Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges. The areas to show 'white' are cut away with a knife or chisel, leaving the characters or image to show in 'black' at the original surface level. The block is cut along the grain of the wood (unlike wood engraving where the block is cut in the end-grain). The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink-covered roller (brayer), leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the non-printing areas.

Multiple colors can be printed by keying the paper to a frame around the woodblocks (where a different block is used for each color). The art of carving the woodcut can be called "xylography", but this is rarely used in English for images alone, although that and "xylographic" are used in connection with blockbooks, which are small books containing text and images in the same block. Single-leaf woodcut is a term for a woodcut presented as a single image or print, as opposed to a book illustration.

Division of labour[link]

Block-cutter at work. Woodcut by Jost Amman, 1568.

In both Europe and the Far East, traditionally the artist only designed the woodcut, and the block-carving was left to specialist craftsmen, called block-cutters, or Formschneider in Germany, some of whom became well known in their own right - among the best known are the 16th century Hieronymus Andreae (who also used "Formschneider" as his surname), Hans Lützelburger and Jost de Negker, all of whom ran workshops and also operated as printers and publishers. The formschneider in turn handed the block on to specialist printers. There were further specialists who made the blank blocks.

There were various methods of transferring the artist's drawn design onto the block for the cutter to follow. Either the drawing would be made directly onto the block (often whitened first), or a drawing on paper was glued to the block. Either way, the artist's drawing was destroyed during the cutting process. Other methods were used, including tracing.

This is why woodcuts are sometimes described by museums or books as "designed by" rather than "by" an artist; but most authorities do not use this distinction. The division of labour had the advantage that a trained artist could adapt to the medium relatively easily, without needing to learn the use of woodworking tools.

In both Europe and the Far East, such as Japan and China, in the early twentieth century some artists began to do the whole process themselves. In Japan, this movement was called Sōsaku hanga, as opposed to the Shin hanga movement, which retained the traditional methods. In the West, many artists used the easier technique of linocut instead.

Methods of printing[link]

The Crab that played with the sea, Woodcut by Rudyard Kipling illustrating one of his Just So Stories. In mixed white-line (below) and normal woodcut (above).

Compared to intaglio techniques like etching and engraving, only low pressure is required to print. As a relief method, it is only necessary to ink the block and bring it into firm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print. In Europe beechwood was most commonly used;^{[citation needed]} in Japan, a special type of cherry wood was used.^{[citation needed]}

There are three methods of printing to consider:

• Stamping: Used for many fabrics and most early European woodcuts (1400–40). These were printed by putting the paper/fabric on a table or other flat surface with the block on top, & pressing or hammering the back of the block

• Rubbing: Apparently the most common method for Far Eastern printing on paper at all times. Used for European woodcuts and block-books later in the fifteenth century, and very widely for cloth. Also used for many Western woodcuts from about 1910 to the present. The block goes face up on a table, with the paper or fabric on top. The back is rubbed with a "hard pad, a flat piece of wood, a burnisher, or a leather frotton".^[1] A traditional Japanese tool used for this is called a baren. Later in Japan, complex wooden mechanisms were used to help hold the woodblock perfectly still and to apply proper pressure in the printing process. This was especially helpful once multiple colors began to be introduced, and needed to be applied with precision atop previous ink layers.

• Printing in a press: presses only seem to have been used in Asia in relatively recent times. Printing-presses were used from about 1480 for European prints and block-books, and before that for woodcut book illustrations. Simple weighted presses may have been used in Europe before the print-press, but firm evidence is lacking. A deceased Abbess of Mechelen in 1465 had "unum instrumentum ad imprintendum scripturas et ymagines ... cum 14 aliis lapideis printis" - "an instrument for printing texts and pictures ... with 14 stones for printing" which is probably too early to be a Gutenberg-type printing press in that location.^[1]

History[link]

Main articles Old master print for Europe, Woodblock printing in Japan for Japan, and Lubok for Russia

The Fire Madonna (Madonna del Fuoco, in Italian), Cathedral of Forlì, in Italy

A less sophisticated woodcut book illustration (Ortus Sanitatis) lapidary, Venice, Bernardino Benaglio e Giovanni de Cereto, 1511).

