Even the most
casual web-search for Enoch Bolles will reveal a slew of products slathered with
his copies of his magazine cover images, some tastefully done, others not so. While it is gratifying
to see how popular Bolles work remains, the majority of these products give Bolles no credit at all. Worse, much of it is simply ripped from existing scans
(some from this site), many of which are not particularly detailed. So when I came across Dan Gantner’s work I
was blown away. They are
not simply high dpi scans taken from well preserved or careful photoshopped magazine covers, the images you see are reworked directly from high resolution scans of the original paintings. And the Film Fun logo isn't scanned from a cover that's pasted in, it's totally revectored. I was able to talk to Dan and learn more about his work and passion for Enoch Bolles.
This is the
obvious question but what you do requires incredible amounts of time,effort and attention to
detail. What ultimately motivates you?
I do it because I love to work with the images--from the
retouching to the printing, framing and shipping handsomely. What more could
you ask for than to work with great images all day?
There are so many artists and pinup illustrators you could have chosen. What is
it about Bolles that you like in particular?
He obviously took so much joy and care in his work and his
technique is just sublime. His girls instantly transport you to another place
and time in a way that only the best illustrators can achieve. I feel the same
way about many of the other illustrators I have worked with in my shop, like
the fantasy work of Virgil Finlay and Frank R Paul, Peter Driben's work for
Wink and Titter, Paul Rader's outrageous sexploitation work for Midwood and
Beacon in the 50s and 60s.
What you
do goes so far beyond the typical scan, clean-up, cut and paste that you see with products that have used Bolles imagery or the works of other illustrators. Could you take us through your process?
The original Film Fun magazine covers were printed on an
offset press using halftone dots, a set of four color screens that create the
appearance of continuous tone. When you scan the old covers in order to reprint
them, you generate moiree patterns, pixelated or off-register colors that leak
through the subsequent printing. I decided to work with the existing photos of
the original Bolles artwork. Basically, it's the difference between working
with the first and second generation reproduction of the original art. Since my
experiments with enlarging a scanned Film Fun logo to the size I wanted often
resulted in tattered curves and jangly lines, I imported a scan of the logo
into an illustration program and outlined the letters using vector paths, which
scale and reproduce with razor sharp crispness. The Film Fun covers were
blessedly straightforward due to the white background and minimalist type
treatment (thanks, Enoch!). I did this process on several of Drieben's Wink and
Whisper covers, essentially recreating the entire cover from scratch. The
famous Whisper keyhole cover of Nov. 1949 was a total rebuild, recreating the
keyhole and banner logo, and typesetting the copy anew with the original fonts.
The result, printed on archival photo paper and an Espon piezo printer using 9
archival inks, is an incredibly crisp, faithful reproduction quite possibly
more brilliant than any of the original issues.Thanks for this tour of your work, Dan.
And for those of you who are interested in seeing more, here's the link to Dan's Etsy site. Check it out!
