Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Reynold Brown Documentary: "The Man Who Drew Bug-Eyed Monsters" (1994)

Reynold Brown was a talented fellow who loved to draw. He was good enough at it that by the time he was 20 years old, he was assisting cartoonist Hal Forrest on his popular "Tailspin Tommy" comic strip. Brown later met Norman Rockwell. (Rockwell's sister was a teacher at Brown's high school.) 

Rockwell told him to leave cartooning. He advised him to get work in the field of commercial illustration. Brown applied for and won a scholarship to Otis Art Institute. During World War II, he worked at North American Aviation as a technical artist. It was there that he met a fellow artist who would become his wife, Mary Louise Tejada.

Post-war, Brown drew many ads and illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post, Outdoor Life, Boys' Life, and others. He taught at the Pasadena, CA Art Center College of Design. While there, he met an art director for Universal Pictures, and, through him, began a movie poster freelance career. His now famous posters include:






And many more.

From his Wikipedia page:

"He suffered a severe stroke in 1976 that left his left side paralyzed and ended his commercial work. Brown and his family moved to Dawes County, Nebraska; with his wife's help, Brown continued to paint landscapes until his death in 1991.

"In 1994, Mel Bucklin's documentary about Reynold Brown entitled The Man Who Drew Bug-Eyed Monsters was broadcast on US public television. A book reproducing many of Brown's artworks, Reynold Brown: A Life in Pictures, was published in 2009."
Here is "The Man Who Drew Bug-Eyed Monster" in its entirety:



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