THE ART OF LOOK-IN

Recently as shown in 'News', a number of pieces of original artwork purchased by a private collector, Peter Hansen, went up for sale on eBay, Peter has been in touch to say he will try to get me some large pictures of the artwork before it is sold, but while we wait for those, here are some blow ups of the accompanying pictures for the sale items on eBay.

On the right we see a page of 'Kung Fu' drawn by Martin Asbury, as on all of these pictures the writing on the edge of the pictures cannot be made out, so I have no idea what this meant or appertained to.  The colours are really quite vivid considering it's 30+ years of age.



'All would probably have the publication title, issue number (or date if applicable) and page number on, for ease of identification. For  instance the 'Catweazle' artworks have 'Look-In/Issue 48/page 20 (or 21)'.'

'On the first 'Kung-Fu' you show, there is a 'measure' going up the left hand side. This indicates, at a time before desktop publishing and digital scanning, that the art had to be optically reduced to a specific size

onto film to make the printing plates. I cannot be 100% sure but the black 'blobs' on the middle edges are registration marks, put there by the printers to ensure each of the four inks used for four (or full) colour print (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) were lined up exactly. It would only take a small misalignment for printed art to look 'fuzzy'.' (Shaqui)

Here is a close up of a registration mark. The page would be lined up with this in the printing press, so the different colours would overlay exactly.

Here we see one of Arnaldo's paintings, Looking quite strange without all the usual writing surrounding it, like it would normally appear on the cover of Look-in.

In a few interviews Angus Allan has said that much of the artwork from Look-in was burned, and that he wasn't sure how much, if any survived.  It's nice to know that some did, but how tragic that many of the beautiful cover paintings no longer exist.

No instructional writing on this one, unlike the strips, it's just as is.  Whoever is lucky enough to win it, has a really great piece of art to frame and hang in their house.

 

One from the 80's now, and the strip based on 'Count Duckula', Cosgrove-Hall's follow up to 'Danger Mouse'  Note the nice neat rows of frames, in comparison to Asbury's board above.


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