Speaking of drawing damn good cars...

(... along with damn good everything else) Harry Borgman sent along these old self-promo postcards.


For those of you who don't know, Harry Borgman began his career in Detroit in 1946.


He was the subject of a week-long series on my other blog, Today's Inspiration. Along with tons of finished art, Harry did TONS of storyboards and comps - 40 years worth! If you scroll all the way back to the first post on this blog, you'll see some examples from Harry's book, "Art and Illustration Techniques", wherein he describes step-by-step how he went about doing comps and marker renderings. Yes, Harry quite literally wrote the book on marker rendering!

He and I have discussed the business through our email correspondences and I pulled this quote from one of Harry's messages to me:

"It's weird to try to figure out just where the business is headed, but it's not good. I used to do a lot of work for an agency in Detroit, they were spending money like drunken sailors. They would call me in to work on premises for two and three weeks at a crack. I did produce tons of frames for them and the ADs were very pleased. Then one day I received an e-mail from them and they said that they were going to limit the number of frames an AD could buy on each commercial and that they were going to put suppliers in various price categories. I was in the top price category and only heard from them again when they had their ass in a wringer and were in BIG trouble. I still get calls from them, but have refused because of the horrendous deadlines. It really used to be a great business, what the hell happened ? I have some ideas: It's all about money and they don't give a crap about the clients or about producing top notch work."

Harry has his own blog now and recently wrote a great post about his marker rendering promo cards. Harry's blog is required reading, whether you do storyboards or finished art - or both. Go check it out.