Royal Decree of Chasbo

His Majesty Charles White III will be signing copies of the fabulous Overspray Thursday June 18th 7.30 at Village Books 1049 Swarthmore Avenue, Pacific Palisades, California. Bliss!

Go See CWIII

Charlie White is having a one-day art sale at his studio in Venice Beach California. 9 Wavecrest Avenue, on June 7th from 3 til 6. Here's a sample of some of the original art that will be for sale.

Modern Painter

Nice review of Overspray by Hrag Vartanian in this months issue of Modern Painter

Little Dave's Stencil Drawing

After months of archeological excavation, Dave Willardson has uncovered this treasure used for what is perhaps his finest illustration.

If you're in the area - please stop by and say hello at the Overspray book event in Williamsburg, Brooklyn this evening.

New York Launch Party & Book Signing

Head over to Desert Island in Brooklyn on Friday May 15th from 7–9 to meet my beautiful self and cast your eyes upon rare and powerful vintage airbrush art posters from the 60s and 70s. Hope to see you there.

Overspray Original Art Sale at PictureBox Gallery

Overspray's publisher PictureBox has just launched PictureBox Gallery in order to sell selected original art by a small stable of their artists, including soul brothers Peter Lloyd and Charles E White III. Get over there and scope it out!

Charlie White's 177 Feet

A student art film made by Robert Merchasin in 1966 that includes the installation of Charlie's notorious big headed self promotion billboard, intercut with scenes of Charlie and Dave Willardson at work creating the construction used for the groovy 1967 album by The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band: Volume 2 (Reprise Records), art directed by the legendary Ed Thrasher. Yes, Charlie and Dave thought it would be a fine idea to coat Charlie's bathroom with silver and cast resin objects in it as well, such as a female mannequin sitting in the bathtub. The photograph was taken at the door of the bathroom. At the time Charlie and Dave lived and worked in the so-called White House, Charlie's white-covered abode in L.A. Shown in the film is Dave's room (with Dave deep in it) and the bathroom under construction. Needless to say, Charlie's landlord was less than pleased, but it was the '60s and somehow Chasbone got away. Robert Merchasin, if you're out there, drop us a line!

Charlie White's 177 Feet II

From the desk of Peter Palombi

A reference photo used by Peter Palombi to create the final magazine illustration shown below it. A rare peak into how photo reference materials were chopped and rearranged to build a more pleasing final design prior to painting.

Classmates Reunited

The Overspray crew have just returned from their successful world tour (well, a single performance so far). Art Center in Pasadena hosted a rollicking panel discussion and painful 70s movies film fest last Thursday evening. Peter Palombi, David Willardson and Charles White III battled to gain possession of the microphone from Roman Coppola in order to impart their harrowing airbrush war stories. Plans are afoot for an East Coast performance so stay tuned for details...

Charles E. White III: Very Good Hair in a Century of Good Hair.

Herewith a couple of snaps supplied to us by Charlie White. The bottom image depicts Charlie, his wife Linda and their two kids as the ultimate hipster family. Charlie would like it known that "and we weren't hippies man, we were artists!!!" It was taken in New Jersey in 1967. On top is an awe-inspiring photo by the infamous Jean-Paul Goude. It was used as an advertisement for Wrangler Jeans in Sweden in 1975. This is the only evidence of Charlie's all-too-brief modeling career in the 1970s. I think the main thing to note from all these CWIII posts is this: Did any illustrator have more fun in the 1960s and 70s? I think not! Charlie did something with his persona and his work that was perhaps only possible for a West Coast boy to do: lighten up, go Hollywood, and not worry. It's not a NYC-centric attitude (which focused much more on notions of conceptual rigor, seriousness, and societies), and as we view all this history, it makes more and more sense why the Overspray Kings have been so meticulously excised from the NYC-controlled illustration history books: they were too fun, too image oriented. Too LA But we should embrace it! Embrace the LA It is still the future there. It always will be.

Peter Palombi

Here's a very short clip of my interview of Peter Palombi, where we discuss his approach to using the airbrush and how he was influenced by JC Leyendecker.

Paint Making

Here's a slide show from recently unearthed contact sheets of behind-the-scenes shots taken during Charlie's incredible film Paint. Chas-bone doesn't remember who the other peeps are swirling around in the background (it was, after all, 1968!) but dig the groovy production.

Peter Lloyd

Here's a video clip featuring a lot of unpublished Peter Lloyd work, and some pieces that didn't make the book's final edit. Included are concept drawings for a tv commercial and production art from Tron.

Demure? Moi?

