Gary's done-in-one, comic book short stories are available at Aazurn.com! Through study of album covers, television program title artwork, and common illustrations used in everything from health booklets to instruction manuals from the 1950s, author/designer Gary Scott Beatty created recent Xeric Foundation grant winner "Jazz: Cool Birth," a jazz club murder mystery.

"I hope to pull readers into the late night clubs of 1957, feeling the music through the visuals," Beatty explained. Ignoring paint and ink magazine illustration, a style left over from previous decades, he said he concentrated on the combination of flat and painterly used by artists working with T-squares and triangles, tracing paper, ruling pens and brush. "What '50s designers lacked in modern printing methods they made up for in raw skill with their tools," he said. "I'm still in awe over what they were able to accomplish by hand.

Some influences on "Jazz: Cool Birth" are Alex Steinweiss, Jim Flora, illustrator Lou Peters and Disney designer Tom Oreb, as well as Mark Rothko and the rest of the abstract expressionists. "But the look of Jazz: Cool Birth comes, mostly, from unknown, uncredited artists working in a beat style in a decade where nearly every printed piece contained some kind of drawn graphic," said Beatty.

Beatty's tools are modern and digital, but he said the process of pushing things around on the page remains the same as 1957. "What I learned from studying craftsmen of 50 years ago is to never let the tools dictate where something lays on a page. The modern computer typesetter's practice of distorting type rather than adjusting the letter spacing and kerning is lazy, uninformed and unattractive. Typography is a line-by-line art, dig?"

"Jazz: Cool Birth" can be found at quality comic book shops worldwide or ordered here at Aazurn.com.

BACK TO GARY'S HOME PAGE

POPEYE - PROMOTE YOUR WORK - LOGO SAMPLER

C.A.D. BACK ISSUES FOR SALE

C.A.D. ARTWORK FOR SALE

BACK TO TOP

All artwork is copyright © by its respective artists and publishers.