The Caller of the Black
- THE CALLER OF THE BLACK - A scratchboard drawing, size 8.5 x 11. It appears in the book, "The Compleat Crow," by Brian Lumley, published by Ganley in 1987.
There was a superb "scratchboard" artist who illustrated a few stories for some SF pulp magazines in the 1950s just before they all went out of business. His name was Paul Calle. I admired his unique style and his amazing craftsmanship with scratchboard, and I wondered why the few digest magazines like "Astounding SF," that were still publishing monthly issues, never used his marvelous artwork. How sad, I never saw his work again, anywhere, for many years. I often wondered what happened to him, thinking that he probably abandoned the field of illustration and got a job doing something else. So I thought . . .
Fifty-Five years have gone by and on April 12, 2013, I was perusing an old 1950s issue of Super Science Stories, and saw one of Paul Calle's illustrations. I decided to search the internet to see if I could find something on this obscure scratchboard illustrator of the dying pulps of the past . . .
This is what I found out about Paul Calle; He went on to paint several Saturday Evening Post covers, and later he was chosen as the sole artist hired by NASA to cover the Apollo 11 astronauts, up close. He designed several US stamps commemorating the first Moon landing, and 40 other illustrations that appear on US Postage Stamps, as well as postage stamp artwork for the United Nations, and other nations like Sweden. His artwork is displayed at the National Air and Space Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the National Cowboy and Western Art Museum, and many other art museum across America.
So, much to my pleasant surprise Paul Calle did not fade away with the pulps, the young obscure science fiction illustrator actually went on to become one of America's honored artists. He died in 2010.
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