One day in 1967 Charlie White III and Dave Willardson were out for a drive and saw a billboard. Dave mentioned that it would be cool to advertise Charlie's studio with such a large scale format. So they went back to "The White House" and called the billboard company. Turned out they couldn't just rent one -- they had to rent five! Black and white was cheapest, so Charlie dug up a b&w promo photo he had from a photo booth, Dave set the type and before they knew it, they had five billboards up around L.A. advertising the man himself. This was very much in the tongue-in-cheek, pop style of the day. Advertise the man/brand ahead of the art! At the time Charlie was going full guns as the premiere West Coast pop-style illustrator. Charlie has since mentioned that it was taken the wrong way by some, who thought it was, um, a tad immodest. But nevertheless these billboards are still remembered by L.A. oldsters as an iconic image around the city. But the idea nicely foreshadow today's strategies (think Shephard Fairey) in its simplicity and persona-driven directness. The billboards begat a whole campaign, including the decal seen at right and the booklet below.

Charles E. White III Rules The World

The clinically shy Charlie White produced this humble self promotion piece in 1967 featuring spectacular photographs by David Willardson. The layout, right down to the typography, was influenced by their L.A. contemporary Ed Ruscha's books from that period. Of course this booklet dovetailed nicely with the Charlie White III billboards that went up around L.A. at the time. More on that later.

Paint

This film of Charlie White was made in 1968 by the Haboush Company. Victor Haboush, whose career has spanned 1950s Disney films to the more recent Iron Giant, produced the film via his own company. From a studio in Santa Monica Haboush produced well over 1000 commercials. Victor remembers Paint as a novelty project, shot just for fun, and Charlie as "an exciting guy and an adventurer in the business." Charlie himself notes that Norman Gollin, who directed the film, was a major West Coast presence as an art director, and that he shot it all in one take. No paint-overs, and no practice. It was pure psychedelic improvisation.

The Original Ruler

This week I'll be uploading a rash of crap recently unearthed at Charles White III's studio in Venice California. Charlie had a colorful career way before he turned into the compressed air king covered in Overspray. This is a photo of Charlie back in the day, sitting under a bedspread (yes, really!) created by his disgustingly talented wife Linda, who's a noted interior designer. So come back soon, there's some good stuff on it's way...

Update:
Due to the amount of interest in the wall hanging I phoned Linda White to ask about the TV Dinner, She said it was created for a Bloomingdales Model Room in the 70s for interior designer Robert K Lewis. Bloomingdales was pretty hip at the time and featured contemporary interior designers work within the store. Linda said this room was all done in Brown and white with the TV Dinner bedspread providing the only color. Linda went on from creating textile art and tapestries to designing complete interiors. She heads her own company White Design based in Venice Beach in Los Angeles. She said she still has the bedspread and can see it poking out from her loft storage space from where she sits.

Unfinished Business

While trawling through the extensive archive of Charles White III for the upcoming Overspray exhibition, publisher Dan Nadel uncovered this gem. Gives a glimpse of the painstaking airbrush painting technique.

70s Shirtage

While trawling through the archives for the upcoming Overspray gallery show, Dan uncovered this treasure designed by Charles White III back in the 70s.

Flippy

Go for a high speed chase through the entire book.

Blog Love

The gentlemen behind the wheel at Eye Blog are enslaved by the beauty of Overspray so they asked me to provide a rant .

New Year

Ran into this Charles White III cover for New York Magazine yesterday. From 1974.

Soundtracks VII The Finale

Okay we're wrapping up our look at the music behind the sleeves with this song from my mother's favorite duo Ferrante & Teicher from the album Dial 'M' for Music. Cover and lettering by his royal majesty Peter Palombi.

Soundtracks VI

Run for your lives it's a power ballad! Jefferson Starship's Caroline from the Dragonfly album.It's a wonder Peter Lloyd didn't chuck it all in after receiving such a cross-wired schizophrenic brief from the band members.

Ones That Got Away II

During the early planning stages of the book, prior to deciding to make Overspray Californiacentric, Philip Castle was an illustrator we'd had on our shortlist. Philip and Robert Grossman are possibly the two earliest illustrators to use the airbrush in the 60s. I'll try and include some further samples of their work here soon.

Overspray Soundtracks V

Today it's 1973's Sport from the album Hustler's Convention by Lightnin' Rod. Former member of the mighty Last Poets, backed up by Kool and the Gang featuring a Cineramic gatefold cover illustration by Dave Willardson.

Overspray Soundtracks IV

Today's track is Billy Jack from my favorite Curtis Mayfield album There's No Place Like America Today. I love how Palombi differed his painting technique for the glossily sprayed crackers in the billboard, and the hand painted watercolor used for the poor folks in the breadline.

