THE CARDIFF GIANT RISES AGAIN - PART 2!

In this first scene, George Hull is depicted trying to age the surface of the stone giant with sulfuric acid.  I utilized the old "ghost story-flashlight spooky lighting" here.  Apparently the acid is giving off a glow illuminating Hull's face from below.  I also like the rendering and lighting on his right hand.

This scene shows part of the origin of Hull's scheme.  A visiting preacher named Reverend Turk is shown telling of Biblical passages that say giants once walked the earth.  The minister is dramatically back-lit by the glow of the flames in the fireplace.  I did everything I could think of to make each scene as visually engrossing as possible.  Lighting was key to this process.

Here, the two sculptors hired to carve the giant from a large block of Gypsum are chipping off the figure's hair and beard, which had been originally part of his design.  It was discovered, however, that hair does not petrify, so it had to be removed.  All in the name of science!  And deception...

I used copious amounts of spatter on the men's shirts for added texture, style and visual interest.  Oh, and the guy at the top is based on an old musician friend, Dave Richardson.  Just for the record.

This image shows a man seeing a large iron box being transported toward Cardiff a year before the giant was "discovered."   Reports of that sighting started a controversy about the authenticity of the stone man.  I mentioned in my previous post that I was working on how to effectively paint clouds, of which there are several kinds.  This illustration is all about clouds.  Stratus, anyone?  Not sure I'd quite mastered the technique yet in this image, but it's dramatic!  I also added a little interest to the horses drawing the carriage by having one looking over its shoulder towards the men at the reins.  I was later told that that would be impossible unless the horse somehow slipped his reins.  But I like that horse anyway.

Here is Newell pointing out to his hired diggers exactly where he wants his well.  They are skeptical of his choice, but eventually give in and start digging in the hard, dry earth.  I recall that when I was initially finished with this illustration, I decided I was dissatisfied with the figures of the two workmen, so I painted them out and rendered them again.  I've always been glad I did, because the second version was much better.  You can tell I painted over them because the gray tones are cooler, having obliterated the warmer gray background washes I used for mid-tones and shadows.  Shadows transparent, highlights opaque!

Finally, here we see P.T. Barnum watching over a couple of sculptors he hired to create a duplicate of the Cardiff Giant after unsuccessfully trying to first buy, and then even rent the original from the uninterested owners.  He did quite well with his own fake petrified giant, even outselling the original when both accidentally simultaneously ended up in New York City.  The "real" phony had to flee town and go to Boston, where he was once again a huge draw.  

I saved this piece for last because I rendered my old boss Gary Newton, for/with whom I worked at three separate establishments back from late 1975 to 1982 or so, as the bearded sculptor in the center.  Gary was one of those "most unforgettable characters" I ever knew, and a multi-talented, creative dynamo nonpareil!  I worked with him at three establishments, a local TV station, a popular counter-cultural newspaper, and his own design studio, all of which where he served as creative director.  I met Gary not long after his run as a TV horror host had finished!  "Simon's Sanctorum" ran on WCVB TV and in syndication in the early 1970s and was very popular.  And creative!  Some episodes can be seen on Youtube on Penny Dreadful's Shilling Shockers here and here, and also on Vimeo, sans Penny, here.  Sadly, Gary passed away much too young 23 years ago, and as I write this, I'm remembering that today December 31st is Gary's birthday!

Backtracking ever so slightly here, I'd like to thank my editor, the charming and very expert Jane Hyman (whom I'm sure I thanked quite thoroughly 40 years ago) and another skilled and clever old friend John Treworgy, whose name appears in the credits of The Cardiff Giant book and may have been the person who got me the job!  Memory fails, but John worked as a consultant with Gary and me around the time I did all that art for JEM Books, including the next book I did later that year, "UFO Teen Sightings."  More on John in future posts.

 

THE CARDIFF GIANT RISES AGAIN!

It can be a startling thing to unearth old art and find that it still stands up to some degree of scrutiny.  I recently found the original illustrations to a book I drew a bit over 40 years ago.  It was my first full-length book, and I really put a lot into it.  All of my life and career, I have been fascinated by line, and the vast majority of my professional output has been drawn in ink on paper, often colored later, first with watercolor wash and later digitally when I learned how to do that.  For whatever reasons, I produced this book in mixed media using acrylic paint combined with various pencils and tightened up with my trusty Rapidograph pen.  More on the technique later.  I'm starting out with six pieces that I particularly enjoy for various reasons.

But first, some back story on the book:  It was titled simply "The Cardiff Giant."  It's a true account of one of the great hoaxes in American history.  It all took place back in 1869.  A man named George Hull concocted an elaborate money-making scheme in which he hired some men to dig up what seemed to be a petrified giant buried on his relative,  William Newell's property.  Science took a back seat to fantasy here since flesh, human or otherwise, does not turn to stone under any circumstances, but there were innumerable credulous people willing to believe that this was the remains a giant human.  The truth, of course, was entirely different.  The stone giant was a sculpture carved by other men hired by Newell which was buried on his farm to be later dug up seemingly by accident by men digging a well.  The first image I'm posting is of the workers digging in hard earth unknowingly about to discover something quite other than water.

The second illustration is of a couple of scientists examining the giant to determine authenticity.  This gave me the irresistible opportunity to render my own version of the classic "eye enlarged by the magnifying glass" image, so beloved by fans of detective fiction.
 

 

The third image is one of my favorites, as several characters reading the news are known to me.  The lady reading over the shoulder of the dapper gent is based on my lovely wife.  The gent is me, as I looked back in the early 1980s, and the little girl is our daughter.  To the right, the bearded chap is my friend Dave LeBlanc, who has been seen here on my blog making various cameo appearances.  He has often appeared in my illustrations over the decades.

The next scene depicts a crowd that gathered quickly after news of the "discovery" spread.  My favorite part of this bird's-eye view is the crying child, obviously unnerved by this spectacle.  Kids crack me up.

In this scene, Newell is joined by investor and co-conspirator George Hull, as the giant is exhumed while a photographer and reported observe.

There were two factions who disagreed vehemently on the supposed authenticity of the "petrified giant."  Scientist decried the possibility of a man turned to stone.  Those more willing to believe the hype were happy to do so.  There were other theories of the giant's origin.  Some thought he was carved by ancient peoples.  This scene is an imagining of that.  And here, I'd like to point out a couple of creative aspects of my approach to the book.  From the beginning, I wanted to employ lots of texture and bold brush strokes in the application of the paint, particularly in the backgrounds.  I also set a task for myself wherein I would attempt to master the rendering of clouds.  That was just something that interested me at the time.  The sky here is one of my earlier in the book attempts.

The Cardiff Giant was published in 1983 by JEM Books (Julian E. Messner), a division of Simon & Schuster.  It's pretty long out of print but a search for ISBN #: 0-671-43851-4 may occasionally turn something up.

Click on the thumbnail images to view the large illustrations, and stay tuned for the next batch!