Although his home was rural Vermont, Norman Rockwell knew about the integrated urban neighborhoods thriving in 1940’s America. Long before interstates, Levittown, and “white flight,” working-class neighborhoods in Troy, New York and Los Angeles, California attracted the famous illustrator. He drew sketches and took photographs of their tenements and people, and these sketches provided the backdrop for two of Rockwell’s most memorable Saturday Evening Post covers, Homecoming GI (1945) and Road Block (1949). And true to their urban theme, both of these illustrations include African Americans.

Troy, known as “The Collar City,” was home to Arrow Shirts, whose “Arrow Collar Man” was made famous by advertisements created by Rockwell’s mentor and friend, J.C. Leyendecker. Troy was a booming factory town, manufacturing four million collars a week during the 1920’s. Another source of industrial fame for the town was its ironworks, fabrications that, in the mid-1800’s, were second only to those of Pennsylvania.

From his Vermont home, Norman Rockwell frequently traveled through Troy on his way to Albany, New York where he caught the train to New York City. When the artist decided to create a Post cover commemorating World War II vets coming back to their home towns, he decided to make that home town working-class Troy, New York.

Homecoming GI appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 25, 1945. Among the folks gleefully (or shyly, in the case of his young sweetheart) welcoming home the young soldier is not only Norman Rockwell himself (standing in a doorway of the tenement), but also two young boys recklessly hanging from a tree they have climbed, wildly waving a welcome. One of the two boys is black.

In 1945, kids just went out to play. No “helicopter parents,” no play dates. Black and white kids frolicked and fought together up and down America’s streets. Think “Our Gang”. Elsie Wagner Fenic, in her moving memoir White Girl in Harlem, provides a lovely glimpse into this time. A second generation Polish-American, Fenic can still jump a pretty mean double dutch, thanks to spending her first nineteen years enjoying 1940’s New York City street games with black and Latino friends.

Norman Rockwell put black and white playmates together in Homecoming GI, not to make a civil rights statement, but because, on the streets of Troy, New York in 1945, they were really there.

Another Norman Rockwell urban setting was Los Angeles, California.

During the winter of 1948-49, while vacationing with his in-laws in Los Angeles, Rockwell paid a visit to a Mrs. Merrill, widow and owner of a rooming house for women. He wanted to borrow her entire house.

Located in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, 719 South Rampart Boulevard was a three-story tenement flanked by similar structures and the “Pacific Telephone and Telegraph” building, the place of work for many of Mrs. Merrill’s boarders. Rockwell sought Mrs. Merrill’s permission to stage a photo shoot in front of her building. Capturing the street as well as some of its residents as models, he would then use these photos to create one of his famous Saturday Evening Post covers. But Mrs. Merrill said no. Apparently, even back in 1949, not everybody loved Norman Rockwell.

The feisty middle aged landlady felt that, in his paintings, the famous artist did not adequately “enhance” his female subjects. Rockwell persisted in his request however, and Merrill finally gave in: for payment of $50.00.

The camera crew showed up on South Rampart while one of Mrs. Merrill’s roomers, Antonia Piasecki, was doing her laundry. In a letter to the Norman Rockwell Museum she writes: “Mr. Rockwell asked me for some fancy undies for the clothes line. I gave him nylon stockings, black lace trimmed panties and a bra which he hung up himself… “

A moving truck arrived, complete with California license plates and two moving truck drivers. Lots of photos were taken. The result was Road Block, the character-filled illustration which appeared as the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on July 9, 1949.

Norman Rockwell put himself in the painting: he’s the violin teacher looking out the window of what was actually Ms. Piasecki’s bedroom. Ms. Piasecki also got to be a Rockwell model: she’s the young woman leaning out the window below Rockwell. The red-haired lady standing at the basement door? That’s the resister-turned-Rockwell model, Mrs. Merrill. The models for other figures in the painting have been identified, as well: Joseph Magnani, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a friend of Rockwell’s, is the artist hanging out of the window in a building across the street, accompanied by a barely-draped young lady. Peter Rockwell, the artist’s youngest son, is the bespeckled boy with the violin right below them. But Ms. Piasecki does not remember “there being all those children (at the shooting site) at the time.”

“All those children” is probably Ms. Piasecki’s polite code for the two little black kids posed at the bottom of the scene. They stand solemnly with their backs to the viewer, studying the impasse created when the big red truck meets a little white dog.

Apparently, Norman Rockwell didn’t actually encounter any black children on South Rampart Street that day. But given his understanding of similar neighborhoods like those in Troy, New York, he knew they were there, somewhere. So the intrepid artist went out and found them.