In Europe, Woodcut is the oldest technique used for old master prints, developing about 1400, by using, on paper, existing techniques for printing on cloth. One of the more ancient woodcuts on paper that can be seen today is The Fire Madonna (Madonna del Fuoco, in Italian), in the Cathedral of Forlì, in Italy.

The explosion of sales of cheap woodcuts in the middle of the century led to a fall in standards, and many popular prints were very crude. The development of hatching followed on rather later than engraving. Michael Wolgemut was significant in making German woodcuts more sophisticated from about 1475, and Erhard Reuwich was the first to use cross-hatching (far harder to do than engraving or etching). Both of these produced mainly book-illustrations, as did various Italian artists who were also raising standards there at the same period. At the end of the century Albrecht Dürer brought the Western woodcut to a level that, arguably, has never been surpassed, and greatly increased the status of the single-leaf woodcut (i.e. an image sold separately).

As woodcut can be easily printed together with movable type, because both are relief-printed, it was the main medium for book illustrations until the late-sixteenth century. The first woodcut book illustration dates to about 1461, only a few years after the beginning of printing with movable type, printed by Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg. Woodcut was used less often for individual ("single-leaf") fine-art prints from about 1550 until the late nineteenth century, when interest revived. It continued to be important for popular prints until the nineteenth century in most of Europe, and later in some places.

The art reached a high level of technical and artistic development in East Asia and Iran. In Japan woodblock printing is called "moku hanga", and was introduced in the seventeenth century for both books and art. The popular "floating world" genre of ukiyo-e originated in the second half of the seventeenth century, with prints in monocrome or two colours. Sometimes these were hand-coloured after printing. Later prints with many colours were developed. Japanese woodcut became a major artistic form, although at the time it was accorded a much lower status than painting. It continued to develop through to the twentieth century.

White-line woodcut[link]

Rhinoceros woodcut image from the book, "The History of the Four-footed Beasts and Serpents.", 1658

This technique just carves the image in mostly thin lines, not unlike a rather crude engraving. The block is printed in the normal way, so that most of the print is black with the image created by white lines. This process was invented by the sixteenth-century Swiss artist Urs Graf, but became most popular in the nineteenth and twentieth century, often in a modified form where images used large areas of white-line contrasted with areas in the normal black-line style. This was pioneered by Félix Vallotton.

Japonisme[link]

In the 1860s, just as the Japanese themselves were becoming aware of Western art in general, Japanese prints began to reach Europe in considerable numbers, and became very fashionable, especially in France. They had a great influence on many artists, notably Édouard Manet, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Félix Vallotton and Mary Cassatt. In 1872 Jules Claretie dubbed the trend "Le Japonisme".^[2]

Though the Japanese influence was reflected in many artistic media, including painting, it did lead to a revival of the woodcut in Europe, which had been in danger of extinction as a serious art medium. Most of the artists above, except for Félix Vallotton and Paul Gauguin, in fact used lithography, especially for coloured prints. See below for Japanese influence in illustrations for children's books.

Artists, notably Edvard Munch and Franz Masereel, continued to use the medium, which in Modernism came to appeal because it was relatively easy to complete the whole process, including printing, in a studio with little special equipment. The German Expressionists used woodcut a good deal.

Colour[link]

Odawara-juku in the 1830s, as depicted by Hiroshige in his series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō.

Coloured woodcuts first appeared in ancient China. The oldest known are three Buddhist images dating to the 10th century. European woodcut prints with coloured blocks were invented in Germany in 1508 and are known as chiaroscuro woodcuts (see below). However, colour did not become the norm, as it did in Japan, in the ukiyo-e and other forms.

