Daily post 27 Jun 2013 08:30 am
Paul Julian’s TOOOOT!
- Here are the illustrations for Tooooot! which is a book illustrated by Paul Julian in 1958 to a text by Betty lou LaWell.
It’s a two color book (black and blue) as were many books of the period. I’m always amazed at how much illustrators of the time got out of the limited color printing. So many big books (by the likes of Dr. Seuss, Bernard Waber, Maurice Sendak among others) were published at the time with more imagination than many of the current books with full color.
The artwork, unlike his other book Piccoli, is composed of graceful and delicate line drawings with the simple, flat color. The work looks very much a part of the brilliant illustrations and art coming out of the 50s, influenced by Ben Shahn and Gregorio Prestopino.
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Piccoli
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- The brilliant artist/designer/background artist, Paul Julian, illustrated a stunner of a children’s book in 1953. Piccoli is the story of Piccoli Sogni (little dreams) a tiny girl who lives in a matchbox. A stranger gives her as a gift to a sad young boy. She helps to inspire him creatively.
The story is by Phillippe Halsman which he had written for his daughters. He was a celebrated photographer who worked with Salvador Dali on the book Dali’s Moustache. In 1958 he was chosen as one of the 10 greatest photographers in an Internation poll. His 1959 book, Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book, collected more than 200 recognized photographs.
Paul Julian, of course, is well known by animation enthusiasts as one of the principal background artists for many of the most famous Warner Bros cartoons. He also gained some fame for his art direction of the UPA masterpiece, The Tell-Tale Heart.
His work has always seemed just slightly this side of the surreal, to me. His color choices were masterful and the many backgrounds he did reflect his own style. See this excellent post by Hans Bacher on his important blog, Animation Treasures.
John Canemaker loaned me a number of color copies of the book, and I tried to get an accurate read on the colors from the copies, but I suspect they’re still a bit off. Here are Julian’s illustrations for Piccoli:
The inner cover of the book.
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At times the art looks influenced by Gregorio Prestopino.
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This is actually a composite of two different illustrations
on two separate pages in the book.
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on 27 Jun 2013 at 9:13 am 1.Pierre said …
The illustrations from the Piccoli book are just stunning. I can only imagine what the originals look like. Thank you for sharing this!
on 27 Jun 2013 at 8:10 pm 2.the Gee said …
Agreed!
The art in the Piccoli book is great. It might be presumptuous to say that I can see a couple or more current illustrators who may have been influenced by his work.
Great stuff.
Actually, all week long you’ve had great stuff to see and read.