***

They are touching in elegance, innocence and simplicity. Two black children, a little girl and an older boy, in rear profile. The black and white photo in the Norman Rockwell Museum archives shows the boy’s shirt crisply pressed, the little girl’s braids impeccably arranged. Both are standing holding their hands behind their backs, staring out at an unseen horizon.

The names of these two little models are unknown. Nothing is written on the back of the photo. The meticulously kept Rockwell receipts do not reveal who was paid for posing for this shot. The locale of the photograph, although it appears to have been taken in Los Angeles, is not known for sure either.

But this is known: in 1949, Norman Rockwell purposely went out and found two black children to model for him so he could place their figures in his illustration. Rockwell knew they were supposed to be in the picture.

The house at 719 South Rampart Boulevard has disappeared. Where the building once stood now stands a parking lot. In the 1950’s, integrated neighborhoods began disappearing from America. Correspondingly, people of color disappeared from Norman Rockwell’s 1950’s paintings as well.

When I was 16 years old my dream job was to work in the electronics industry, I loved electronics. But my careers officer advised me the best thing for me was to do art. Great! I was always drawing and at school I always had the first prize for my artwork, drawing was a natural way of life for me.

So with the advise from my teachers, parent and of course my careers officer off I went to art school to study “Technical and Pictorial Illustrations” at an art college in Kent, England.

We were to learn everything to do with art, from painting, sketching, technical illustration and perspective.

Perspective, what is that? Well it was the beginning of a love affair that blossomed into one of the greatest love of my life. It changed the whole way I thought about art and the world around me.

My main lecturer was a man called George Nicholson who was a master of perspective, and I loved this old man. He made me understand perspective and the reasons for it. For someone who drew so much I suddenly found myself starting all over again.

At the end of the two years intensive course I was the only one that passed the exam that had a total of 26 students.

Since that period my jobs were such that perspective was not the main part of the work but I lived and breathe perspective. Every drawing I looked at I would find fault with the perspective and the way the artist went about it, but never said anything because what could I do about it!

All I ever wanted to do was to show every artist how to draw using perspective to create the correct image. Lets face I am old enough to say it but most artist are lazy when it comes to learning how to create a real drawing that has an outstanding sense of feeling and reality. Because they can draw it makes them unique!

I have seen so many portraits, landscape and technical illustrations that is so badly drawn that I started to lose faith in a lot of artists in whatever media in was presented in.

But after over 30 years I saw something that made me stand up and got angry, mad at what these people were doing to perspective that I wanted to do something about it. But what could I do? The people I was angry with were the most respected bunch of guys in the world of computer graphics and I have worked with them over the years and had great respect for a group of individuals that dedicated themselves to graphics on our computers.

They started a revolution, a transformation that changed our lives and gave us fonts and all manner of things, with list that would be too long to go into here, that I felt bad just thinking of the situation.

The company is Adobe. Anyone in computer graphics in any way would have heard of these guys. From Illustrator to Photo Shop the list is endless. I myself have Adobe CS4 and love the fact that after all these years working with them I am still around because of this famous and celebrated company.

But when in the early part of 2010 Illustrator CS5 came out I was shocked, the thought of upgrading was canceled, and my whole thought about Adobe was in a mess. You see for the first time in over 25 years the company had introduced perspective to Illustrator and it was a mess, yet like me over the years, no one had said anything detrimental!

Every post and article I read about Illustrator CS5, no one had noticed it seems, that the perspective was not correct, appalling perspective, junior grade, yet everyone raved about it and Adobe collected millions of dollars for nonchalance work. But still what could I do? What could I say?

I started researching and looked all over the Internet for answers but still I found nothing of great value. I wrote to Adobe regarding my frustration about the mistakes I found with the perspective used in Illustrator CS5 and had no answer.

Then I found EzineArticles and started to do a search and still no one had any solid idea it seems, about perspective. Yet the articles were great and were written with great skill yet no real value about perspective, people from all walks of life and with passion and wonderful writing skills. But so often the picture is painted with so much inaccuracy I cannot tell you how I feel. Take a look here and lets analyze this statement from someone who had received a BFA.

“To put things straight, in a perspective drawing, the viewer is assumed to be at a distance from the actual drawing. Therefore, the objects are not scaled accurately. A circle may appear an oval, or a square may appear a trapezium. This distortion, as mentioned above, is known as foreshortening“.

OK, lets look at the statement…

1. The viewer is ALWAYS at a distant, this is not an assumption, it’s a fact, and how often do we view an object that is touching our eye!

