Friday 25 April 2008

Bellamy starts drawing Paul English in Swift




In my last post I highlighted the difficulties in trying to identify Bellamy artwork. None more so than the early material.

I have an early run of the Swift comic that enables me to scan two pages for your perusal of the strip that was illustrated by Giorgio Bellavitis. That much is agreed by sources over the Internet, but when exactly did Bellamy take over?

Above are  The Exciting Adventures of Paul English from 2nd and 9th April 1955. comparing the two weeks, I think I'm right in seeing one artist (Giorgio Bellavitis) and then another (Frank Bellamy) a week later. Why do I think that?

  • Compare the musculature and the ways it's drawn on the boys
  • Look at the lines to denote wooden beams
  • Look at the window in the room and how it differs
  • ...and most important of all, look at the horizontals and verticals that are drawn in the room in the first and not in the second!
Let me know what you think...

1 comment:

crow said...

It kinda looks like Bellamy. In frame two, the way the wood grain has that stepping effect, almost like rock. The wood splintering points to his way of drawing that effect. The intructor's outstretched hand looks like a Bellamy pose, with that curling action of the fingers. Also the shading of his arm, the way it curls around.

In frame five, the rocks in the wall and the straw look like his work. Also, the deep crease in the blond boys left arm looks like Bellamy. But, the clincher for me, strangely enough, is the little diagonal wooden beam in the top of the same frame. It has that stepping effect and a line with a little wiggle at the end.

My two cents. :)