Associated Study: 🏃 Study 7: 5.5 Hour Drawing

When was the last time you persuaded somebody of something?

Recalling cicero again, the point of our art is to inform, to persuade, to entertain.

If you can think of lesson 5, rendering, as “informing”

and lesson 6, fanart as entertaining,

then this one is about persuading

The most common form of persuasion in modern society is “let me get you to buy something”

Advertising is persuasion, and persuasion is the strength of a concept.

Introducing… the world’s most powerful concept (can you guess?)

A hot girl.

We mentioned before, art starts in the mind of the creator and finishes in the mind of the viewer.

“Hot girl” is such a strong viewer multiplier, that it’s the optimal subject matter. In other words, if the only thing you care about is reach, and you are equally good at drawing fruits and hot girls, you should always draw the hot girls. Because people respond so much better to hot girls, your art will be seen by so many more people.

A hot girl with commercial-tier ad spend is better.

If we model the strength of a campaign as marketing dollars x power of concept, we draw the conclusion hot girls is a great way of selling products.

Nobody did it better than Alphonse Mucha

At the dawn of the 20th century, Alphonse Mucha’s style blossomed to popularity in his playbills of the actress sarah bernhardt. This style was called art nouveau.

(This chuuni one of bernhardt as medea is my favorite)

…And he once he cemented that style, he revolutionized the advertising industry

This is an ad for a bike, but the poster doesn’t contain much bike. Mucha sells you the bike, not by drawing the bike, but by drawing the beautiful girl on the bike.

This is a Mucha telling you to vacation. (Can you spot where Monte Carlo is)?

This is Mucha telling you to buy biscuits.

This is mucha telling you to buy champagne

It was said that these posters were so beautiful, audiences used to tear these ads down and take them home. (in fact, people still do put these on their walls!)

Eventually, they were so successful that Mucha’s workshop published a guideline book on how to make decorative elements. Documents Decoratifs, A “style guide” for how to make these art nouveau illustrations.

And it extended to not just paintings, but objects made in the physical world.

Despite its name, art “nouveau”, it was snubbed by critics as “contrived, old fashioned” at the time of its inception. It surged in popularity after its rediscovery in the latter half of the 20th century, thanks in part to Mucha’s descendants, who created a foundation for mucha’s legacy.

Mucha himself, in his later years, was not a big fan of the art nouveau style he popularized. He turned to making stuff that he felt was more “serious”

His personal interests were jesus fanart and his homeland, and so for the last 18 years of his life, he devoted his labors to the Slav Epic, a celebration of slavic history

Unfortunately, it is extremely hard to beat the hot girl viewer multiplier x commercial advertising dollars.

Midjourney users today can probably answer the question of how much he succeeded in changing his legacy in the minds of the mass audience.

Believe it or not, there’s also a hot guy equivalent. Half a generation behind Mucha and across the Atlantic Ocean, JC Leyendecker was laying down the foundations of a “Golden Age” of advertising illustration.

Starring… hot guys selling you things.

These are images from his campaign for Arrow collars and shirts, some of the most iconic advertising illustrations ever made.

Leyendecker wasn’t selling you an arrow shirt. He was selling you the ideal man. (who happens to wear arrow shirts and collars)

But notice, the arrow collar man doesn’t even have arms or a suit. He’s literally just a shirt. The advertisements are screaming. OI. Buy it. This shirt makes you HOT.

Very persuasive.

In fact, the fictional arrow collar man was so hot that he received thousands of pieces of fanmail and inspired a broadway play!

Beyond advertising a product, Leyendecker was sculpting the idealized adonis in every work.

Compare this drawing of a knight and lady

To this drawing of a knight and lady

Somehow, you get the feeling that Leyendecker’s knight is way hotter, and the dude isn’t even showing his face!

Some would say he very much defined the idea of an American Man.

The secret? Leyendecker had a very handsome boyfriend to use as a reference!

It’s well-documented that they lived luxuriously in a large house with lots of servants and threw extremely extravagant parties.

To this day, you still can’t get much better character design than a man wearing a nice suit, with nice crisp lines.

Today, we can see both leyendecker and mucha’s influence everywhere. from fine art works:

To illustration:

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