2. In perspective ALL objects are scaled accurately by the use of measuring points.

3. The only reason a circle is oval is when you view it at an angle, stand over a cup and it’s a circle, move away and it becomes an ellipsis, a circle in perspective.

4. A square that is placed outside of the ‘cone of vision’ will appear as a ‘trapezium’, which would only be cause by creating perspective incorrectly and therefore wrong!

5. None of these are ‘foreshortening’. Take a pencil and hold it in front of your face, now lower the top of the pencil towards your face about 45 degrees, the pencil seems shorter in length and perspective is applied, that is foreshortening.

Yes, EzineArticles is where I will start I thought, let my frustration out; tell people how I felt, so here I am.

The next thing, start putting a website together to teach perspective, a Membership Site that I will aim start in the New Year, 2011. Perspective is something we ALL use every day yet we ignore it because our brain does all the work for us; however, to put in on paper or canvas we lose the plot.

Too many article writers have made perspective a complicated issue when it’s not at all! The beauty of perspective is, once YOU have learned perspective, you will SEE perspective and the technical stuff will be stored in your head, the brain is where perspective belongs and it will help you in all manner of drawings, even photography.

I want to show perspective drawing from another perspective and I will do my utmost to put Adobe to shame until they correct the flaws in this great program call Illustrator.

A number of expertly written books are available in the market to help parents and teachers to teach the values of honesty, right, and wrong to children during their formative years. A review of these books will provide more information about the usefulness of these mediums as teaching tools for children.

”Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big”, written by cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, is one of the most useful children’s books to have been written for teaching children the values of life in a fun-filled manner. The author has used his experience as a cartoonist and illustrator to write this book. Illustrations, expressions, and significant insight have been used extensively by the author to develop the book, which teaches children all the good values of life in a fun-filled manner. The illustrations and expressions of the characters in the book play a key role in informing children about all the good values and things of life without forcing them to make much effort and experience stress in understanding the content of the book and the moral behind the story. The story has been told from Edwurd’s sister, Fannie’s perspective, encouraging children not to lie and highlighting the advantages of being truthful in one’s life.

”The Berenstain Bears And The Truth” by Jan Berenstain is the second children’s book in this category, which has emerged as a key feature of any home where there are small children. This book also uses lots of illustrations and expressions to tell a story where temptation and lies have adverse impacts on one’s life. The story is told in a light manner without putting much stress on the readers to understand the content and values that need to be taught to children to improve their characters and personality during their formative years. The book emphasizes that children need to avoid telling lies and temptations for certain things and actions in their lives and inculcate the values of truthfulness and honesty to grow up as better human beings.

”Ruthie And The (Not So) Teeny Tiny Lie” by Laura Rankin is the third book in this category, which uses illustrations and creative brushstrokes to narrate the story. The book narrates a story where a young fox finds a camera on the ground and claims it to be hers. She spends a restless night at home where she is unable to sleep, as she had lied to everyone about the camera. She tells the truth to her parents and teachers in the morning, realizing that lying is bad. The creative illustrations and expressions of the characters when they interact with each other are the highlights of this book. These features play a key role in teaching children the significance of truthfulness and its role in molding one’s character and personality for better living in the future. The illustrations and the brushwork also play a key role in enhancing the sense of creativity in small children, which help them in putting their imagination and skills to better use in their later life.

All the three books and many more that are available in the market today are playing a key role in helping parents and teachers in teaching the significance of good values during their formative years in a playful and fun-filled manner without putting much stress on the toddlers.

The Pin Up Girl

Before we talk about the curvy, swervy, plus-size-bikini-clad Hilda, the stage is going to be set with a little history of the pin up girl. I’ll take you back in time now, with a short story about a few of the most talented and popular Pin Up illustrators in American history.

Earl Christy, (1883-1961)

We’ll begin with the prolific Earl Christy, who’s porcelain-doll-like illustrations appeared on everything from Hollywood magazine covers and commercial advertisements to sheet music and postcards. His work can be found going back as early as 1906. His movie posters and covers he painted for “Photoplay” and other Hollywood magazines are now valuable collector items.

Earl Moran (1893-1984)

Earl Moran’s artistic genius appeared on everything from Sears and Roebuck catalogs to Life magazine and millions of Brown and Bigelow Calendars. How he’s remembered most is through his pin ups. Moran’s stunningly rendered pastel “visions” offer more situational variety than any other major illustrator. Of his most enduring legacies are his 1940s paintings of a breathtaking

young model named Norma Jean Baker. He painted more images of her than any other artist.