In Europe and Japan, colour woodcuts were normally only used for prints rather than book illustrations. In China, where the individual print did not develop until the nineteenth century, the reverse is true, and early colour woodcuts mostly occur in luxury books about art, especially the more prestigious medium of painting. The first known example is a book on ink-cakes printed in 1606, and colour technique reached its height in books on painting published in the seventeenth century. Notable examples are the Treatise on the Paintings and Writings of the Ten Bamboo Studio of 1633, and the Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual published in 1679 and 1701.^[3]

Bijin (beautiful woman) ukiyo-e by Keisai Eisen, before 1848

In Japan colour technique, called nishiki-e in its fully developed form, spread more widely, and was used for prints, from the 1760s on. Text was nearly always monochrome, as were images in books, but the growth of the popularity of ukiyo-e brought with it demand for ever increasing numbers of colors and complexity of techniques. By the nineteenth century most artists worked in colour. The stages of this development were:

• Sumizuri-e (墨摺り絵, "ink printed pictures") - monochrome printing using only black ink
• Benizuri-e (紅摺り絵, "crimson printed pictures") - red ink details or highlights added by hand after the printing process；green was sometimes used as well
• Tan-e (丹絵) - orange highlights using a red pigment called tan
• Aizuri-e (藍摺り絵, "indigo printed pictures"), Murasaki-e (紫絵, "purple pictures"), and other styles in which a single color would be used in addition to, or instead of, black ink
• Urushi-e (漆絵) - a method in which glue was used to thicken the ink, emboldening the image; gold, mica and other substances were often used to enhance the image further. Urushi-e can also refer to paintings using lacquer instead of paint; lacquer was very rarely if ever used on prints.
• Nishiki-e (錦絵, "brocade pictures") - a method in which multiple blocks were used for separate portions of the image, allowing a number of colors to be utilized to achieve incredibly complex and detailed images; a separate block would be carved to apply only to the portion of the image designated for a single color. Registration marks called kentō (見当) were used to ensure correspondence between the application of each block.

Children's book illustration by Randolph Caldecott; engraving and printing by Edmund Evans, 1887

In the 19th century a number of different methods of colour printing using woodcut (technically Chromoxylography) were developed in Europe. George Baxter patented in 1835 a method using an intaglio line plate (or occasionally a lithograph), printed in black or a dark colour, and then overprinted with up to twenty different colours from woodblocks. Edmund Evans used relief and wood throughout, with up to eleven different colours, and latterly specialized in illustrations for children's books, using fewer blocks but overprinting non-solid areas of colour to achieve blended colours. Artists such as Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway were able to draw influence from the Japanese prints now available and fashionable in Europe to create a suitable style, with flat areas of colour.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Portrait of Otto Müller Woodcut (1915)

In the 20th century, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner of the Die Brücke group developed a process of producing colored woodcut prints using a single block applying different colors to the block with a brush à la poupée and then printing (halfway between a woodcut and a monotype).^[4] A remarkable example of this technique is the 1915 Portrait of Otto Müller woodcut print from the collection of the British Museum.^[5]

Gallery of Asian woodcuts[link]

• 

  Coloured woodcut Buddha, 10th century, China.

• 

  Jiaozi (currency), 10th century, Sichuan, China.

• 

  Dragon, Japanese ukiyo-e woodcut, c. 1750-1900.

• 

  Modern woodcut Carp Painting, Dong Ho Painting, Vietnam.

Chiaroscuro woodcuts[link]

Chiaroscuro woodcut depicting Playing cupids. Anonymous 16th century Italian artist.

Chiaroscuro woodcuts do not necessarily feature strong contrasts of light and dark, but are old master prints in woodcut using two or more blocks printed in different colours. They were first invented by Hans Burgkmair in Germany in 1508, and first made in Italy by Ugo da Carpi a few years later.[1] Other printmakers to use the technique include Cranach, Hans Baldung Grien and Parmigianino. In Germany the technique was only in use for a few years, but Italians continued to use it throughout the sixteenth century, and later artists like Goltzius sometimes made use of it. In the German style, one block usually had only lines and is called the "line block", whilst the other block or blocks had flat areas of colour and are called "tone blocks". The Italians usually used only tone blocks, for a very different effect, much closer to the drawings the term was originally used for, or watercolours.

Examples[link]

Bar by Carl Eugen Keel (1885-1961).

