GODS' MAN published in Britain in 1930.

MADMAN'S DRUM published in Britain in 1930.

AS A JOBBING ILLUSTRATOR SELECTION ONE

AS A JOBBING ILLUSTRATOR SELECTION TWO

AS A JOBBING ILLUSTRATOR SELECTION THREE

AS A JOBBING ILLUSTRATOR SELECTION FOUR

RARITIES FROM THE RICKER COLLECTION

WOOD ENGRAVINGS FROM THE RICKER COLLECTION

Some Biographical information is contained in Silent Witnesses, my essay on Graphic Novels for an exhibition at The Space, Lincoln in 2010.

Georgetown University Art Collection, the online exhibition catalogue by LuLen Walker, quotes" Making Pictures for a Book," published in the Instructor magazine (August 20, 1953).

When the artist first reads a manuscript for a book, a series of visual images begins to form in his mind. Since an artist thinks in images, he creates something like a "private little movie" that is projected in his head by the words from the manuscript. He then consults with the publisher to find out what kind of book they want to create and in what format, i.e. size, length, number of illustrations, whether they want color or black and white illustrations, etc. The illustrator begins to research the subject so he will be able to create an accurate portrayal. For his book The Biggest Bear, Lynd Ward went to the zoo to observe the behavior of bears, and to the Museum of Natural History to study them in greater detail. For a story on Martin Luther, he turned to the work of Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach for period details and consulted books on costume, architecture and home furnishings of the period.

Once he feels he "knows" the subject, the artist can begin to plan out the illustrations on a number of pieces of paper, cut to the size specified by the publisher, making a rough layout of each page in the book from beginning to end. At this point he begins to revisit the mental pictures stored in his mind's eye since first receiving the manuscript, and making sketches of some of the most important ones, placing the pages where they belong in the sequence of the story. During this stage, he is concerned with showing the development of the main character, and planning the key pages with color illustrations and how certain colors might affect the emotional impact of the story. The final step is to work out each of the rough sketches using watercolor, ink or whatever medium seems best suited to the reproduction process selected by the publisher.

My own method in color work is to make a fairly loose pencil drawing on the paper or illustration board, to block in the position of the main figures and background elements, and indicate the way the area is divided between the important units of the picture. Then I brush in the main colors fairly quickly so that the over-all effect is indicated in a general way right at the start. I find that this gives me not only a much better feeling about the picture from the very beginning but also enables me to change and adjust specific colors as I go along. A yellow, for example, that seems all right just on the white paper by itself, may have to be changed quite a bit if it appears later against a large area of the sky.

So, by working from large areas down to smaller, and by saving details until the last... you finally end up with a finished picture. When you have in this way finished all the pictures that were planned in that early rough form, when you have wrapped them up and sent them to the publisher, and when he, in turn, has had them reproduced, and printed in their proper places with words all neatly set in type, then you have a book. And that is what you started working for.