Rolf Armstrong (1889-1960)

Rolf Armstrong was another famous Brown and Bigelow calendar artist. After arriving home from a trip to France in 1919, he opened a studio in Greenwich Village where he painted the Ziegfeld Folly girls. Later, while in Hollywood, all the great stars of the era posed for him. Popular actresses like Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Katherine Hepburn were all painted by him. He even talked Boris Karloff into posing for him on the set of the original “Frankenstein”.

He refused to work from photographs and was always on the quest for the perfect model. When asked why he preferred a live model over a photograph, he said, “I want the living person in front of me. As I look at her again and again and again while I work, I get a thousand fresh, vivid impressions… all the glow, exuberance, and spontaneous joy that leaps from a young and happy heart.”

Armstrong’s pastel pin ups of his idealized, scantily clad,”girl next door” have a distinctive, luminous and shimmering quality to them. His paintings of healthy, nubile young women are some of the most memorable of all the famous illustrators. He was truly a man of rarefied talent.

George Petty (1894-1975)

The Pin Up finally exploded into the popular culture with Esquire Magazine’s introduction of s”Petty Girl” in 1933. Slender, flirtatious and extremely shapely, the Petty Girl became an American institution, capturing our hearts and minds for more than twenty years. From 1933 to 1956, her images were seen in tens of millions of places; every where from magazines and billboards to playing cards and match books, even aircraft “nose art” in WWII. In 1950, she was made into a movie starring Robert Cummings and Elsa Lanchester.

Gil Elvgren (1914-1980)

No pin up gallery is complete without displaying the breathtaking talent of Gil Elvgren. His enchanting, dreamy renderings of the nubile female form cannot be eclipsed in genius by any other artist. He was sublimely talented! A student of the Minneapolis Art Institute, he liked to paint girls who were new to the modeling business. He believed the ideal pin up was a girl with

a fifteen year old face on a twenty year old body, so he combined the two. During the forty two years spanning 1930-1972, he produced over five hundred paintings of beautiful young women, nearly all painted on oil and canvas. Today, his fully developed, finished works of art are second only in value to the paintings of Alberto Vargas.

Alberto Vargas (1896-1982)

The most prolific and famous glamor illustrator of all time is Alberto Vargas. The son of Max Vargas, a famous and talented photographer in his own right, Alberto learned to airbrush from his father before he was a teen. Most don’t realize he was actually born in Peru, and didn’t come to the US until 1916. He arrived on Ellis Island via Europe, where he had been since 1911. While

there, he had studied in both Geneva and Zurich, and by the time had made his way here, he was already a gifted talent coming into bloom. Within three years he had hung his own shingle and was painting store fronts and window displays for New York City merchants.

One warm afternoon in May 1916, while painting a window display for a downtown merchant, he was approached by a employee of the Ziegfeld Follies and asked to show his work to the great Ziegfeld himself. Within forty eight hours, he was commissioned to paint 12 portraits of the leading stars of the 1919 season of the Ziegfeld Follies. They were for the lobby of the New Amsterdam Theatre.

From that first commission on, Alberto Vargas was an artist in high demand.

He painted every major star of the Ziegfeld Follies and later major Hollywood stars like Betty Grable, Jane Russell, Ann Sheridan, Ava Gardner Linda Darnell, Marlene Dietrich, Loretta Young, and even Marilyn Monroe all posed for him.

In 1940 he replaced the great George Petty at Esquire magazine and by 1945 was the most famous glamor illustrator in the world.

Baby boomers all know him as the creator of Playboy Magazine’s Vargas Girl. He painted over 150 of his Vargas Girl masterpieces for Playboy.

He was married over forty years to the love of his life, Anna Mae Clift. When she passed away in 1974, he lost most of his creative drive and worked just a few more times doing The Cars “Candy O” album cover and two album covers for Bernadette Peters. He passed away in Los Angeles in December, 1982.

Now, the reason this article was written…to talk about the most shapely, wondrously round, perfectly proportioned, plus size, pear shaped beauty in Pin Up girl history: Duane Bryers’ “Hilda”

One night, while prowling “Google Images” for curvaceous content, I found myself at Les Toil’s Big Beautiful Pin Up Gallery. I clicked through and followed his fun and curiously titled links looking for the well-nourished, feminine imagery I had started out that night looking for.

After I got done admiring Les’ talent, I went back to his homepage and clicked on a cheerful teal and yellow banner with the name “Hilda” written across it. I clicked on it, not prepared at all for what I was about to see.

As soon as the page opened, I stopped and looked in wonder. It was one of those moments when you’re seeing something with which you’re completely taken; the world around you seems to disappear, and everything goes completely silent as your focus narrows, taking in what’s in front of you.

