Bill Peckmann &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 15 Jun 2012 06:52 am
Rowland Wilson Calendar
- Continuing with the odd jobs posted yesterday.
In 1987, Rowland B. Wilson released a calendar called Murphy’s Law.
Bill Peckmann has forwarded the illustrations from it, and I’m posting them here.
The cover and June
January
February
March
April
May
June is already visible as the cover.
July
August
September
October
November
December
The following are some additional rough pieces by Rowland.
1
A Xerox of Row’s line drawing before the color elixir was added!
Great posing!
2
Unfortunately this is an old faded Xerox, but here is a New
England Life ‘Dog Show’ gag. I’m sending it because of all
of the dogs in it, man, you can’t shake a stick at them,
they are just phenomenal! Catch all of the different breeds.
3
A TV Guide rough.
4
Another TV Guide rough.
5
Two small thumbnail sketches before
starting to paint Playboy ‘Robin Hood’ gag.
6
For gags that were extra special to him, Rowland would
pre plan and work out the color shading on a Xerox of
his line drawing. Here again is ‘Robin Hood’.
Rowland would usually discard his roughs after finishing a job,
but for some reason he kept a small stash of them at PK & A,
so when the studio finally closed it’s doors and we asked Row
what to do with them, he said dump ‘em. Which I promptly did
into my attache case! Since then I’ve found out from Suzanne Wilson
that for what ever reason, RBW did not hang on to his roughs,
much to her dismay. So what we see here is something on the rare side.
It’s ironic because Rowland always understood the passion and
vitality of everyone else’s roughs.
.
– Finally, Trade Secrets : Rowland B. Wilson’s Trade Secrets: Notes on Cartooning and Animation has had a release date changed. Amazon is promising it’s pre order customers that we should get our copy the beginning of Aug.
Rowland Wilson‘s journals, in which he wrote about illustration and animation, have been gathered by Suzanne Wilson and are collected in this book. The information must certainly be very informative to students; the book seems to offer quite a bit of attention to Mr. Wilson’s animation art, just as it does his brilliant illustration and cartooning. I’m looking forward to seeing the book and will certainly make sure you know what I think of it when it does come out.
on 15 Jun 2012 at 3:40 pm 1.Suzanne Wilson said …
The Murphy’s Law calendar originally had “Capistrano Car Wash†painted on the building, a nod to Rowland’s studio in San Juan Capistrano, California, where legend has it that the swallows return every year. In droves!
on 16 Jun 2012 at 3:10 pm 2.The Gee said …
I know it isn’t a hard and fast absolute but for a long time I thought that cartoonists who did business specific cartoons just specialized in that or had their work adapted to fit that purpose.
I know there are some illustrators who are commissioned to do gag-centric cartoons, like the Murphy’s Law calendar kind of work.
It is really nice to see that he produced such cartoons with that specific sense of humor required for that kind of work.
As usual, all of these have that great sense of staging and layout present. It’s amazing stuff.
One note about July’s calendar cartoon: I don’t think TV Repair people exist anymore so it kind of threw me for a loop to see that van. I’ve gone to them before and doubt any of us ever will go to them again.
Time, it flies dragging quick change along with it.