WHY DO KIDS DRAW LIKE THAT?

Like everybody else I'm always surprised by the vitality of  art made by kids. Something about collecting bugs and wearing pajamas with feet gives young artists the ability to draw with shocking freshness and immediacy.  I don't pretend to know how they do it, but it's been on my mind lately and I thought I'd record my thoughts here.

To start with, surely some of the magic comes from the little rugrats never cleaning their brushes. When they want to paint with yellow they use the same dirty brush they used a minute before when they were painting with red. The kids benefit from a lucky accident because this unintentional mixing gives the new color texture, which always makes color more appealing. Not only that but the sloppy colors benefit from the kind of optical mixing that impressionists like Seurat used to talk about.    

Then there's the kid belief that every living thing disturbs the air around them and emits an aura of grief marks or sunbeams (above). Where kids get that from I can't even guess. Exceptions to this rule are army men, ghosts and dinosaurs, which are never granted sunbeams.

Thanks to "N" for pointing out that the picture above is of a lion and the sunbeams are simply its mane. I don't know how I could have overlooked something so obvious, and I almost changed the caption, but my long experience with my own kids' drawings seems to confirm that kids will deliberately choose subjects that lend themselves to sunbeams, cilia and fringe. Primitive masks are often like that.  

The subject of kid pictures is never a unified whole, but is rather a collection of parts, which are separate and distinct. The lady above is a nothing more than a dress, legs and shoes. The bike is wheels and a frame. Usually the collection of parts is given grief by some evil being. Here (above) the collection of parts that is the woman is beset by a demon newsboy...or is that just the just the artist hitching a ride? 

Here's (above) a raging duck man surrounded by blue dots. Since kids like to menace their their subjects I'll guess that the blue dots are killer bees or bombs. Whatever they are, it's a safe bet that the kid who drew it had a definite idea about what they were. Kids don't draw for the sake of drawing. Everything always represents something. 

How do you like the color here? That yellow and orange ground really makes the blue pop out, and the black is a perfect counterpoint. 

Here (above) the warship goes into battle with all guns blazing. Kids don't get distracted by nuances like the color of a late afternoon sky reflected in the sea water. For kids a battle scene portrays battle, clear and simple, and the battle is one of epic dimensions. The nobility of the brave ship is honored by cilia-type sunbeams of fire power.

Interesting huh?

EDWARD STEICHEN: GENIUS

You probably know Edward Steichen for his painting and fine art photography, but did you know that he also helped to create the modern concept of fashion photography?  That's his cover above, one of the most well-known in the history of magazine publishing.


Before Steichen fashion pictures looked mostly like this (above). The idea was to highlight the dress. The woman in it was little more than a mannequin.

Steichen had the revolutionary idea that the women wearing the dresses should look interesting, even if sometimes they almost overshadowed the clothes. They should look like they were having fun and like they had lots of friends. The idea was to make the women reading the magazine envy the models. 

Steichen was a painter before he was a photographer. The influence of Matisse on the two pictures above is obvious. 

Some believe that Steichen was the greatest photographer of women who ever lived. That's Gertrude Lawrence above. 

He made women (above) look mysterious and seductive.

He was no slouch with men, either. What do you think of the pictures above? The picture immediately above is of Conrad Veidt, who played Major Strassner in "Casablanca."


When Veidt was young he played horrific parts in films like "Dr. Caligari."

Nice poster, eh? But I digress....

What happened to Steichen you ask? Well, he dropped out of fashion photography when Borodsky introduced Beaten and Horst to Harper's Bazaar. I put up a blog about these guys a couple of weeks ago. Borodsky introduced humorous surrealism to women's magazines and poor Steichen, who was a serious kind of a guy, just couldn't keep up. That's Steichen's attempt at surrealism above. It just wasn't his thing.  

Why should men be interested in what happened in womens' magazines in the 20s and 30s? Because those magazines, operating beneath the radar of formal critics, helped to shape the attitudes of modern women, and of the whole world we live in today.  That and the fact that these magazines continued the revolution in art that critics supposed had died after WWll.

UNPUBLISHED WOLVERTON

Have you seen the new Wolverton book, called "The Wolverton Bible?" Most of the book is about his Biblical illustrations done for his church, the same church that used to publish "The Plain Truth" magazine, edited by radio preacher Herbert W. Armstrong. The Bible illustrations are interesting but the real treat is the small last chapter, which contains previously unpublished or under-published drawings from his best period. A few of them can be seen here, above and below. 