Discovering Hilda was like discovering lost treasure. I recognized her right away. I remembered her as a perfect likeness of what I had for years idealized in the feminine form; round, soft, pear-shaped, plump, and shapely to the extreme.

If one’s natural male instinct is to respond to the rounder, softer, more generously proportioned woman, you will understand why there is so much to like about her. From her long, soft legs, girlish face, plump, inviting arms, to her hips, round and wide, you see a vision of femininity forming in front of you. Add to all that her ample, well-developed breasts, soft, yielding tummy and glorious hip-waist ratio, and you discover she is an ideal example of full-figure perfection. The perfect plus size, pear-shaped,

nubile beauty.

Unlike the stick-thin, female icons so popular today, Hilda has not one angular feature. She sublimely embodies the old fashioned womanly ideals of “round and soft”. She is feminine to the nth degree.

Duane Bryers was the first illustrator to use plus size models as subjects in his pin up art. Sometimes he didn’t use a model at all and painted from memory or fantasy. A feat, according to pin up artist Les Toil, “most impressive!”

Pamela Colman-Smith, nicknamed Pixie, a twenty-two-year-old US citizen living in London was having an existential crisis. On this day in November Smith needed money to market and fund a publishing enterprise featuring an Avant-Garde magazine called "The Green Sheaf." Pixie, like the Peter-Pan of her illustrations, started to feel like her friends had stopped believing in her.

Pixie started making illustrations for Theater Set Design and Theater Costume Design as a child living in London. Her mother was a successful writer of illustrated children books. Her father traveled regularly between Brooklyn, Jamaica and London as auditor for an Industrial Financial Corp that owned the Jamaican Railroad. Hellen Terry, a world famous Shakespearean Theater Actress and co-founder of the Lyceum Theater, was her neighbor. Terry became a mentor and gave the energetic child with the dark hair and eyes the nickname Pixie. The family lived in Jamaica during Pixie's adolescence.

Facing racial issues in New York, Colman-Smith felt London was her best choice for a career. Pixie left Pratt College in Brooklyn in 1899 and traveled to London with her father. Her father died that same year leaving her an orphan. Pixie's first network of clients came through her association with Terry and the Lyceum Theater group. Her career soared. Her first illustrated publication of African-Jamaican folk tales, Annancy Stories, was a success. She continued to build her client network through small theater performances of poetry and story reading in her home. Her list included famous playwrights, authors, poets and actors of the era. She excelled in Theatrical Set design and Costume design. Her clients were amazed at how easily she could make an illustration from the thought they were trying to project. If you think it is easy, try it. You will soon change your mind. She was able to monetize her synesthesia. That is seeing images while listening to music. Everyone has that, to some degree, but hers was extremely advanced. Her fans loved the intellectual tickling that her art evoked.

Although she was a child of the 2nd industrial revolution, her illustrations excluded anything from the mechanical age. She was always willing to share her knowledge and experience with other artists. She advised them to have the same energy that drives a piston.

Her client list included the most successful playwrights, writers, poets and theatrical performers at the turn of the 20th Century. In her innocence, she felt her clients were her friends. Pamela Coleman Smith could not get a small business loan. It was impossible in that era. No one would loan money for a woman owned business, especially a single woman owned business. She was paid by commissions.
Smith started the publication and used everything she had as leverage to make it work. She had the best content and images from the most respected artists from her network of clients. She continued to do set design and invested the commissions into the magazine. Her graphics were now being attributed to Green Sheaf School, indicating Pixie had a good grasp of Market Branding techniques. The young woman had worked in the Commercial Art industry as an illustrator since childhood, and had a thorough understanding of the latest technology.

Without funding for modern equipment, she was forced to use a century old technique for the binding process. It was quaint, but Smith's business plan called for Avant Garde. The subscription rate didn't meet expectations. The business was under capitalized. It failed after 13 issues. Pamela Coleman Smith shut it down. Poor Fool, she found herself at rock bottom financially.

Once she got fiscally stable again her career changed direction. She completed a large project that would become the defining project of her career. She was guaranteed complete artistic control. An immense project, it consisted of 80 illustrations for the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, accurately illustrated, delivered in 6 months. The project was delivered on time, on budget, to the complete satisfaction of the author, Arthur Waite. Sales of the deck were extremely successful. The only recognition Pixie got was a line in Waite's accompanying book, "I commissioned a young woman to do the illustrations." That was it. No residuals, no intellectual property. In a letter to her business associate, Alfred Stiglitz of the world-famous Stiglitz Studio, she said of the project, "It was a large project for very little cash." What contractor hasn't made that same statement a time or two? No one knows how much Pixie left on the table, but Waite had a reputation as a tightwad and the contract was verbal.

