Friday, February 7, 2020

February 7 is Wear Red Day! Bolles has her covered

In a letter Enoch wrote to his daughter and budding artist Lila, he passed along a word of advice he'd gotten decades earlier from a printer; "use any color as long as it is red!"   Surprisingly, he seldom followed it, but when he did the results popped.  You'd be hard pressed to find a nicer example than this cover from 1927. The contrasting color scheme on the car works nicely here. I've often wondered if Bolles ever did any illustrations for automobile manufacturers. 

There's something else very special about this painting, Notice the speed lines?  They were 'invented' by the French artist, .Ernest Montaut, but I think this is the first use of them in what we'd now call pinup art.