Overspray Soundtracks III

Pour a little Polo for Men into the hot tub and switch on Friends and Strangers by Ronnie Laws. The original painting for this blew my mind when viewing it for the first time hanging on Peter Lloyd's living room wall in Eugene, Oregon. He tells a great story about how the cover concept came about in his interview in Overspray.

Overspray Soundtracks II

Slip on your cranberry suede fringed boots and have a listen to Gentle Giant's The Advent of Panurge from their 1972 album Octopus. This epic die-cut cover was painted by Charles White III with lettering by Michael Doret.

Overspray Soundtracks I

This is the first post in a series of Overspray Soundtracks. A chance to listen to some of the funky 70s albums whose cover art is featured in Overspray. Today's track is Are You Ready by Pacific Gas and Electric from 1970.

Media Domination

Overspray was reviewed in last weekend's New York Times and also appears in this month's Women's Wear Daily The Reading Room section.

Press Frenzy

As the world rapidly realizes the import of Overspray, the media is tripping over itself to report on the airbrush tsunami. Style.com and TurntableLab being the latest victims.

David Willardson Pin-Ups

Dave discusses the illustration that kicked off his start in painting pin-up girls.

Interview with David Willardson

A short clip of Dave Willardson discussing his work.

Royalty and Plebes

His Majesty David Willardson

His Royal Highness Charles White III

Charlie signing a copy of Overspray

Me shooting my mouth off to hand lettering legend Michael Doret

Michelle Shocked, David Willardson and Charlie White

Mike Salisbury awed by my command of the English language

LA Book Signing Event

I wasn't prepared for the huge stampede of humanity that showed up for the book launch last week at Family. We wiped out their supply of books then trashed the place.

Book launch in LA this Wednesday

Join the mass exodus to Los Angeles this Wednesday for the Overspray book launch at Family on Fairfax Avenue. I'll be introducing two of the kings: Charles White III and David Willardson who will be answering questions, along with LA art director Mike Salisbury. Family will be showing some extremely rare airbrush art posters from the 70s - plus the dudes and myself will be signing books.

Family
436 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, California
323 782-9221

Image Restoration V

This is the final retouched image. Retouching airbrush art was much harder than I'd anticipated as there are so many rolling gradients everywhere, it's not easy to find a good cloning source. There were other pieces to fix as well: working from a printed piece as opposed to the original art, paint giving off reflections when photographed etc. etc. Give me a shout if you want to hear more about any aspect of the assembly required for the book – technical or editorial.

Image Restoration IV

Once the colors are corrected I went in to do any 'spotting' or cleaning up of blemishes. An unforeseen problem with retouching the work in Overspray, was not being able to use Photoshop's dust and scratches filter, which normally would have been a simple process. But airbrush art is composed of tiny paint speckles which would be mistaken by the filter as dust particles, thus causing over-smoothing, and robbing the illustration of its snap. So all spotting needed to be done by hand.

The before and after images here are easier to study when magnified

Image Restoration III

I then adjusted the overall levels of the cyan channel, bringing the shadow slider up to where the darkest shadow detail remained in the image. This usually gives you an indication of whether an image still retains enough information to work with.

So now it's possible to see a wider range of hues. There's a little green in the glass, and the outer outline ring of the circle is a similar color. The skin tones in the hand are also looking much better. Dave usually uses very bright colors, so I can tell that the original didn't look this somber originally. My hunch is that the outer ring should be blue-green along with parts of the glass, and perhaps the fill color within the circle should be a bit less green.

It's become apparent that I'll need to adjust portions of the illustration separately, then merge them together into a single image. The 3rd image has had the cyan increased, and shows the parts that didn't need more blue being erased. This is repeated for every element that needs individualized tweaking - maybe 5-6 components.

Image Restoration II

This caused the image to become oversaturated, so I reduced that a bit as well.

Now I could tell what shape the overall color was in. It was instantly obvious that the blues had faded quite severely, so I opened up the cyan channel to see how it looked.

Eek!

Image Restoration

The most time consuming portion of assembling Overspray was ensuring that all the paintings were in good shape and ready for print. As some pieces are nearly 40 years old, they required a bit of help in the retouching department. Dave Willardson had done an excellent job of archiving all of his work onto 4x5 transparencies which we sent to Singapore for drum scanning. But even so there were still a few that required restoration work.

This is what the original transparency looks like. Pretty severe fading, probably due to improper finishing during film processing. But this illustration is one of my favorite early pieces by Dave and I wanted to include it.

The first step was to remove the overall color cast that had been caused by the fading. I could tell the background was once white, so I reduced the red cast until it was neutral, and adjusted the shadow levels.

Real Color

Kind of shocking while working on the book, to see what the original paintings look like, compared to the image that ended up being printed in not the most accurate fashion.