Pixie drifted away from her Golden Dawn friends after that. She continued making fantastic illustrations for the Shakespearean Theater and for publication but on a print-shop scale. She became heavily involved in Woman's Suffrage. Female publishers were wary of the danger from an angry male population. She did a lot of work for community works projects, like international relief agencies and veteran's programs. Her uncle from Brooklyn died and left her enough inheritance to help her escape the rat race and move as far away from London as possible, and remain in England. She moved to the town of Lizard, in Cornwall. That is the area that was known to have the largest concentration of pixies.

Her last visit to the US was when she visited a friend in Brooklyn in 1946. A devoted Catholic, she died in 1951. Her name and ideas faded into antiquity.

In the Tarot deck The Fool doesn't have a number, doesn't belong to any suit, can go anywhere. The fool is a free spirit always appearing unexpectedly. It happened that way for Stuart Kaplan of US Games in 2009 when he published the Centennial edition of the Rider Waite Smith deck. He sells over 1.5 million decks each year, mostly as stocking stuffers at Christmas. That makes Pamela Colman Smith the most successful illustrator of 21st Century.

The Story Of Normal Rockwell

Norman Rockwell's vision of the USA was not all white. As early as 1936, Rockwell was showing people of color with sympathy and a dignity usually withheld from people of color back then. Normal Rockwell developed these portraits from live painting sessions held at his studio.

Hidden in Plain Sight tells the story about the other people in Norman Rockwell's America. It shows the stories of the Asian, African, and Native Americans who posed for Norman Rockwell. These people were often concealed, though patently obvious from Rockwell's body of work.

There are more than 4000 illustrations in Rockwell's portfolio. People like the John Lane household, Navajos poignantly depicted in the almost unidentified Norman Rockwell painting, "Glen Canyon Dam." Individuals like Isaac Crawford, a 10 year-old black kid who was a precursor to the Boy Scout calendar.

In this enlightening narrative, Jane Allen Petrick explores exactly what motivated Norman Rockwell to slide people of color "in to the picture" to begin with. And in so doing, she persuasively documents the well-known illustrator's deep dedication to and pointed imitations of multiculturalism, imitations that up to now have been, as Rockwell biographer Laura Claridge puts it, "bizarrely overlooked".

Jane Allen Petrick tells the story using an easy, flowing narrative, the style conversational, and deceptively 'laid-back'. Petrick is a sharp social observer and her wry sentences stand out, as do her more poignant descriptions of the people Norman Rockwell saw when all around him were blind.

Rockwell suffered psychologically, and spent his life trying to crawl out from under the rock of media oppression. If he, as an artist, was repressed, how much more so were the subjects of his intriguing paintings; the people who were 'hidden in plain sight'.

Wonderful story. I found myself reading this book from cover-to-cover in one or two days. Unusual for me.

About the author.

Jane Allen Petrick is the author of several publications on subjects ranging from biograpy to work environment issues. She was a bi-weekly columnist for the Knight Ridder Wire service, and her short articles have appeared in many outlets such as the New York Times , the Denver Post and the Washington Post .

Born and raised in Connecticut, Jane earned a BA in economics from Barnard College and obtained her Ph.D. in business psychology from Saybrook College. Retired as a vice-president of ATT Wireless, she is now the vice-president of Informed Decisions International and an adjunct professor at Capella College. Jane has provided assessment in business habits and diversity and ability to many business clients such as IBM, Nextel and Xerox.

Jane is Longstanding and enthusiastic supporter of cultural and historic preservation, she has contributed to neighborhood preservation efforts in both Florida and NYC State. She belongs to The Villagers, the earliest preservation society in South Florida, and is the writer of all the Miami strolling tours for PocketGuides. A qualified trip supervisor, Jane conducts cultural ancestry trips on the East Coast, from the Everglades to the Maritimes.

Jane and her husband, Kalle, split their time between New York's Hudson Valley and Miami, Florida.

Introduction

To reach the highest number of customers in today's business environment, it is critical to have multiple media formats for your marketing and business literature. It is also important to have an experienced full-service graphic design firm or individual contractor that can provide them.

Your business should possess a print version that can be handed out or placed in locations where potential customers will take one, an electronic version in PDF that can be posted on a website for download and printed by the customer, an image version that can be posted on sites such as Instagram or Facebook for customers to view, and an HTML version that is formatted for targeted emails to customers.

Print Version

A print version is the most basic format and how your business will reach many local customers. It is also the basis for the other formats as they should all be uniform. A good designer will create the literature in an industry standard application such as Adobe InDesign® or Illustrator®. As the customer, you provide the content and design or allow the designer to create the design. If the latter, the designer will become familiar with your company's branding, previous literature format, and website to create a format that reflect your business.

