Amazing Detective Cases!!

pastel and ink on typing paper

pastel and ink on typing paper, much cropped

contour drawing, also pastel and ink 

A few months ago I was rummaging through drawers of old magazines at the local consignment shop and I found a 1961 issue of Amazing Detective Cases.  This one was a special issue, Crime In Screenland.  The banner at the top shouted Sin, Sex, and Sadism in Hollywood!  I had to have it. By today's standards the photos and stories are mild, the usual tabloid stories of drugs, murders, and so on.  The ads are classic.

Now!! A fish lure that swims by its its power!  

Strange, mysterious house plant catches, .. eats flies and insects -yet the "Venus Fly Trap" bears lovely white flowers!  

Let me send you this amazing electronic kit!

I haven't seen so many exclamation points since I taught eighth grade language arts.  

The plan was to cut up the magazine for collage, but instead it has been a source of experimental drawings.  The black and white photos are a combination of glamour shots and crime scenes.  I played with using letter stencils to emboss thin paper with pastels, which after they were fixed, served as textured background for the pen and ink drawings.  The last one was a contour drawing, with hatching over the pastel.  I'm not sure I love them, but I may do a whole series, and start including some of the men, all of whom look like escapees from  film noir.