Tuesday 30 July 2013

In the Spring of 1955 Sam made contact with a Hugh White another Artists Agent and by mutual agreement severed his ties with Artists Partners.
Mr. White gained a commission for Sam and on the strength of this and the promise of further work decided to move into the World as a full time Freelance Commercial Artist, so on June 30th 1955 Sam started his new adventure.
It was from here that Sam was to do a Story Illustration for "Women's Own" the story title being "Red Red Rose".
For this Illustration Sam used himself and his wife Kity as the models for the photography session and took the pictures with his delayed action camera, develop and print them himself and chose one of the photos to illustrate the full colour rough for the Art Directors approval, after it was approved Sam carried on with the finished Illustration, and with acceptance of the finished artwork was offered another commission through Hugh White from "Woman's Own" unfortunately we do not know this title.


Red Red Rose 1955 for Woman's Own.

From here Hugh White had made contact with the Art Director at Corgi Books who was John Richards another very fine paperback cover artist whose work can be found on many Corgi titles, at this meeting Mr. White had taken with him a specimen of Sam's work and from this was commissioned to illustrate the 1956 Corgi edition of Peter Cheney's G-Man at the Yard.
The original artwork was sold at auction in 1993 and again  around 2008.
For this cover Corgi were paying for the Professional Modelling fee's and the photography session which was carried out by a West End photographer Arthur Brilliant.



G-Man at the Yard by Peter Cheyney.
Corgi Books T159 First 1956.


 G-Man at the Yard Original Artwork.

This led to Sam's second book cover for Corgi titled Jivaro published 1956 by Bertrand Flornoy about the Headshrinkers of the Amazon.
For this Sam made contact with The British Museum and was allowed admittance to the area that housed these items and proceeded to photograph shrunken heads for his reference shots. 


 Jivaro by Bertrand Flornoy.
                                                          Corgi Books S165 First 1956.

With the finished Jivaro artwork completed Sam made contact with his agent who up till now would take the final artwork for approval but at this time the agent was busy and asked Sam if he would deliver it, so after making an appointment with John Richards duly delivered it and was to meet him for the first time.
Approval for the artwork gained Sam was offered a Western Title to illustrate by the name of Tombstone.
Having amassed a great deal of reference material over the years from magazines of all types Sam was able to produce two roughs for John Richards approval, with ones of these being accepted Sam then went on to do the finished cover and again delivered this.

Tombstone by Clarence Budington Kelland.
Corgi Books P47 First 1956.

Tombstone Rough 1

Tombstone Rough 2



1 comment:

  1. Rough #2 clearly based on some Alan Ladd reference material.

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