Andrew Loomis, "Fun with a Pencil" (repost)

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Andrew Loomis, "Fun with a Pencil" (repost)

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Loomis was born in 1892 in Syracuse, New York. Walt and Roger Reed in The Illustrator in America say that "it was a visit to the nearby studio of Howard Chandler Christy that made him decide to seek for himself an artist's career." He studied in New York at the Art Students League under George Bridgman and F.V. du Mond when he was 19 and went back to the Midwest (he grew up in Zanesville, Ohio) in 1915 to Chicago to work in an art studio there. He continued his education at the Chicago Art Institute.
After military service in World War I, Loomis worked for a couple of advertising agencies before opening his own studio at 360 North Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago where he listed his "subjects" as "Character Studies, Figures, Historical Subjects, Interiors, Covers, Posters, Portraits, Still Life, Landscapes" and his "mediums" as "Black and white, Charcoal, Color, Dry Brush, Oil, Watercolor, Pastel, Wash." At left is a sample of his work from 1928.
He taught at the American Academy of Art, in Chicago, during the 1930s and that it was there he perfected the teaching techniques that he codified in his first book, Fun With a Pencil, in 1939. The self-portrait/caricature at the top of this page is the final illustration in that book. It's 120 pages in b&w and blue and the focus is cartooning, though there are lots of very solid illustration tips as well. And it really is fun! The tone is light-hearted, but the information is carefully and skillfully presented. It's no surprise that it was popular.

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Andrew Loomis, "Fun with a Pencil" (repost)

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