Kids and Toys and Stereotypes

This illustration is one of a series I did for a book titled Rethinking Pop Culture. This chapter was about how stereotyping dictates the toys our kids play with, something majority children wouldn't notice. The art director was the excellent Patrick J B Flynn.

Department Store Christmas

I spent my early childhood in suburban Chicago, which meant every Christmas we made a trip downtown on the train to see the decorated windows at Marshall Fields, visit the toy department and Santa, and stand in line to eat lunch in the Walnut Room beside the enormous Christmas tree. That's what I'm remembering when I hear Christmas music today and what I was picturing when I painted this Christmas card for Graphique de France several years ago.

Airplanes, etc.

My parents once expressed hopes that I'd find a job in the airline business, so they could fly for free. A very sensible idea. The closest I've come is doing art for airline advertising. Fifteen years ago I did a daily ad for one airline. This week I've been doing some paintings for another. As a mapmaker, it's a good fit. But illustrators seldom are flown anywhere on assignment. I get to go places more often as a travel writer. I used to fly all over to write about ski destinations, but since I no longer ski I am looking for a different gig. Beaches maybe, or cities with interesting cafés. I once introduced myself as the food and wine editor for Skiing magazine. I could do the same for another magazine if asked.

Are We Happier?

I did this illustration for a story about property and happiness. I"m the person on the left.

Assorted Items

I've been drawing still lifes lately. Arranging items in a certain way says something. It implies a message even if there isn't one, a relationship or a causation you never intended. Why else are these things together? My book uses this same trick. Setting anecdotes and people next to each other strikes up a conversation between them.

This arrangement of toys and people was done for a paper promotion designed by Besser Joseph years ago. The items have a loose connection having to do with the initial letter L, and some other tropes I can't remember. As I look at it now I can almost make sense of it, but it's probably not the sense I intended when I painted it.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

I love toys. Not only are they a fun timewaster in the studio, they offer a useful metaphorical tool. Things not plausible in real life often make sense as a toy. This pencil style I've been playing around with has a different effect: pencil gives things a documentary feel, as if they've been seen and recorded. Pencils also come directly out of the artist's head, with none of the smoothing-out that a more finished medium adds. It's more off-the-cuff, more sincere, more suggestive. What does this drawing suggest? We use the phrase "remote control" in a disparaging way, so maybe it could add an ironic commentary to a story about a pol who's controlled by others. Just off the top of my head.

Real Toys

I'm tired of PlayStation 3s and BMWs being called toys. This is a toy. We need to get back to the tradition of buying and giving toys for Christmas. Enough of my soapbox, I need to address some Christmas cards.

Toys Toys Toys

When I can't think what to ask for for Christmas I ask for toys. Tintoys, Dinky Cars, cast metal toy soldiers. Somewhere, in a drawer probably, I have a set of elastolin zoo animals I found at an estate sale years ago; I should find them and put them out. It's a toy time of year. I did this motorcyclist for a designer friend who likes motorcycles. I should maybe offer my services as a toy portraitist. Is there such a thing?

Thanksgiving, the Revised Standard Version

One of my favorite memories from kindergarten and first grade is of the day we spent cutting and coloring paper pilgrims and turkeys and Indians and log cabins for the classroom Thanksgiving mural. The resulting tableau was a mixture of scales and artistic abilities. It didn't matter if it was wrong in its details; this unevenness was what gave it its charm and energy.

Our modern picture of the historic holiday is similarly uneven, and almost entirely wrong. But we tend to love our traditions even––maybe especially––when they are mistaken. We wrap holidays in sentiment and it's hard to correct people's sentimental attachments. It's hard for some people to be reminded that the Pilgrims were incompetent at pioneering or that the founding fathers––Washington, Jefferson and that lot––were a bunch of agnostics and (worse) Unitarians.

I did this illustration for designer Patrick J B Flynn. The article was about the modern revisionist picture of Thanksgiving, so I used iconic toy figures as a starting point. Despite knowing better, I got the same nostalgic Thanksgiving thrill drawing them. Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Art Installation

Art museums butter their bread with "art installations", rooms filled with art that looks like plain ordinary stuff artfully arranged. (I collaborated on a screenplay years ago about an art detective. The funniest line from it was written by somebody else. The detective enters a museum gallery which is filled waist-high with mud and says: "I can't believe this is a forgery.") This is an illustrator's version of installed art. We all collect things. I collect old toys, and they turn up in my art. The arrangement here is influenced a bit by Saul Steinberg, but also (in the styling) by Elwood Smith and Steven Guarnaccia and Seymour Chwast. Our minds are all shadowboxes full of items glued together by Joseph Cornell. The art director on this was Rick Besser, but the art was never used.

The Terrible Truth About Grown-Ups

Story time was improv. Every night I'd sit down and wing it.

One night I decided to riff on the things kids don't know about grown-ups. For instance, that we play with their toys when the kids are in school. Sometimes we even let friends of ours play with their toys. The worse the behavior the more she laughed. If it's preposterous it's funny... but maybe it's actually true. That uncertainty makes it funnier. The tradition goes back to Struwehlpeter and to Belloc's Cautionary Tales, but these tales don't warn kids to behave. The idea is to warn kids about grownup behavior. The bias probably shifted to the child's side with Roald Dahl. Like I said, I hope I'm able to get this published before my kids are grownups themselves. They might not think it's as funny then.