Thursday, June 21, 2012

Digest This: David Stone Martin Illos from RDCB

Today's Reader's Digest Condensed Books artwork is by David Stone Martin. Since I've written so extensively about DSM in previous posts, I'm going to keep the commentary to a minimum -- enjoy the pictures!

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I wrote about David Stone Martin's career back in 2008. If you're interested in reading those posts, here are the links:

David Stone Martin: Modernism Meets Traditionalism

David Stone Martin: Early Days

David Stone Martin: For the Record

David Stone Martin: "...unusual pictures, vitalized by many strange textures"

David Stone Martin: "Bending a wire"

Or if you'd rather just stay here and peruse another batch of DSM illos, here's his work from another RDCB - this time from 1963.

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* Many thanks to Reader's Digest Creative Director, Robert Newman for linking this week's posts to the Reader's Digest art Tumblr page! Robert has been posting some classics from the back covers of Reader's Digest from those days on the RD tumblr page. Be sure to go take a look!

6 comments:

  1. Love the originality of his jazz work but was he suited to this kind of subject matter? I'ii be interested to know what people think.

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  2. I think he was suited enough to produce illustrations which tell a story by themselves. Some of the samples shown here are extraordinarily telling.

    What more to expect from an illustrator?

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  3. It depends if you see basic weaknesses in his draughtsmanshio as an impediment to realistic storytelling.

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  4. The first time I saw his work was in the opening credits to "Paint Your Wagon" - at first glance I thought of Ronald Searle...

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  5. Thanks for the Mockingbird collection! Haven't seen them since the first publication, when I was Scout and Jem's age.

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