Austin briggs

Austin Briggs was 19 and still in art school when he sold his first drawing to Collier's magazine. Briggs soon decided he didn't need more school. He was making good money from Collier's imitating the popular artists of the day. But after a couple of years Briggs realized that he was faking it. Many of his lines were just random squiggles with little understanding of what went on beneath the surface. He was borrowing solutions he hadn't earned, and his shortcuts began to betray him. His…

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“Briggs”

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In keeping with our current theme of posting working sketches by the great illustrators, today let's look at some unpublished drawings by Austin Briggs. It is a shame that Briggs does not get much attention today; for decades he was one of the most highly regarded illustrators in the country. An excellent painter, Briggs was especially known for the great subtlety and sensitivity of his drawing with a lithography crayon, charcoal or similar tools. Despite the free and spontaneous look to his…

Explore Alex Knowlton's 4858 photos on Flickr!

Austin Briggs (1908-1973) never settled into a distinctive style, shifting over time according to his personal artistic development and the influence of changing illustration fashions and client expectations. What was consistent was his great skill in drawing people. A short Wikipedia biography is here and a fairly brief biography on the Norman Rockwell Museum site is here. A more detailed biography can be found here. Commentary on his methods is here. Some statements by Briggs himself are…

Decades after fine artists embraced photography as a tool for drawing and painting pictures, illustrators remained wracked with guilt about...

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