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| Eagle Vol:10:28 (29 August 1959) |
The news of Don Harley's death arrived the other day and it spurred me on to sharing a letter he sent to Richard Farrell (the creator and publisher of Andersonic and all round brilliant caricaturist). Richard used some of the letter in quotations in his article "Frank, Don, Dan and the Tracys" (way back in Andersonic Episode 4 Dateline (Autumn 2007) pp.4-8) and has given me permission to use whatever information I find useful from his letters from Harley and Keith Watson here for the first time. The topics covered by both artists are Frank Bellamy and the changeover at Hulton during a massive upheaval - the subject of an earlier article by David Jackson and here too. I also shared the drawing, with permission, of Bellamy by Don Harley way back in 2009 and another article in 2010
In Don Harley's letter (from 9 March 1991) Richard is given advice by Don on drawing and Don goes on:
"Both Frank Hampson and Frank Bellamy were skilled draughtsmen. Frank Hampson learned his skills at Southport art school and through working in a commercial art studio, but Frank Bellamy was self-taught, as was Keith Watson also, although the last two were self-taught, they aimed for perfection in their work. Frank Hampson's style of drawing was much more subtle and sensitive than Frank Bellamy's he paid much more attention to detail even small objects were drawn with great care. Frank Bellamy on the other hand relied much more on design and contrasting tones, he also aimed for great movement and impact achieved through the heavy use of black.
Kieth (sic) Watson and I never saw Frank Bellamy at work as he worked at home and at this time, 1959, Kieth (sic) and I with other members of the Dan Dare team were working in Hulton House, Fleet Street. Frank would deliver his part of the work and we tied it in with what we were doing and as the two styles were so different it looked like two different strips.
Frank Bellamy was secretive about his methods of working although he did reveal to us that he did not mix colours on the palette but applied washes of diluted ink using primary colours only, red, yellow and blue therefore he made green by putting a wash of yellow on top of blue to make a darker green he would add more blue and a touch of red to prevent the green from becoming too acidic the colours were pelican (sic) inks he rarely used watercolour. The board he used was CS10 which is normally extremely difficult to paint upon, it had a surface like scraperboard he was able to obtain trick effects by scraping out colours with a razor blade and then flowing other colours over the scraped out bit."
Richard also had a reply from Keith Watson who drew Dan Dare solo from Eagle volume 13:10 to 18:1! An incredible run.
"I remember Frank Hampson telling me that Frank Bellamy's work "stood head and shoulders above that of other Eagle artists" and he had advised Marcus Morris to engage Bellamy as chief Dan Dare artist following his (Hampson's) departure. However many people, including Bellamy himself , were not entirely happy with the new Dan Dare. In my view Hampson's super clean crisp style fitted the futuristic world of Dan Dare like a glove but was not so suited to historical subjects like the "Road of Courage" [the life of Jesus].
The reverse was true of Frank Bellamy. In my opinion it was a case of the right men doing the wrong jobs. Hampson's hardware was the product of much time spent studying the latest in spacecraft or aircraft engineering and then trying to push it forward a generation. It looked functional and convincing. It looked as if it could work. Bellamy's designs were a quick flash of artistic imagination and looked like it.
It is all subjective of course but I'm glad to say that the Eagle editor received a flood of mail welcoming back the Hampson-type Dan Dare"
He went on...
"Bellamy used to tell me he didn’t approve of Hampson’s methods, too much use of references, photos, models, etc. But the truth is that when the cake is so good there can’t be much wrong with the recipe".
As a child I loved Don Harley's work as it mirrored my favourite artist Mike Noble as it was straight 'representational' art. In fact I loved the time Bellamy took a break to do The Avengers TV series from illustrating Thunderbirds in TV21. So here's the last episode of a very long story before Bellamy took the break followed by Don Harley's continuation. Harley drew 6 issues before Bellamy returned to draw Thunderbirds.
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| TV21 #92 Thunderbirds - drawn by Frank Bellamy |
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| TV21 #93 Thunderbirds - drawn by Don Harley |
Other thoughts on Don Harley
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