The Tower of the Elephant 2
- THE TOWER OF THE ELEPHANT, 2 - A black ink and black color pencil on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It appears as Plate 2 in my art folio based on the story by Robert E. Howard, "THE TOWER OF THE ELEPHANT," published by Bortner and Kruse in 1977.
The moon in this drawing reminds me of the time, way back when most of my artwork was appearing on fanzine covers or inside their pages. One day I received a letter from a fan in which he wrote that I was a "Lunatic," moon-crazy! He wrote that of the last ten drawings of mine that he saw in the fanzines, nine had a "moon" in them! . . .
Around that same time, give or take a couple of months, I received a letter from another fan informing me that the cover drawing I did for a specific fanzine he referred to, was all wrong; that the composition I started out with was circular, but I had broken the pattern near the top of the drawing. "And that" he wrote, was not acceptable in the art world . . .
I also remember someone telling me, around that same time period that the gun-fighter cowboy I drew in Robert E. Howard's book, "The Vultures," was obviously copied from a photo of Chuck Connors, star of TV's, "The Rifleman".
So, believe it or not, there were times when I was about to add a moon in one of my drawings, but that "lunatic" letter came to mind and it made me pause to think whether I should, or should not add a moon in the picture. As for the "circular composition" letter, I just ignored it because being told what was "not acceptable" in the art world was ludicrous. And about my cowboy drawing being a copy from a photo of Chuck Connors, it is simply not true. And, I just remembered, it was Gerry de la Ree who made that claim, and though I swore to him that I did not copy Connors' photo, he did not believe me . . .
Critics! Though they are important, they can also be insufferable.
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