Ted Withers - Hollywood Pin-up Girls

Pin-up Artist Ted Withers had an interesting way of including a bunch of preliminary sketches in many of his Artist's Sketch Pad pin-up girl calender pages.










Ted Withers was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He studied at Wellington College, then at the Royal Academy in London and later at the South Kensington School of Art and the Slade School of Art. Withers moved to Paris and the prestigious Académie Julian. (See Jessie Pixley Lacey - Teacher of Figure Drawing for another student of the Académie Julian)






He came to America and Hollywood in 1924. He worked as an art director at MGM Studios, supervisor in the trick and miniature department at Universal Studios, art director for Earnshaw-Young Advertising Agency, and art director for the Sterling Press Lithograph Company.




He started painting pin-ups in 1950. For more of his biography see The Pin-Up Files. For more of his art work see The History of Pin-up Art at all-art.org. Still more art work at Pin-up Classic Ted Withers.

Ted Withers' pin-ups at Ebay.com.


1000 Pin-Up Girls (25th Anniversary Special Edition)



The Great American Pin-Up



Another Gallery of pin-ups The Great American Pin-up.com.






Ted Withers first painted the images for The Artist's Sketch Pad Calendar in 1954, he continued doing it until 1961. Birography of Ted Withers at The Pin Up Files.

Artist's Sketch Pad calendar for 1956 [Pin-up calendar] at Amazon.com

Water Color Figure Sketches

One great way to explore the figure is with quick sketches in water color. Listed on Ebay right now are several representations of the technique by Nat Edson.

Notice how Mr. Edson gets at the essential form of the figure with a few quick strokes of color, followed by shadows to make the form appear in space. With a real economy of brushwork there is a convincing rendering of form. This ability to see the form in this almost abstract manner must have contributed to his long uccessful career in Comic Book Illustration.

The seller quotes a couple of biographical sources to note that he was a a comic book and sketch artist, worked in the comic industry for over forty years. His career included work on Edgar Rice Burrough's TARZAN and Disney Comic Books. He also drew for Quality, Lafayette, DC/National and Pines/Standard in the 1940s.



He painted in his leisure time, favorite subject were nudes and portraits.

His TARZAN works include: Tarzan in the Temple of Flames; Tarzan, Valley of Peril; Tarzan and the Sea Serpents; Tarzan and the Apes of Changok.

There is a biography at Lambiek.net. Another brief biography is at CALart.com.






Putting People in Your Paintings
and
Figure Painting In Watercolor
and
The Big Book of Drawing and Painting the Figure at Amazon.com.




An ebook Rendering in Water Color about basic watercolor techniques is available at Figure-drawings.com, another ebook Figure Painting in Water Colours demonstrates the technique of various well known British water color artists at the beginning of the twentieth century.

at Amazon.com. The author Emily Ball trained at Exeter College of Art, and later at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, and now runs highly successful courses in contemporary painting and drawing, as well as continuing to develop and exhibit her own work as an artist.
Drawing and Painting People: A Fresh Approach

Kuwagata Keisai (Kitao Masayoshi) - Human Proportions, Actions and Sketches

This book or woodblock prints by Kuwagata Keisai (Kitao Masayoshi) was published in 1795 in Tokyo. It shows figures in all kinds of actions and has a chart of human proportion at the beginning. it is titled Ryakuga Shiki or Simplified Forms of Drawing or Rough Sketches or Admiring the Spirit and Form of Nature.

According to various sources Hokusai was greatly influenced by his work.

Very rare. a copy is for sale on Ebay. Search for the book Riaku Gwa Shik on Ebay.

Here is a link to another blog entry by Mark Mason: Kitao Keisai's Abbreviated Drawings.

And here is a link to the drawings online from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

One of his books was the famous Fish and Shell book. An archive of images from it is available at Degener.com.

There are several copies of similar books by Masayoshi at Abebooks.com. Use the search terms "Keisai Masayoshi," or "Gyokai Ryakuga Shiki: Simplified Forms of Drawing Fishes and Shells."

Ryakugashiki & Jimbutsu Ryakugashiki

Japanese Prints