Electronic Version

The designer will next provide a print quality file. If you are using a designer that provides full-service to include the printing, the designer will manage the proper file type. If you are using in-house printing or third-party printing, the designer will need to know what file format to provide it in such as PDF, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.

In addition, the designer will provide various levels of file quality for electronic distribution such as downloading from a website or emailing to customers as an attachment. Your designer will understand the effects various file sizes will have on the visual quality of the content and be able to provide you an optimized file.

Image Version

An image version of your literature is for sites such as Instagram® or Pinterest® which primarily use posting of photos. Depending on the amount of text you wish to include will dictate the resolution and the image size. Whether it is an image of the entire document or a snapshot of a portion of it, your designer will be familiar with the different resolution requirements.

HTML Email Version

Most email distribution sites such as MailChimp® require the email content and graphics to be coded in HTML. You may use the built-in content designer provided by the site, but to ensure maximum control over the visual content, hard coding the HTML and then uploading it is effective. Different email clients such as Outlook shows the HTML differently and has different requirements. Your designer, if they are full-service, will be familiar with these requirements and be able to test the code in different email clients.

In addition, depending on your target audience, certain information must be present in the email such as a company address, opt out link, etc. This is listed under the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Your full-service designer will be familiar with this and ensure it meets requirements.

Conclusion

To reach the highest number of customers in today's business environment, it is critical to have multiple media formats for your marketing and business literature. This paper listed those formats and explained what your business should expect from a full-service Graphic Design firm or individual. The ideal designer will be able to provide all the formats providing one point of contact to minimize the time required to get edits or changes completed.

Book Review – The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs by Gregory S. Paul

We had known about the launch of this book for sometime, after all, it came out last year and I recall reading the review out of Prehistoric Times magazine to colleagues at one of our Friday afternoon meetings, but nobody took the hint and purchased it. However, after having contacted the author on a technical issue concerning the anatomy of Spinosaurids I decided that enough was enough and I have bought it, using the excuse of an "early Christmas present to myself".

For those not yet acquainted with the work and illustrations of Gregory S. Paul, let me quickly put you in the picture before providing a brief review of this offering. Gregory S. Paul is a world renowned illustrator of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. His enthusiasm for all things Dinosauria is quite remarkable and his research into this subject and deep understanding of these prehistoric animals makes him one of the most respected technical illustrators in the field of Earth Sciences. He has produced a number of books related to palaeontology as well as being a frequent contributor to Nature and Scientific American as well as numerous other respected science-based journals.

The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs – Reviewed

This publication is aimed at the casual reader as well as the serious academic, it combines beautiful anatomical illustrations and life-pose depictions with concise data on a vast range of the Dinosauria. I note that the jacket states that more than 735 individual species are covered with over 600 color and black / white illustrations, I won't dispute these figures but suffice to say that this book is crammed full of dinosaurs, dinosaur illustrations and dinosaur facts and figures.

The book is laid out like a comprehensive field guide to the subject. It reminds me of the sort of handy, practical guidebooks produced for enthusiastic ornithologists and bird spotters. If one was able to travel back to the Mesozoic then this book would be just the thing to help the explorer distinguish between different Hadrosaurines should he or she encounter them. A sort of "spotters" guide to dinosaurs with lavish accompanying notes. If dinosaur fans have ever tried to unravel the differences between Euoplocephalus and Ankylosaurus then reading pages 233-235 would be a good place to start.

However, this book is not just a dinosaur directory, it starts with a comprehensive outline of dinosaur research, dinosaur discoveries and other information setting the scene for the descriptions that are to follow. In fact, about one-fifth of the 320 pages or so are dedicated to providing detailed descriptions regarding dinosaur anatomy, physiology, behavior and reproduction. Each of these subject areas is broken down into manageable "chunks" before the major dinosaur groups are introduced.

The rest of this highly informative volume is dedicated to describing the various dinosaur families, genera and species. Although it is not a comprehensive account, a number of "nomen dubium" are included, the author has to be praised for featuring so many members of the Dinosauria.

We have already found it useful, helping to resolve the issue we encountered regarding the Spinosaurids. "The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs" has obviously been a labor of love and the author's enthusiasm for these prehistoric animals really does come across. Just a couple of quibbles, being based on this side of the Atlantic, (Britain) we note that this book is written in American English so expect to see words such as paleontology and behavior, rather than the English spellings. Secondly, the back of the jacket shows a black and white illustration of a herd of mixed Sauropods. The white area of ​​the jacket is going to get quite grubby with all the handling, but these are really only minor points.