Of particular interest to me are the ones in the top two pictures, which were among those submitted to Harvey Kurtzman when he was editor of Mad in the fifties, and which Kurtzman declined.  Kurtzman published the best of the lot but these just didn't make the final cut.

Publisher William Gaines didn't like Wolverton. He thought the drawings were ugly and tried to talk Kurtzman into dropping them. Fortunately Kurtzman insisted and the masterpieces of gross that we're all familiar with were published, sans the pictures shown here.  I can see why these were turned down. They're funny but not as focused and polished as Kurtzman's favorites. Even so, they're still interesting, don't you think?

 





Some of these sketches were done for Armstrong's church, but were never (or seldom) reprinted anywhere else. Some of the people above were, believe it or not, depictions of character types Wolverton found in his own congregation. 


Armstrong reportedly tried to talk Wolverton out of cartooning and into serious illustration. He said there was no future in it because cartooning had run its course and would soon die. Actually cartooning thrived in the fifties, thanks to the efforts of artists like Wolverton. 

MAD PRIDE

Mental illness is a fascinating subject, all the more because so little is known about it. You get the feeling that there must be hundreds of kinds of mental illness, yet books on the subject usually list only a dozen. The mind seems to break down in fairly predictable ways, meaning I guess that we're prone to certain kinds of disorders a lot more than others.

One disorder has to do with hearing voices that aren't there. From a little reading on the net I got the feeling that the treatment of this illness is changing. Gone are the days when the patient is told the voices are a figment of his imagination. Nowadays the doctor might accept the reality of the voices and simply try to teach the patient to cope with them, to have constructive conversations with them. 

Here's (above and below) some excerpts from a pamphlet for people who hear voices. It's not very judgemental. The idea is assure the patient that what they're going through isn't as scary as it seems, and that they have some control over it.





My hunch is that a lot of people with this problem get only a pamphlet and some drugs. I don't know enough about the subject to know if this constitutes woeful neglect or simply a recognition that the cause of this problem is mysterious and treatment reasonably has to be restricted to the little bit that we know actually works.

Mental patients are forming Mad Pride groups, mostly to resist compulsory electroshocks, and to get more free benefits from the government, but also to persuade the public that mental disorders don't always prevent people from doing good work on the job.  

The most articulate mad person I've encountered is Spikol (above). She accepts questions from YouTubers and I have to resist the urge to deluge her with them.  What cures actually work? What should parents do? What did she think of the book, "Franny and Zooey?", and the movie "Royal Tannenbaums? Should the state sterilize? Does she agree with coercive institutionalization? Can mad people cope with their problem without curing it, like Russell Crowe did in "Beautiful Mind?" How many crazy people are there? What does she think of the therapy attempted by the author of  "The Criminal Mind?" Does madness stimulate creativity? Are mad people attracted to other mad people? Why do some mad people become violent? Are all violent people mad? Does therapy help? Do previously mad people make the best therapists?  Why is depression so common? Is it curable? What are the most helpful books? Does madness often just go away with time? What's the relationship between habbit and madness? 

Here (above) she talks about the downside of electroshock therapy. Elsewhere she admits that it does seem to work for some people.

LESTER DENT'S ADVICE TO WRITERS

I covered this subject before but here's a fuller and more satisfying version of pulp writer Lester Dent's famous advice to writers, written...when...in the 50s? Even if you've seen this before it's worth re-reading, and if you haven't seen it, then it'll surely strike you as a revelation, the way it struck me. 

Some of the books presented here claim to have been authored by Kenneth Robeson, but Robeson was the pen name of Lester Dent. Dent wrote a zillion Doc Savage novels, but he didn't invent the character, his publisher and editor did. Anyway here's the timeless advice of Lester Dent to short-form adventure writers everywhere.

No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.

Here's how it starts:

1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE
2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING
3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE
4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO

One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.

A different murder method could be--different. Thinking of shooting, knifing, hydrocyanic, garroting, poison needles, scorpions, a few others, and writing them on paper gets them where they may suggest something. Scorpions and their poison bite? Maybe mosquitos or flies treated with deadly germs?

If the victims are killed by ordinary methods, but found under strange and identical circumstances each time, it might serve, the reader of course not knowing until the end, that the method of murder is ordinary.

Scribes who have their villain's victims found with butterflies, spiders or bats stamped on them could conceivably be flirting with this gag.

