Arthur Ranson

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Arthur Ranson bigraphy, stories - Illustrator

Arthur Ranson : biography

1939 –

Arthur James Ranson (born 1939) is an English comic book illustrator, known for his work on Look-in, Anderson: Psi Division, Button Man and Mazeworld. His work on Cassandra Anderson has been called "photo-realistic".

Early life

Born in 1939, Ranson’s childhood and formative years included access to the influences of art and artists in a mixture of British and American comics, including "[The] Beano, Knockout, [The] Dandy, Film Fun, Wizard, Hotspur…, The Eagle with Frank Hampson setting new standards. Wayne Boring’s Superman, C.C. Beck’s Captain Marvel," and others (including, "[l]ater, John Buscema’s Silver Surfer and his Conan, Jack Kirby’s Thor"). He says that Hampson in particular was an early influence, but that

Ranson attended the South West Essex Technical College and School of Art in Walthamstow, Essex, where he studied painting and printmaking.. Accessed September 3, 2008 Trained initially as an "apprentice stamp and banknote designer" in the 1960s, learning "to translate photographs into watercolour… [i]n stamp size." A "rare ability at the time," he would later use this skill as a "selling point" when pursuing a career "as an illustrator in advertising and publishing."

Notes

Career

After a period of time as a "[l]ettering artist for a cardboard box manufacturer", followed by teaching work, he says he "[r]an away to London." After some time in menial jobs, Ranson gained experience as a "[g]eneral patcher-up and filler-in at [a] commercial art studio," where he was encouraged to become a freelance artist by, he recalls

Ranson has a son, Jonas, who is also an artist, and daughter, Cassandra.http://www.arthurranson.com/biography

Look-in

Ranson first brought the precise techniques he had evolved through his apprenticeship to the UK TV comic Look-in, working first on portrait covers, and later alongside other major comics talents such as John M. Burns, Martin Asbury, Harry North, Colin Wyatt, John Bolton, Jim Baikie, Phil Gascoine, Barry Mitchell, and Bill Titcombe.

After some time drawing "funnies," Ranson drew on his skill in translating pictures across mediums (generally using a Grant Projector, which "projects an image up onto a glass plate, on which one places tracing paper"), and brought his talents to bear for Look-in by creating strips based on such popular TV series as Sapphire and Steel and Dangermouse, all written by Angus Allan. Since these works were based on specific TV shows, he says that "it seemed important that the characters looked as much like the actors as possible", and thus "used the methods I knew" to achieve the accurate likenesses that typify his work.

Musical strips

Ranson also produced a series of comic-strip biographies of well-known music stars and bands, including ABBA (1977),Published January 14, 1978. Reprinted in 2007 by Prion Books in Look-in: The best of Look-in * Junior TVTimes * The Seventies (Prion, 2007) (ISBN ISBN 978-1-85375-622-1), pp. 98-99 Elvis Presley (1981), The Beatles (1981-2), Haircut One Hundred (1983) and The Sex Pistols (1983). Most biographical articles on Ranson date his Beatles work to "the 1960s," at Lambiek’x Comiclopedia. Accessed September 3, 2008 but Ranson himself dispels this myth by stating that the "first auto-biographical [sic] strip I did was ABBA."ABBA not existing before the 1970s clearly indicates that Ranson was not drawing the Beatles a decade earlier.. In fact that work was done in 1981.Confirmed by the artist himself 28 September 2008.

Ranson recalls that Look-in editor Colin Shelbourne was convinced to allow Allan and Ranson to "retain… the copyright" to their Elvis and Beatles strips, which had the unfortunate side-effect of delaying complete publication, since such deals were largely unheard of. Ranson says: