Mel Crawford - Magilla Gorilla (Big Golden Book) 1964
I think I first became consiously aware of Mel Crawford's cartoon character themed golden book illustations thanks to Shane Glines and have been addicted to searching out and unearthing as much of this incredibly inspirational material as possible ever since.
Mel Crawford's cartoon character based artwork is pure bliss to behold. His style seems to be an intoxicating concoction made up of equal parts Mary Blair and Ed Benedict, with an added a dash of Sasek to create one of the most amazingly talented golden book illustrators that I have come across. I especially admire his use of simple yet effective shape combinations which create solid and expressive cartoon figures that seem to jump off the page. Top all of this off with his equally unique color sense and use of texture and it becomes even more difficult to find anyone who does cartoon character based childrens books better than Mel Crawford. Looking at these images and their scarcity of linework would also seem to point to a sense of style & design that has influenced the art direction of modern day cartoons like samurai jack.
Click each image for a larger version
As promised here are the rest of the scans...
Please feel free to leave any of your own thoughts, comments, etc.. regarding Mel Crawford and his work by using the comment feature below.
-Clarke
Mel Crawford's cartoon character based artwork is pure bliss to behold. His style seems to be an intoxicating concoction made up of equal parts Mary Blair and Ed Benedict, with an added a dash of Sasek to create one of the most amazingly talented golden book illustrators that I have come across. I especially admire his use of simple yet effective shape combinations which create solid and expressive cartoon figures that seem to jump off the page. Top all of this off with his equally unique color sense and use of texture and it becomes even more difficult to find anyone who does cartoon character based childrens books better than Mel Crawford. Looking at these images and their scarcity of linework would also seem to point to a sense of style & design that has influenced the art direction of modern day cartoons like samurai jack.
Click each image for a larger version
As promised here are the rest of the scans...
Please feel free to leave any of your own thoughts, comments, etc.. regarding Mel Crawford and his work by using the comment feature below.
-Clarke
posted by Clarke (Csnyde) at 11:34 PM
13 Comments:
What a wonderful blog! more please!!! :)
The parade one before the last it's awesome.
Tnx for sharing these treasures!
-L
Thank you for taking the time to show off this great work. I really love the stills from the 'Pig' cartoon, but all of it is great and inspirational. Much appreciated.
WoW! those Pigs is Pigs stills are so amazing! Thanks allot, very inspiring!
Thanks for posting this stuff!!!these are great!
Thanks for all of your comments and for stopping by to check out my blog.
-Clarke
Mel Crawford is great! Thanks for sharing these images!
You know, you should really start up a Flickr account so you can post these great illustrations by Mel Crawford and post them in my Flickr Group that i started, The Retro Kid. It has all of these types of great fun illustrations from kids' books, games, ads, etc.
The Retro Kid
Stop on by, Clarke -- you'll really dig it. There are over 1,400 image so far from the mid-40's to the mid-60's. Great stuff!
I'm afraid I don't have anything hugely insightful to say, but let me just express my appreciation for this blog. Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful art with us; I will be checking back frequently in the future.
Thanks again for all of the great feedback you guys have been leaving for this blog. I'm glad I'm not the only one getting something out of this.
Ward: I am a frequent visitor to your retro-kid flicker pool and think that a lot of what gets posted there is great, but I just can't be bothered to re-post the exact same material in a different spot for no apparent reason. Sorry.
Hey, Clarke, no problem! I can completely understand about that. Do you mind if I mention your site and especially this post (and the other posts that mention old children's books) on The Retro Kid? I think those guys would love to check this place out.
Keep this up, man. It's a great thing for an artist to share his/her influences and interests out there. I really love to see what gets other artists' juices flowin'.
Ward: feel free to mention away my good man.
And thanks again for your feedback. it's great to know that what is interesting to me also holds the attention of other fine artists as well.
Truely inspirational. Thank you for sharing. To think all this work was created without the safety net of an undo button boggles the mind.
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