Thursday, July 12, 2012

Using Costumes

Over the years I have made extensive use of costumes in my illustration work.  The better the costume, the more help it is in creating a good illustration.  Sometimes I have raided the thrift stores and resorted to re cutting and resewing my own creations.  But while I lived near Hollywood and did work for film advertising, I was able to make use of a great resource: Western Costume.  That warehouse contained many thousands of beautiful costumes created for and rented to motion picture production companies.

In a single large room dedicated solely to medieval male tunics I would paw through hundreds on triple story racks to find just the one I wanted for a book cover. Not cheap to rent, but worth it.

Below is a picture of one I chose which is being worn by "Rocketeer" artist and pal Dave Stevens for a book cover illustration.
The same tunic in the 1980's and 40 years earlier.

Some years later while watching Errol Flynn's "The Adventures of Robin Hood" I realized that from the myriad of tunics I had picked one from that film.  They kept them in good repair through the decades.