Europe

• Ars moriendi
• Dürer's Rhinoceros
• Emblem book
• Four horsemen of the Apocalypse
• Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
• Just So Stories
• Lubok prints

Japan

• 36 Views of Mount Fuji (Hokusai)
• The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife
• Ukiyo-e

Artists[link]

See also[link]

• Blockbooks - Medieval European books with both text and pictures in woodcut
• Carving
• Chiaroscuro - Western woodcuts in colour
• Cordel literature - Popular Brazilian woodcut books
• Linocut
• Metalcut - relief prints from metal plates
• Old master print - Social and Art History of the woodcut and other print techniques
• Printmaking - main article covering all techniques
• Relief print
• Rubber stamp
• Scandinavian flat-plane style of woodcarving
• Shin hanga - 20th century "New Prints" movement in Japan
• Sōsaku hanga - 20th century "Creative Prints" movement in Japan
• Wood carving
• wood engraving - invented by Bewick; much used
• Woodblock printing - Overview of history, including non-artistic uses
• Ukiyo-e - main article on 19th century Japanese woodcut prints

References[link]

Sources[link]

• A Woodcut Manual, J. J. Lankes, Tampa Bay Press

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Woodcuts

• Ukiyo-e from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History
• Woodcut in Europe from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History
• Italian Renaissance Woodcut Book Illustration from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History
• Museum of Modern Art information on printing techniques and examples of prints.
• Woodcut in early printed books (online exhibition from the Library of Congress)
• A collection of woodcuts images can be found at the University of Houston Digital Library
• In Relief Printing Techniques French printmaker Dominique Lecomte explains how to use the technique and shows some of his work.

Thomas "Tom" Killion is a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from the 168th Legislative District. He currently sits on the House Appropriations, Insurance and Urban Affairs Committees.

Career[link]

Killion served as a fraud investigator with the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue and later founded his own pension advisory firm, InR Advisors. In 1990, he became the campaign chairman of Rep. Curt Weldon, a capacity in which he served until 2003.

His first elective office was as a member of Delaware County Council, to which he was elected in 1991 and later served as Chairman of the body. Killion also served as one of the Delaware County representatives on the board of the SEPTA transit agency.

Killion defeated William Thomas in a 2003 special election^[1] to succeed former Pennsylvania House Speaker Rep. Matt Ryan, who died of leukemia earlier that year.^[2] He has been re-elected to each succeeding session of the House. Killion announced plans to run for Lieutenant Governor on December 4, 2009.^[3] He ended his campaign for that position on January 8, 2010, and announced plans to once again run for the State House in 2010.^[4]

Personal[link]

He is a graduate of Cardinal O’Hara High School and the Pennsylvania State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

Killion lives in Middletown Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania with his wife and daughters.

References[link]

External links[link]

• State Representative Tom Killion official PA House website
• Elect Tom Killion official campaign website

Stephen Allen (July 2, 1767 – July 28, 1852) was an American politician from New York.

Biography[link]

He was Mayor of New York City from March 6, 1821 to 1824, first appointed by the Council of Appointment in 1821, and then elected by the Board of Aldermen in 1823 and 1824.

He was a member of the New York State Assembly (New York Co.) in 1826.

He was a member of the New York State Senate (1st D.) from 1829 to 1832, sitting in the 52nd, 53rd, 54th and 55th New York State Legislatures.

In 1835, Allen removed to 1 Washington Square North.

He died in the Henry Clay steamboat disaster on July 28, 1852 in Riverdale, Bronx and was buried at the New York City Marble Cemetery.

See also[link]

• List of mayors of New York City

Sources[link]

• List of Mayors at NYC website
• It Happened in Washington Square by Emily Kies Folpe (2002, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-7088-7 )
• The New York Civil List compiled by Franklin Benjamin Hough (pages 127ff, 138, 204, 255 and 428; Weed, Parsons and Co., 1858)

External links[link]

