Cartoon Vixens: Elvgren Girls In Photos

Monday, April 16, 2012

Elvgren Girls In Photos

Gil Elvgren would frequently work from photographs as opposed to a live model who sat there for long periods of time. Not always, but since he did, we have these great photos to compare with his own works.

Again, we see an artist playing with lines. When created, the fact that some of the lines on the girl have been subtly, and sometimes even wildly, exaggerated isn't very salient. It doesn't stand out as it does with Photoshopped models of today because it hasn't entered the uncanny valley. Every element of the image has been built from the ground up by the artist to match every other element. When the same principles that make these images coherent and sexy are applied to photos of real women, the results are awful.

The below photos were scavenged from multiple websites, and the bulk of them appear to be of a model named Janet Rae; you can see her in the first photo. Compliments of a single collector (her son, I believe), who uploaded them to his Flickr page, the images are available to the net-addicted public. Fans of Elvgren everywhere thank you very much. He is rumored to be working on a book about his mother's work, which would be fantastic. It would be a perfect companion piece for Louis K. Meisel's book on Elvgren.