Take a close look at the full-page picture of the female movie star in the magazine that Norman Rockwell’s Girl at Mirror has in her lap. Now look at the reflection of the woman in Robert McGinnis’s painting for the Carter Brown novel, The Never-Was Girl; see how McGinnis’s model seems to be using her hands as a cover to test how she would look with short hair; also, simply compare the two faces. Coincidence? I doubt it…
The lesson here: if you’re fleeing from danger, or just out taking the air, alone, on the verge of a dangerous precipice, and you’re wearing a dress, you’re going to have to hike it up in front with your hands to avoid tripping headlong into the clutches of an insistent lover or over the brink. Women already know this; men, not so much.
One bare foot… hm… perhaps it’s a sign… a symbol of some sort… if only I could think what it means…
ABOVE: Robert Kyle, Kill Now, Pay Later (New York: Dell, 1960), with cover art by Robert McGinnis.
ABOVE: Robert Kyle, Some Like It Cool (New York: Dell, 1962), with cover art by Robert McGinnis.
Sorry about the iffy scan on the second one. The book is a little bit warped, so the scanner created and caught a bit of glare.
BONUS COVER SCAN (added 14 August 2010):
This evening, as I was absent-mindedly browsing the paperback shelves in our basement, I came across a cover by an uncredited artist that had something about it that made me want to include it here…
ABOVE: Doris Lessing, In Pursuit of the English (New York: Ballantine, 1966), with cover art by Robert Foster (uncredited/attributed).
BONUS LINK:
Flickr > Kyle Katz > Robert Foster Covers
In my growing collection of vintage books, I have quite a few paperbacks with Robert McGinnis art. I posted a few last time; now, here are five more, in no particular order:
I usually prefer to display paperback covers in order of publication, but these Fawcett paperbacks mostly don’t include the year(s) of publication, only the year the book was copyright.
Scanned from the mouldering vintage-paperback library of yours truly, here are four “Carter Brown” covers by Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame inductee Robert McGinnis (1926 – ), everyman’s favourite pulp-paperback cover artist:
First interesting fact about McGinnis: his preferred medium for his cover paintings wasn’t oil, or watercolour, or gouache; rather, it was, and still is, egg tempera. Second interesting fact: McGinnis seldom drew from life but instead took photographs of models (etc.), projected them onto the painting surface, and traced the resulting images, clarifying the forms where necessary, and elongating and adjusting the limbs and features according to his distinctive sense of proportion and beauty. McGinnis very briefly demonstrates his working methods in a DVD entitled Robert McGinnis: Painting the Last Rose of Summer, which is not a painting video at all but rather a documentary overview of McGinnis’s career as a commercial artist and painter.
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