On Hiatus

For the time being Illustration Station is on hiatus due to technical reasons.

I hope to have it back online in the near future. Thanks for your support!

Mel Crawford

Mel Crawford
Born Canada 1925
Illustrator/teacher/fine artist

Of all the artists' work I've shown samples of I don't think I've shown anyone as versatile as Mel Crawford, an illustrator with superior skills.

These are two examples of his work in wildly divergent styles. Fury, a Little Golden Book from 1958, is done in a straight illustrative style. The figure drawing, and especially the horse, are superb.

Yogi Bear and The Cranky Magician is from the Top Top Tales series published by Whitman, copyright 1963 by Hanna-Barbera productions. It's done in a wonderful H-B animation style. It seems Crawford could draw anything. Most artists would be lucky to be so skilled in one style or the other, much less both.

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Fury Takes The Jump
©1958 Television Programs of America, Inc.

Yogi Bear and The Cranky Magician
©1963 Hanna-Barbera Productions

Lynd Ward

Lynd Ward

Born 1905 - Died 1985
American illustrator

Ward, who has a previous entry here, was a prolific illustrator using several different mediums and techniques for his artwork. These attractive duotone illustrations were done for the book The Treasure of Topo-El-Bampo by Scott O'Dell, and ©1972 by Houghton Mifflin.

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Arthur Shilstone

Arthur Shilstone
Born 1922
American Watercolorist/Illustrator


Arthur Shilstone is a well respected watercolor artist who has work in many galleries, and has done illustrations for many magazines and books. This particular series of illustrations is from The Boys' Life Book of Mystery Stories. I showed the cover to this book in my last posting of book covers featuring skeletons in caves. These are the black and white interior illustrations, done in wash, ink, watercolor and pencil. For this book Shilstone's illustration are perfectly matched to the material, showing his ability to evoke mood and mystery.

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Various Artists

Various Artists
Skeletons in caves

Departing from my usual format featuring a single artist, this Illustration Station entry is about something I noticed a few years ago: several covers of children's books featured kids in caves with skeletons.

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The earliest I have is Mystery of the Haunted Mine, a Scholastic Book from 1962, painted by Dom Lupo.

The Boys Life Book of Mystery Stories is from 1963, painted by Arthur Shilstone.

Artist Harry Kane (1912-1988) drew Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators The Mystery Of The Moaning Cave, published in 1968.

Kane did two versions of this cover, the original and the paperback version which came out a few years later. Kane redid the background color scheme from a hot red to a cool blue-green, and he changed the Three Investigators' hairstyles to the early-to-mid 1970s look.

Artist Roger Hall did this other Three Investigators cover for The Secret Of Skeleton Island in 1972.Cave of the Living Skeletons is by Richard Kriegler, and came out in 1989.

Garin Baker did Ghost Cave, which came out in 1993.

This entry in the Fright Time series from Playmore is uncredited, and was published in 1995.

Robin Jacques

Robin Jacques

British Art Director/Educator/Illustrator
born 1920 - died 1995

Jacques (rhymes with Jakes) was orphaned at an early age, and taught himself to draw. He illustrated over 100 children's books in his career. These fantastic and detailed pen-and-ink drawings are from Steel Magic by Andre Norton, ©1965.

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