Book Review – Summary

The overall layout is easy to follow, we loved the helpful guide to the group and species descriptions which included what we call a "taxonomic timeline" showing the different types of dinosaur families and when they lived. Also, extremely useful is the well crafted index of taxa and the separate listing of geological formations referred to within the text.

We thoroughly recommend this book, do what I did and treat yourself to an "early Christmas present".

The old saying “garbage in, garbage out” applies to reference photos for line art illustrations. If the quality of the reference photo isn’t very good, the artist is going to have trouble discerning the detail they need to make a high quality image. One of the earmarks of line illustration is sharp detail.

A good reference photo helps an artist see the detail they need to include, and enhance, in a line art illustration, but taking a good reference photo is not a simple matter of pointing and clicking. Here are some tips that will help you take good reference photos for line art illustration so you can streamline the process, save money, and produce better quality results.

Take plenty of photos.It’s better to have extra, than it is to have to go back and “do it again”. For larger subjects, such as a forklifts, zoom in and out on the various features while standing from the same spot. For smaller subjects, like a microwave oven, you won’t need to zoom in and out.

Get a variety of angles too, but keep in mind which angle you will ultimately want the illustration to represent. Get most of your shots from that angle. If, for example, you are shooting a power hand tool that will end up being illustrated in someone’s hand being used, try to get the angle right, and provide variations. Shoot a little high, a little low, a little left and a little right. Twist the angle, and shoot more. With digital photography, you don’t have to worry about film costs, so take a lot of shots.

Make sure you get the entire subject within the frame of the shot. Seems simple, but a lot of people don’t realize that they’ve cut off someone’s shoe, or hand, or something that extends from a piece of machinery.

Take close ups of key parts of larger products. For example, if you are taking a shot of a car and you want to make sure we get the hood ornament right, take a close up of it, so the artist has the detail they need. When taking close ups, make sure to take them from the same angle as the main photo. Either zoom in from where you are standing for the main shot, or simply step straight forward to get closer. Taking close up photos from alternative angles can help us understand the mechanical structure of a product – same-angled close-ups help streamline the illustration process and can save you money.

Lighting is the single most important factor that affects the quality of a photo. Studio lighting is the best. Sunlight is good, but creates harsh shadows that usually hide details. It is better to shoot in shade. Warehouse or office lighting tends to come from the ceiling, so if there are important details on the lower/under side of your product, think of ways to bring light in from the sides. Using portable floodlights, commonly used on construction sites and job shops, is a good way to bring light in from the sides.

Take shots with, and without, your flash turned on. The flash will add detail, but also create harsh shadows and highlights. If the subject has shiny parts, the flash can create hotspots that totally burn out detail.

When you learn about the endothermic reactions, it is important to understand it properly with the help of illustrations. At times, just classroom instruction is not enough. You need someone to help you understand the topics well, and this can be done by hiring a private home tutor. The different types of physical changes and chemical reactions are broadly divided into two categories, which include exothermic and endothermic reactions. In this article, we will explain the endothermic reactions and present some illustrations for your clearer understanding.

To being with, let us understand what is meant by endothermic reaction, and try to identify its chief characteristics. Any type of chemical reaction which needs an outside input of energy as heat from the environment is known as an endothermic reaction. Thus, these types of chemical reactions are usually accompanied by the absorption of heat from surrounding area. This further brings down the outside temperature.

Thermodynamics is sub part of Chemistry, and it basically deals with the study of energy exchanges that take place throughout any chemical reaction, and how it influences the variables state of any system. In case of any endothermic reactions under constant pressure, there is a marked rise in the enthalpy of the system. Students can better understand this concept with the help of illustrations from real life.

Photosynthesis: The entire food pyramid system in this world is continuous because of the existence of photosynthesizing plants, which take place at the base of this pyramid. The plants are responsible for creating food in the form of glucose, through the photosynthesis process. This process is a prime illustration of the endothermic reactions. When sunlight falls on the leave, plants receive energy which boosts the photosynthesis reactions.

Water Evaporation: When absorbs heat energy from the surroundings, gets evaporated and transforms into steam. When the water molecules receive energy, their vibration increases, reaching to the point from where they can move about quite freely.

The melting of the ice can also be considered as an effective illustration of endothermic reactions. The ice receives heat energy from the surroundings, and the solid melts into liquid form. This is a physical change that cannot be possible without external energy. The process of electrolysis where a molecule gets decomposed to its constituent ions is also an example. If you wish to learn more about the topic and its various real life example, then hire a private tutor today.