Peter Lloyd's illustration for this Kansas album cover is a good example. Never seen the little edge of the earth until now either.

Toga Brava Suite

Portrait of Duke Ellington painted by David Willardson for the Toga Brava Suite album cover. This is one of two paintings Dave completed overnight for the sleeve.

Ones That Got Away

There were a handful of images that we would have liked to include in the book, but space limitations or the inability to find high quality transparencies or original art meant they didn't make the final cut.

1 A burger painted by Peter Palombi for a pharmaceutical brochure.

2 Dollar sign by Charles White III for the Los Angles Art Directors Club Annual.

3 A figure study for the film Tron by Peter Lloyd.

4 Portrait of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg for Rolling Stone by Dave Willardson.

Film Title Art by Charles White III

Charles White's giant film title painting for the concert documentary Ladies and Gentlemen The Rolling Stones. Painted in two pieces, at over six feet wide, this is the first example of chrome painting that was wildly influential at the time, spawning truckloads of scary-assed heavy metal album covers in the years to come.

West magazine

Dave Willardson's painting for the influential West magazine, a supplement to the LA Times. West helped define California visual culture - commissioning work by Ed Ruscha among others. Helmed by art director Mike Salisbury who went on to art direct Rolling Stone in its glory years, shitloads of album covers and then switched from editorial design to advertising. Mike hired Dave Willardson, Bob Zoell and many other goddamn great illustrators. He also wrote a WILD introductory essay for Overspray that describes what the LA scene was like in the 70s.

Artist Interviews

The portfolio sections of each artist's work is preceded by an extensive interview. Early drawing histories, art school and the frenzied days of their early professional careers are covered in detail, along with passages discussing airbrush technique.

Rollerball

Charley White's Esquire illustration for The Roller Ball Murders. The article which was used for the basis of the uber 70s film. Lettering by Michael Doret, who provided lovely hand lettering for many of Charlie's early illustrations.

Peter Palombi

One of my favorite images from the book. Peter Palombi's painting for the Eddie Harris album Is It In.

Cover 4: Charles White III

Illustration was originally used as a cover for Japanese hipster magazine Yasei Jidai, art directed by Eiko Ishioka.

Cover 3: Dave Willardson

Beautiful example of Dave Willardson's work. This was originally used as an album cover.

Cover 2: Peter Lloyd

Peter Lloyd's 1974 illustration for the Oui article Cocaine Is A Lady.

Pink Jumpsuits

Peter Lloyd's famous painting for Rod Stewart's Atlantic Crossing. Unbelievably painted over a weekend without the aid of a preparatory color sketch. That's when illustrators were MEN !

Hipster Men's Mag

An illustration for the quasi hip 70s men's mag Oui by Peter Lloyd which sadly didn't make it into the book. Tasteful skin mags and the exploding record industry provided ample work for illustrators during the 70s.

Cover 1: Peter Palombi

Overspray has 4 different covers. This one is by Peter Palombi originally used for the album That Is Why You're Overweight, later to be printed as a poster and card by the fantastic Paper Moon graphics. I'll upload the other three covers soon.

Topics

Feel free to request information on any aspect of the book. I'll be happy to discuss the artists, 70s illustration, airbrush technique, the image retouching undertaken for the book etc.

Book Signing Event in LA

Airbrush dieties Dave Willardson and Charles White III will honor us with their presence for a book signing in Los Angeles on November 12th at Family 436 N. Fairfax Avenue at 7 pm along with Overspray author Norman Hathaway and badass LA art director Mike Salisbury.

Some vintage airbrush posters will be on display, with a very limited number for sale as well, including Charlie White's extremely rare Star Wars poster.

Overspray cover

Overspray is the comprehensive account of the rise of airbrush art, and of the equally bright and glossy Los Angeles culture in which it flourished during the 1970s. Inspired by surf graphics, psychedelia and Hollywood glitz, a generation of young artists made every lip and palm tree glisten, and every record cover slick as a well‑lubricated sex toy. Fueled by a combination of intense demand, sleepless nights and brutal competition, the four men at the center of LA’s airbrush art market—Dave Willardson, Charles E White III, Peter Palombi, and Peter Lloyd—embarked on careers that produced work for Playboy, Levi’s, the Rolling Stones, American Graffiti and Tron. Overspray tells the unvarnished story of these four artists, through images of their best-known work, and frank, in-depth interviews. Viewed today, their surreal, funny and hyperslick imagery; seems all the more fantastic—which combined technical precision; and wild flights of imagination.

Order from PictureBox

Overspray: Riding High with the Kings of California Airbrush Art is now available for pre-order at PictureBox.com.