And End To Frank Talk On Drawing

 We come to the conclusion of the excellent Draw-along With Frank Borth series. If you came in late, here are the previous 1, 2, 3, 4 installments.

Having walked us through the basics, now Frank shows us how to put it together and what to do with it...

This series was collected back in the '60s and released as a stand-alone how-to-draw book, available for only one shiny quarter.
Of course, like the source comics, it was only available to parochial school students who ordered it through the school. (Think of it as something like a Catholic version of the old Scholastic Books program)

BTW - the Enchanted Flivver story to which he refers at the end is The Return Of The Enchanted Flivver (posted in 1, 2 parts)

Bonus!
Now that you know what Frank Borth looks like, you can spot when he uses himself as a character in his comics.

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #s 19 & 20 (1963)

Ayup, Even More Frank Talk On Drawing

Well, huzzah!

I found my good scans instead of the semi-crappy archive scans i'd been using. You may note an upgrade in image quality with this installments of Draw-Along With Frank Borth. If so, and there's an interest, i'll probably go back and upgrade the previous lesson pics.

We finally get to #7 - Animals! - the cover we saw when we started this series. This morning is part 4 of 5, and if you missed 'em and are too lazy to go hunting (like most of us) here are links to parts 2 and 3, too.

Now, let's listen to Frank instead of my ramblings -

For the final lessons tomorrow morning, Borth gets into practical territory with How To Make A Picture Out Of A Drawing and Using Art for more than just decorating your school notebook.

I wound up working through the night and just barely getting this into the queue in time. So no telling if i'll be here with a post this afternoon or not.

Enjoy the suspense!

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #s 17 & 18 (1963)

Still MORE Frank Talk On Drawing

We reach the midpoint of the Draw-Along With Frank Borth strips - this time with an important lesson that some modern artists (Yeah - you know who you are) missed when they were learning to draw - FEET!

If you're just joining us, here are parts One and Two of the series.

Three down, two to go. But let's jump back a bit to that Sketch-It of Ben Franklin we showed at the start of this series. It was numbered 6 - here are the previous 5...
 

With Ben Franklin, they saved the best for last, eh?

Ben Franklin is one of those people i think of when i think of Great Americans.
It's a shame our Fake President hates him so much, and is trying to destroy Franklin's works, isn't it?

But, i digress. (sorry, Peter)

If things go according to plan, we'll be back this afternoon with another little post for those who don't care for Art Lessons.

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #s 15 & 16 (1963)

More Frank Talk On Drawing

Draw-Along With Frank Borth Part Two, or Parts Three & Four, depending on how you're counting, continuing from yesterday morning's post...

I realize that not everybody is interested in such things, nor likely to appreciate Frank's approach here. So while we continue this for the next few days, i'll try to do an unrelated post in the afternoons. (In theory at 3:33pm, Pacific Hermit Time)

Well - not exactly unrelated. All comics are 'related' - comics and movies are 'related' - and so on. I'll likely get even closer than that - i'm thinking we'll probably stick around in Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact since we're here already.
Maybe we'll finally check back in with The Bear, eh?

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v18 #s 13 & 14 (1963)

Frank Talk On Drawing

We were going to go flying again with the Franks (Moss & Borth), but as i was pulling pages i realized the we still had a major bit of Borth dangling. Quite a while back, i dropped this page into the mix of a scattered post -

Note that the Sketch-It is numbered - #6, implying a series.

In another post focused on covers from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact, i teased this cover -

Draw-Along With Frank Borth - #7, it says! 

Back in 1963, Borth serialized how-to-draw lessons, and they were quite good. He touched on things that i usually don't see - though, to be honest, i haven't read a lot of How To Draw books. I already had my own approach by the time i found them. So, i could be making ign'ant statements here.

But, for example, in the first lesson he talks about the usual bit of how everything is made from squares, circles, and triangles. But then, before going further, he has the students actually practice drawing the geometric shapes, getting comfortable with them before moving forward. Quite practical and solid foundation work. And you even get a sense of what Scott McCloud would elaborate upon decades later regarding the nature and history of art & storytelling. (Did McCloud refer to sign language as "drawing on air"?)

And, of course, it's Frank Borth! It's not hard to figure out i'm fond of his artwork - we're passing a score of posts featuring it. TCoF&F published 20 issues each school year. The first half of volume 18 featured another serial from the Capt. Frank T. Moss & Frank Borth team (One of their Ferdy tales. We'll get to him), and when that completed Draw-Along filled the space for the next 10 issues.

You know where this is going, right? Of course we're going to run them all. They're generally five pages each, so we'll do two at a time. That way i won't have to fight too hard with Blogger's defective image upload. (I get tired of waiting for over half an hour for them to not frell up the transfer and leave it hanging.)

Observe the footnote at the bottom of panel one below. 16 years at TCoF&F at that point. And most of those years, he and Capt. Moss did a serialized tale together. We've seen The Enchanted Flivver series, but there was also The Champ (no - get that picture out of your head) and Ferdy, both of whom have pages pulled to run here eventually, and many others including one-shot stories. Since Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact wasn't available to the general public, and i don't believe any of these have been collected and reprinted as they should be, we'll be coming back repeatedly for more. (Along with a bunch of other hidden treasures from artists like Joe Sinnott and Reed Crandall, for whom words like Great and Legendary are often used.)
For now, let's get to that "panel one below" -

For the second lesson, the inside front & back covers were utilized to provide an artist's aid -

I liked the old styrofoam head i used (an cheap wig stand) cosiderably better since this thing is really only good for front & side views. But i like the concept. And the X shape does make a Funny Face of sorts.

On to the lesson!

You're going to have to practice fast since the lessons continue tomorrow (i hope). 
Better get to it!

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact V18 #s 11 & 12 (1963)