• Stephen Allen at Find a Grave

v t e Mayors of New York from inception to consolidation (June 12, 1665 – December 31, 1897) T. Willett Delavall T. Willett Van Steenwyk Delavall Nicoll J. Lawrence Dervall De Mayer S. Van Cortlandt Delavall Rombouts Dyre Van Steenwyk Minvielle N. Bayard S. Van Cortlandt Delanoy J. Lawrence A. de Peyster Lodwik Merritt J. de Peyster Provost De Reimer Noell French Peartree Wilson J. Van Cortlandt Heathcote Johnstone J. Van Cortlandt Walters Jansen Lurting Richard Cruger S. Bayard Holland Cruger, Jr Hicks Mathews Duane Varick Livingston Clinton M. Willett Clinton Radcliff Clinton Ferguson Radcliff Colden Allen Paulding Hone Paulding Bowne Lee C. Lawrence Clark Varian Morris Harper Havemeyer Mickle Brady Havemeyer Woodhull Kingsland Westervelt Wood Tiemann Wood Opdyke Gunther Hoffman Coman Hall Havemeyer Vance Wickham Ely Cooper Grace Edson Grace Hewitt Grant Gilroy Strong

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2010)

The Snakes were a British-Norwegian hard rock band, formed by former Whitesnake members Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody in 1997. The line-up consisted of guitarists Marsden and Moody with Norwegian musicians, vocalist Jørn Lande, bassist Sid Ringsby, who later joined the Norwegian band TNT, and drummer Willy Bendiksen. The band released one live album, one studio album and broke up in 1999.

Biography[link]

The Snakes were formed by Whitesnake guitarists Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody, exclusively performing Whitesnake songs. Initially, the project was called 'Saints and Sinners' and was to feature other former Whitesnake band mates including, bassist Neil Murray and drummer Cozy Powell plus American vocalist John West but this never materialised. During August 1998, the Once Bitten album was released in Japan on the Pony Canyon label. Former Vagabond vocalist Jørn Lande was drafted in and TNT guitarist Ronni Le Tekrø produced the band. TNT's touring keyboard player Dag Stokke engineered the album. A live album Live in Europe was released in December 1998, with recordings of live performances of Whitesnake songs.

Band members[link]

• Jørn Lande - lead vocals (1998–1999)
• Bernie Marsden - guitars (1998–1999)
• Micky Moody - guitars (1998–1999)
• Sid Ringsby - bass (1998–1999)
• Willy Bendiksen - drums (1998–1999)

Discography[link]

• Once Bitten (1998)
• Live in Europe (1998)

References[link]

External links[link]

• MusicMight The Snakes page
• Jorn Lande's official website

Dave Stevens
Dave Stevens at Inkpot Awards in 1982
Born	(1955-07-29)July 29, 1955 Lynwood, California
Died	March 11, 2008(2008-03-11) (aged 52) Turlock, California
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Penciller, Inker, Illustrator
Awards	Russ Manning Award Inkpot Award Kirby Award

Dave Stevens (July 29, 1955 – March 11, 2008) was an American illustrator and comics artist. He is most famous for creating The Rocketeer comic book and film character, and for his pin-up style "glamour art" illustrations, especially of model Bettie Page. He was the first to win Comic-Con International's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award in 1982, and received both an Inkpot Award and the Kirby Award for Best Graphic Album in 1986.

Early life and career[link]

Stevens was born July 29, 1955, in Lynwood, California, but grew up in Portland, Oregon. His family relocated to San Diego, where he attended San Diego City College for two years,^[1] and attended the then-new annual San Diego Comic-Con (now Comic-Con International).

His first professional comic work was inking Russ Manning's pencils for the Tarzan newspaper comic strip and two European Tarzan graphic novels in 1975; he later assisted Manning on the Star Wars newspaper strip.^[2]

He began doing occasional comic book work, including providing illustrations for fanzines (inking drawings by comic book veteran Jack Kirby among them), as well as creating the Aurora feature for Japan's Sanrio Publishing.^[3]

Starting in 1977 he drew storyboards for Hanna-Barbara's animated TV shows, including Super Friends and The Godzilla Power Hour, where he worked with comics and animation veteran, Doug Wildey.^[1] For the rest of the decade, he continued to work in animation and film, joining the art studio of illustrators William Stout and Richard Hescox in Los Angeles, working on projects such as storyboards for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark and pop singer Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.^[2]

