Nature Done Wright

I know this is a bit farther "beyond" than most posts, but I found it fascinating and thought it worth sharing …

While cleaning out a bookcase recently, I found an illustration that I had found in a drawer at a magazine I worked at in Manhattan many moons ago.

It was done in pencil on cheap cardboard, and a bit worse for wear.

I always liked the illustration, and managed to hang on to it all these years. I thought someday I'd write a short story to go with the illustration.

Never did a Google search until this week.

Turns out the guy was a big deal — "the dean of American illustrators," "Norman Rockwell looked up to him" — and from my hometown of Philly to boot.

(My father was an illustrator who lived in Philly as well, and probably knew of Gruger,)

This from saturdayeveningpost.com:

He had a long, successful career working for the top magazines and companies, including The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Harper’s, Century, Collier’s, Scribner’s, McClure’s, and Good Housekeeping.  

So, what was Gruger’s “secret technique” that achieved such great success?   

Surprisingly, his technique was just drawing with a pencil on cheap cardboard. 

When Gruger first began working on the staff of a newspaper, he learned to draw on flimsy cardboard called “railroad blank.”

The newspapers kept stacks of railroad blank lying around for anyone to use as a backing for photos. The cardboard was so cheap, nobody cared how much Gruger borrowed to practice his drawing. 

It was a simple and frugal way to get art supplies to satisfy his early assignments. As he learned to draw, Gruger found that the cardboard took his pencil well. 

He experimented with smearing and erasing the carbon pencil to achieve special effects that no one else had achieved. Pretty soon, he became a virtuoso of pencil and cardboard. 

Now, if I could only find out where the illustration appeared.

This blog post was helpful as well.