A WEEK OF GRUGER, day 3

### On Tuesday a commenter suggested that Gruger "paints with a pencil." Here is a good example of that effect:

Illustration for the Civil War tale, “The Crystal Chandelier” 

Saturday Evening Post, July 14, 1934, 15.75 x 18"

For me, the exciting part of this picture is not the main figures (who are fairly conventional) but the dirt on the ground.  Gruger positions that dirt at center stage and sculpts it with loving care:

He achieves this effect by starting with a broad foundation of wash made from lamp black.  He then works shapes and structure into that foundation with carbon pencil, blending the carbon into the wash with a stump for tonal effect,  sharpening it with a Wolff pencil point to add accents and vitality, and selectively lifting the smeared carbon with an eraser for highlights.  The result leaves Gruger with the full range of values used by a painter.   

Gruger was a big admirer of Rembrandt and Velasquez and despite his carbon medium, it shows.

The sparkling apex of the triangle, where the most intense darks are contrasted with the brightest whites,  is the woman's dress.  In 1934 readers of the Saturday Evening Post had no way of understanding the starkness of Gruger's contrast.  Thanks to the wonders of Epson, we can now see what Gruger intended.

___________________________

In response to a number of inquiries, the Gruger originals I've been showing over the past few days came from the substantial collection of our friends at the Illustration House gallery.  ###

A WEEK OF GRUGER, day 2

### In 1928,  F.R. Gruger was so popular that the Saturday Evening Post published a cartoon by another artist about ways "Gruger could guard his famous technique from the hundreds of ambitious young artists who would possess it." 

But Gruger's "famous technique" wasn't all that secret.  Essentially he used pencil on cardboard.  Sometimes he supplemented it with a little wash.  His only protection against imitators was his talent.

Gruger drew on a cheap board that he discovered when he first started out on the staff of a newspaper art department.  Newspaper printers used thin cardboard, called "railroad blank," as a backing for silverprints.  Gruger found stacks of the stuff lying around, and nobody cared how much he used.  He discovered that the soft surface took his pencil well, and he soon began experimenting with an eraser and smearing carbon for special effects. The board later became famous as "Gruger board," in recognition of the miracles that Gruger was able to perform on it.  But many wonderful Gruger originals are no longer with us today because the treacherous Gruger board was so flimsy.

The artist began an illustration with a light pencil drawing on the cardboard. He would sometimes go over this preliminary drawing with a wash made from black watercolor, to block out his tonal composition.  Then he followed up with pencils, starting with a hard pencil and finishing up with a Wolff carbon pencil which produced a "rich, velvety black" that was so often lost in the reproduction process.

Let's see how this approach worked in some close ups from another Gruger original:

“The King’s Minion” by Rafael Sabatini, American Magazine, September 1930

Note how Gruger draws important faces in relatively sharp focus, but then quickly drops back as he pulls away from those focal points.  He indicates surrounding elements such as hands in softer terms so they don't compete with the faces:

Gruger deliberately went back and smudged this hand with an eraser.

By the time Gruger gets to background figures,  they are mostly just shapes added for compositional purposes.

No fingernails here: these hands are a lovely little abstraction.

But for me, the most impressive thing about the way Gruger prioritized his drawing was his control over the value scale. 

That's why it's such a shame that most people only know Gruger for the etiolated images on the inner pages of old magazines.

Gruger drew on cheap board which is already crumbling around the edges, and his completed work was printed on cheap magazine paper which robbed his drawings of their dark and light accents.  Sandwiched between these two limitations, Gruger nevertheless put his heart and talent into 6,000 carbon illustrations. Before his original marks disappear altogether, they deserve an appropriate audience.  

###