Probably it won't do a lot of good to be too odd, fanciful or grotesque with murder methods.

The different thing for the villain to be after might be something other than jewels, the stolen bank loot, the pearls, or some other old ones.

Here, again one might get too bizarre.

Unique locale? Easy. Selecting one that fits in with the murder method and the treasure--thing that villain wants--makes it simpler, and it's
also nice to use a familiar one, a place where you've lived or worked. So many pulpateers don't. It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool him.

Here's a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt, say, author finds a book titled "Conversational Egyptian Easily Learned," or something like that. He wants a character to ask in Egyptian, "What's the matter?" He looks in the book and finds, "El khabar, eyh?" To keep the reader from getting dizzy, it's perhaps wise to make it clear in some fashion, just what that means. Occasionally the text will tell this, or someone can repeat it in English. But it's a doubtful move to stop and tell the reader in so many words the English translation.

The writer learns they have palm trees in Egypt. He looks in the book, finds the Egyptian for palm trees, and uses that. This kids editors and readers into thinking he knows something about Egypt.

Here's the second installment of the master plot.

Divide the 6000 word yarn into four 1500 word parts. In each 1500 word part, put the following:


FIRST 1500 WORDS

1--First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved--something the hero has to cope with.

2--The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)

3--Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.

4--Hero's endevours land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.

5--Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development.

SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE?
Is there a MENACE to the hero?
Does everything happen logically?

At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has learned the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise, who can explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events. The hero corners villains, they fight, and villains get away. Not so hot.

Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero counts the rings on Eloise's tail, if nothing better comes to mind.
They're not real. The rings are painted there. Why?

SECOND 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel more grief onto the hero.

2--Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:

3--Another physical conflict.

4--A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE?
Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud?
Is the hero getting it in the neck?
Is the second part logical?

DON'T TELL ABOUT IT***Show how the thing looked. This is one of the secrets of writing; never tell the reader--show him. (He trembles, roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.

When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed page. It is reasonable to to expect these minor surprises to sort of inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound efforts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him begins slowly to open. He does not see it. He conducts his examination blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until--surprise! The glass pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then what the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader's mind. TAG HIM.

BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.

THIRD 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel the grief onto the hero.

2--Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:

3--A physical conflict.

4--A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

DOES: It still have SUSPENSE?
The MENACE getting blacker?
The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix?
It all happens logically?

These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there is no pulp story.

These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until next the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may, naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it more than once.

The idea is to avoid monotony.

ACTION:
Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and feel the action.

ATMOSPHERE:
Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.

DESCRIPTION:
Trees, wind, scenery and water.

THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.

FOURTH 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.

2--Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)

3--The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.

4--The mysteries remaining--one big one held over to this point will help grip interest--are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes
the situation in hand.

5--Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the "Treasure" be a dud, etc.)

6--The snapper, the punch line to end it.

HAS: The SUSPENSE held out to the last line?
The MENACE held out to the last?
Everything been explained?
It all happen logically?
Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?
Did God kill the villain? Or the hero?

FAMILY PHOTOS

Many thanks to Anonymous for these photos from the hilarious awkwardfamilyphotos.com. Boy, I was lucky to get these; if I hadn't I would have been strapped for something to post. It's not that I haven't any ideas...my mind is teeming with ideas right now...I just haven't had time to write them down.

One of the reasons is that I'm trying to learn a program that infuriatingly resists being learned, and I only have a short time each night to spend with it. Bear with me. I'll be happy just to get it set up, and get the cables tucked away, then I can attack it at a more leisurely pace.

Awkward is certainly the right word for these (above). 

This (above) is my favorite of the Awkward Photo pictures. I imagine that the people shown here are a family of poisoners. Over the years the two ladies tried out samples of their poisons on the guy on the left and he lost all his hair and much of his muscle control. He's not mad, though. He's a poisoner himself, and he understands the necessity of practice.
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Like I said, I'd like to try my hand at family photography. If I had willing subjects I'd like to  take a picture where everybody acts out a character. Imagine the four people above in a single picture.  A whole family of over-actors.

A horrific, underlit family (above) would be nice...



...as would a family of super-intelligent space invaders (above). All it would take is the right lighting and the right clothes.

Imagine a family photo where everybody had wide-angle heads like Hillary in the picture above.

Of course I'd take some classic pictures (above) too, but only if I had the right subjects.