The Rocketeer[link]

The Rocketeer was an adventure story set in a pulp fiction-styled 1930s (with allusions to heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow emphasizing the pulp tradition), about a down-on-his-luck pilot named Cliff Secord who finds a mysterious rocket pack. Despite its erratic publishing history, Rocketeer proved to be one of the first successful features to emerge from the burgeoning independent comics movement. Influenced by Golden Age artists Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Reed Crandall, Maurice Whitman, Frank Frazetta and Wally Wood,^[4] Stevens was widely recognized, along with artists such as Steve Rude and Jaime Hernandez, as one of the finest comic book artists of his generation.^[5]

The first comic book featuring Stevens' signature Rocketeer character was released in 1982. Those first stories appeared as a second feature in issues #2 and #3 of Mike Grell's Pacific Comics' Starslayer series. For its next two installments, Steven's feature moved to the anthology comic title Pacific Presents #1 and #2. The fourth chapter ended in a cliffhanger that was later concluded in a lone Rocketeer comic released by Eclipse Comics.^[5] The character was then continued in the Rocketeer Adventure Magazine, with two issues being published in 1988 and then 1989 by Comico Comics; a third and final issue was published six years later in 1995 by Dark Horse Comics. Stevens' extensive background research and meticulous approach to his illustrations contributed to the long delays between Rocketeer issues.^[1] The first completed story line was then collected into a graphic novel by Eclipse Comics, in both trade paperback and hardcover formats, and simply titled The Rocketeer (ISBN 1-56060-088-8); the second story line was collected into a glossy trade paperback graphic novel by Dark Horse called The Rocketeer: Cliff's New York Adventure (ISBN 1-56971-092-9).

IDW Publishing announced a hardcover edition collecting the entire series for the first time, due originally in October 2009. Dave Steven's The Rocketeer, The Complete Adventures would contain all-new coloring by Laura Martin who was chosen by Dave Stevens before his untimely death.^[6] The book finally appeared in December of that year in two separate states: A trade hardcover edition with full color dust jacket and a second, more lavish, deluxe hardcover edition (ISBN 978-1-60010-537-1) of 3000 copies. The deluxe edition sold out almost immediately upon publication, and IDW announced a second printing.

In 2011 IDW launched an all-new Rocketeer comic book series, illustrated by various artists, called Rocketeer Adventures; the series features four quarterly issues per year (the second series of four began appearing in May of 2012). The four 2011 issues were then collected by IDW and published in hardcover as a graphic novel. All four issues in each series offers additional variant covers in shorter-run editions, some of them reprinting Stevens original Rocketeer cover art in both full color and just black and white.

Stevens began developing a Rocketeer film proposal in 1985 and sold the rights to the Walt Disney Company, which produced the 1991 film The Rocketeer. The film was directed by Joe Johnston, and starred Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin and Timothy Dalton. Stevens co-wrote the screenplay and was a hands-on co-producer of the film.^[5] It received a mixture of highly positive and lukewarm reviews and disappointing domestic ticket sales, insuring no immediate sequels would follow. Dave Stevens always felt that a majority of the problem was that the studio's movie poster and promotional graphics were over-stylized, vague, and didn't convey to people what the film was all about.^{[citation needed]}

Later life[link]

Following The Rocketeer, Stevens worked primarily as an illustrator, doing a variety of ink and painted illustrations for book and comic book covers, posters, prints, portfolios, and private commissions, including a number of covers for Comico's Jonny Quest title and a series of eight covers for various Eclipse titles, which were also published in the form of large posters.^{[citation needed]} Much of his illustrations were in the "good girl art" genre. He also returned to art school to study painting.

