothed chick. What is he supposed to be thinking?

This is great rendering and I saved it until last. You can read more about Jon Whitcomb here.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Stay tuned for The Great One among this genre of illustrators -- Al Parker.

Comments

[Holly Klass]

I was a teenager and aspiring artist in the days of Jon Whitcomb, Al Parker, Vargas and other illustrators of that time. I'm not sure I still have it but I collected their illustrations in a scrapbook and I'll have to look for it. A group of these artist developed The Famous Artists Group and sold lessons in large books where you would complete the assignment and mailed it in. You would receive a lengthy critique with onionskin layovers to demonstrate the ways you could improve. I do still have these books. Wonder if anyone would be interested in seeing them.