Who Was Ray Houlihan?

A few years ago I found this illustration in a 1954 issue of Saga magazine. It's by an artist named Ray Houlihan...



... and I was quite taken by his style.



I hoped I'd be able to find more of Houlihan's artwork, although I hadn't come across it in any of the mainstream magazines, like Collier's or the Post, of which I'd already amassed a substantial number of issues.

Happily, not long after that, I acquired a small stack of Bluebook magazines from the early '50s. I was delighted to discover that Houlihan had illustrated stories in a couple of the issues I'd purchased.



The distinctive look of his pen and ink technique really made an impression on me.



Here's a spread by Houlihan from this September 1951 Bluebook story.



Notice how effectively he alternates light, shadow, light, shadow across this composition. Impressive. The limitations of printing on Bluebook's cheap pulp paper doesn't diminish anything in Houlihan's illustration. In fact, the combination of that course paper and Houlihan's rough-edged pen technique seem to be made for each other.



Another Bluebook story illustrated by Houlihan, this one from 1953.



Much like the Saga illustration at the top of this post, here it appears that Houlihan used a scratchboard overlay sheet to add texture and detail on the single colour plate.



At that time, I managed to find just one more set of story illustrations by Ray Houlihan in the March 1953 issue of Bluebook.



Aside from this handful of illustrations from some men's adventure magazines, from a brief period in the early '50s, I could locate no other examples of - or any biographical information about - Ray Houlihan.



It was as though he'd appeared only briefly and in just one place...



... then slipped quietly away into the ether, never to be heard from again.



The Internet was a very different place back then, with far fewer resources than are available today, just six or seven years later. Recently I dug out the back-up CD on which I'd saved these scans of Ray Houlihan's art and did a little looking, both online and in my now even larger collection of old magazines.

I'm happy to report that I now have quite a bit of information about and 'new' artwork by Ray Houlihan. The entire picture is still incomplete...



... but what I've managed to find I'll share with you this week.

Fred Steffen in the 1970s Childcraft Books

* Things are a bit hectic for me at this time so, as you may have noticed, new posts will be intermittent (depending on my schedule). Sorry for that... I should be able to get back to a stable schedule in a week or two. ~ Leif


About a year ago I posted some examples of 1950s album cover art by a Chicago illustrator named Fred Steffen...



Recently I happened upon some 'new' artwork by Steffen - this time from the 1970s. Fred Steffen provided title page artwork for each chapter in Volume 10 of the 1972 edition of Childcraft, The How and Why Library.



Seen at actual printed size, these illustrations are bit indecipherable.



But have a look: when we zoom in on the individual elements... they're wonderful!



Here you can see Steffen's distinctive linear ink line style and complex but well organized use of detail.



As a group, these illustrations have a trippy look so reminiscent of the era in which they were created.





I don't really have any new information of Steffen, so I'll just leave you to scroll through this series and enjoy their groovy quirkiness.































* This week, as time allows, I'll be featuring more artwork by a variety of illustrators from the 1970s editions of Childcraft, The How and Why Library.

Robert J. Lee: "The career has gone just great."

Recently, Robert J. Lee's daughter, Robin Lee, wrote to me: "Before my dad died in 1994, he dictated a bunch of stories from childhood. I put together a small booklet transcribed from tapes he made of his life. There is at least a snippet that could be interesting."



Most of the text consists of personal anecdotes from throughout his life, but on the last page Lee sums up his thoughts on his career:

"At age 70 I can look back and say at age 30 I was in "Who's Who in American Art." And the biography is very solid. My first painting I ever sold was out of the El Burracho bar in San Francisco. I think I got $35 for it."



"I can recall the lady calling me on the phone and asking if I'd come down in price. I gather that would have been after the war so I would have been 24 or 25. Recently I sold a painting for $15,000 so in 50 years I've come up a little bit in the world."



"The career has been great. Ups and downs. Depression and happiness."



"I guess my favorite stuff about the career is going on assignments, traveling. The most fun travel was for Allstate Insurance and Sears, going to the Southwest with two little girls and Lucy in a big station wagon in 1964."



"And we had all kinds of wondrous adventures."



"The other travels on assignments that I've taken have been mainly for the Air Force. They would send me to different bases and later I would do a painting, take lots of photos and later go to an opening of the exhibition of people who had taken these trips to the Society of Illustrators and the Air Force. The exhibit would be at the Society of Illustrators and later moved down to D.C."



"And then we would go down there for a black-tie dinner. It was great fun seeing, as I get older, people I've known for 35 or 40 years that had been on trips; a lot of guys 70 years old that I know are still working artists."



"I know I still am."



"The length of time that I put in the studio has diminished a lot but I think I am painting fairly well."



* Thanks to Robin Lee for sharing these remarks from her dad, Robert J. Lee, with us. Robin is a freelance nonfiction writer who enjoys telling people's life stories. If you are interested in reaching her, email me and I'll forward your message to Robin. The text of today's post is © 2013 Robin Lee

Robert J. Lee: "There must be a constant probing of one's mind to paint something meaningful"

In 1968 the editors of American Artist magazine presented the work of illustrator Robert J. Lee. Accompanying his art they compiled interviews, correspondences and "several pages of informal notes" into a single 'digest' of Lee's thoughts on a broad range of topics related to his life as an artist.

Here is the 4th and final excerpt:



"Most of my children's books are done in mixed media."



"Tales of the Arabian Nights, published by Whitman, is a good example of this. It was created in a mixture of charcoal, designer's colors, casein, watercolor, pecil, and pastel, bleeding through and over and around each other."



"In both oil and mixed media I paint with sable brushes, but from different paint pots, naturally."



"I am not fond of hard edged painting usually, but I hadn't given it much thought till, in talking to an editor, he pointed out to me how all of my edges were quite feathery in paintings done a few years ago."





"David with a Sling" and the newer paintings, Holy Men and Puerto Rican Landscape, were not as "smokey" or "feathery."



"I feel the newer paintings to be a bit more solid as they rely less on technique, style, or mannerisms which can often be short lived."



"Possibly one of the reasons for painting in a rather looser manner is that I have done so much really tight rendering over the years..."



"... that when I get a chance to paint in any manner I wish, I like painting wet with slow drying linseed oil that can be pushed around, feathered and smeared with the hand."



"Much of my painting is actually done with the fingers."



"I am becoming more and more involved in a love for good drawing. One of the things concerning drawing I have observed in students over the years: they separate drawing and painting into two different sections of their mental attitude towards an art problem. They often think in terms of "doing a drawing" and then filling it in with color, which they think of as painting."



"Drawing with the paint while painting, I feel, makes for greater solidity in picture making. A mountain has anatomy just as much as a mammal, as does a tree or a building, but to feel that inner structure, one must paint with draughtsmanship rather than simply covering over a fine drawing with color."



"There is a dangerous tendency, when one becomes technically proficient, to work sort of automatically with 'the mind in neutral.' Strangely enough, while I do not know any real intellectuals who are top-flight artists, most of the artists I know are involved in intellectual endeavors. There must be a constant probing of one's mind to paint something meaningful, aided by research which goes on year after year involving so many possible subjects."

Tomorrow: an addendum