Following several years of struggling with uncommon hairy cell leukemia, which caused a gradual reduction in his artistic output, Stevens died on March 11, 2008 in Turlock, California.^{[7][8][9][10]}

Personal life[link]

Artist Laura Molina, with whom Stevens had a romantic relationship in the late 1970s,^[11] used him as the subject of her controversial Naked Dave series of paintings.^[12]

In 1980 Stevens married longtime girlfriend Charlene Brinkman, later known as horror film scream queen Brinke Stevens; their marriage ended in divorce just six months later, but she later modeled for her ex-husband.^[13]

Two characters that show up in the Rocketeer stories were based on personal acquaintances of Stevens: the "Peevy" character on cartoonist Doug Wildey and the sleazy "Marco of Hollywood" character on real life glamor and porn photographer Ken Marcus.^[2]

Stevens was a longtime admirer of 1950s glamor and pin-up model Bettie Page; he modeled the look of the Rocketeer's girlfriend after her and featured her image in other illustrations too, which helped contribute to the renewed public interest in Page and her modeling career. After discovering that the retired Page was still alive and lived near by, Stevens became friends with her, providing both personal assistance and helping to arrange financial compensation to her from various publishers for the use of her image and reprints of her many glamor and pin-up photos.^[3]

Death and legacy[link]

At the time of his death, Stevens was working on a career retrospective collection of his work to be titled Brush with Passion – The Life and Art of Dave Stevens from Spectrum Publishing.^[14] That book was finally published by Underwood Books in 2008.

His work has had a significant influence on comic book and fantasy illustrators,^[5] among them Adam Hughes.^[15]

Quotes[link]

"Dave had more artistic integrity than anyone I've ever known. He always marched to his own drummer whether it benefited him financially or not. He turned down many lucrative job offers — including a monthly pin-up assignment for Playboy offered by Hugh Hefner as a replacement for their regular Alberto Vargas feature — when they didn't jibe with his own highly personal vision of what he should be doing. As a businessman, Dave often drove his close friends nuts. We'd watch in astonishment at the riches passing him by." – William Stout^[2]

"Dave was truly one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life... and was certainly among the most gifted. Our first encounter was at Jack Kirby's house around 1971 when he came to visit and show Jack some of his work. As I said, Kirby was very encouraging and he urged Dave not to try and draw like anyone else but to follow his own passions. This was advice Dave took to heart, which probably explains why he took so long with every drawing. They were rarely just jobs to Dave. Most of the time, what emerged from his drawing board or easel was a deeply personal effort. He was truly in love with every beautiful woman he drew, at least insofar as the paper versions were concerned." – Mark Evanier^[1]

"Well, I do expect a lot of myself. I'm a harsh critic because I know what I'm capable of. I have hit those occasional peaks amongst the valleys, but the peaks are so few-things like genuine flashes of virtuoso brush inking, like I've never executed before or since-I can count on one hand the number of jobs where I've been able to hit that mark. The same with penciling. Sometimes it just flows, but more often than not, it's pure physical and spiritual torment just to get something decent on paper. I often get very discouraged with the whole creative process." – Dave Stevens^[3]

Selected works[link]

• The Rocketeer, Eclipse books (1990). ISBN 1-56060-088-8
• Just Teasing, Ursus Imprints (1991). ISBN 0-942681-12-6
• The Rocketeer: Cliff's New York Adventure, Dark Horse (1997). ISBN 1-56971-092-9
• Vamps and Vixens: The Seductive Art of Dave Stevens, Verotik (1998). ISBN 1-885730-10-1
• Dave Stevens: Selected Sketches and Studies, (Vols. 1–4), Bulldog Studios. No ISBN
• Brush with Passion: The Art and Life of Dave Stevens, Underwood Books (2008). ISBN 1-59929-010-3
• Dave Steven's The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures, IDW Publishing (2010).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site
• Resume at Internet Movie Database
• Biography from Comicsreporter.com
• Miscellaneous artwork gallery
• Dave Stevens Bettie Page Gallery
• Dave Stevens at Find a Grave

Interviews[link]

• 1987 Comics Journal interview
• 1988 Interview with Dave Stevens
• 1990 WFMY news segment
• 2001 Interview with Dave Stevens

Obituaries[link]

• Obituary by William Stout
• Obituary by Mark Evanier
• LA Times obituary
• New York Times obituary
• Reminiscences from Jim Steranko
• Reminiscences from David Scroggy
• Obituary from Spectrum Publishing
• Personal reminiscences by Rich Dannys