Pre-WSJ Illustrations
My post will deal with what this illustrator was up to towards the end of his art school career. Specifically, I am talking about the most interesting of years: 1976-77, while enrolled at Tyler School of Art, an arm of Temple University. The reader may be aware of my work at The Wall Street Journal, initiating their hallmark portrait 'hedcut' style. The illustrations here were all created a few years earlier, and presage what was to become a trademark recognized far and wide.Let's see what was going on in 1976...
Here is an illustration I created in Junior year:I was assigned a project in Typography class: to assemble and print, on my school's letterpress machine, a collection of pages, packaged in a folder. It was a lot of work! I received the honor of 'spending the least amount of time attending class', as I was feverishly busy creating illustrations at my rental house, two miles from school. My professor, Joe Scorsone, awarded me an 'A', as I succeeded in completing the assignment. Here's one more from the series of six illustrations...I went to study in Rome in Fall of 1976, a glorious and intense experience. While there, I had the good fortune to study classical literature with Paula Robison, a Temple Abroad scholar. Our class comprised of eight students -- we met a couple of times a week. I became a lifelong devotee of the likes of Homer and Virgil. The exploits of Odysseus became an inspiration for a Tale I wrote. Here is the opener:Above, the initial page of my Senior Typography project. I set all of the type myself, on what was then a state-of-the-art typesetting machine. The font is Korinna. The type galleys had been turning black with age over the years, and each page had to be corrected and cleaned up. Amazingly, I managed to hold onto the materials for this tome, through floods, the birth of children, many migrations, and constant reshuffling. I will be publishing a printed version of the tale this year -- stay tuned!Above, one of the illustrations from my book. I was reading William Morris a the time... "The Well at the World's End". That would explain my use of archaic language in telling the tale. I created a series of border ornaments for the work, inspired by the Art Nouveau style that I admired:
Here's another illustration from the book: It's little wonder I couldn't complete this project, even with an extra month at it after all of my colleagues had departed from campus. There are about eight illustrations in all.This is the final image from the tale. I'm still working avidly to finish this project, forty years later. Prof Scorsone gave me a 'B' grade for this class, as the project did not reach completion in 1977. When I publish this year, maybe I'll apply for a revision of my grade!
all images, c. Kevin Sproul
