Drawn to the Skies

Pic info:
Taken from "longacre Book of Aircraft" 1963
no author/artist listed
designed by Peter Sulivan

Picture Books:
One of the overlooked benefits enjoyed by post WWII children was the gradual improvement in the design and production of books. Today’s book shops are a riot of colour with Kids books particularly being full colour throughout. But it wasn’t long ago when books came on rough acid paper with a few pages of often black and white plates in the middle, the odd diagram in the text the only colour being a dust jacket.

Thankfully by the time me and my brothers were taken to Hanley library colour books were more mostly the norm. The MAIN reason of course to go to Hanley library was the chance if there was time to go and see the Spitfire in greenhouse across the road (aren’t the government missing a literacy trick here, forget new books put more fighters, dinosaurs and killer robots in libraries)!

The book we loaned from the library, were a particular golden age of illustration; with photography still costly and complicated children’s books were filled with wonderfully hand drawn illustrations and paintings. These where a special boon to technical books allowing exciting cutaways of space ships or the fiery separation of yet un-built rockets to be depicted.

Also freed from the realism of photography artists could use dramatic angles and inspiring perspectives to brings scenes to life. One the most appealing aspects of these books are the simple bold palettes this type of printing used. This is why this sort of commercial illustration is still sort after much like the colour magazine spreads and print advertising of the period.

I know this book is about flight in general but it has got rockets in it and I wanted to share the cool picture of the chopper carrying a speed boat, reminiscent of the scene from Apocalypse Now, Charlie don’t surf!

Sadly there’s no illustrator listed in the book and I can’t see any signatures on the painting, whoever they were they had bold clear consistent style much more interesting than prose!