EXTRACTS: The Art of Denis McLoughlin © 2013 The Book Palace (272 PAGES in Full edition)

53 W hen I was about four, Dad used to take me to a Dr. Crawford to help with my variety of complaints. In the waiting room were two very large oil paintings of women and cherubs and such, and the good doctor, no doubt having heard fromDad that I was drawing whilst still on potty training, pointed out to me that the main thing in any work of art was light and shade. Boy! This has really stuck with me and I remember it at least once a week. Thank heavens for that doc. Another strong influence was the American pulp magazines. Whilst at Ward and Copley I would wander around Manchester every lunchtime, oc- casionally going without a meal, and there was a shop fairly near London Road Station (now Piccadilly Station) that dealt in American mags. These retailed at the lowly price of 3d. You couldn’t go wrong. By the time I was called up, my bedroom was deep in copies of American Detective, Inside Detective, Front Page Detective, Horror Stories, Terror Tales, Dime Detective and many other titles. Up-market mags. were also there; stacks of Look and Life also littered the place. The faces of all 1930s heroes on the covers of the pulps were nearly all of the same type, lean, well-chiselled features and neat haircuts and mine tend to be somewhat similar. Sad to say, when I returned from the army, all these mags had been cleared out, together with all my art school nudes, ancient film projector and most of the films. Today I realise there is a growing interest in the covers I did for the Boardman Bloodhound Mystery series. I am often being asked how did I do such and such a cover, what materials did I use and - very often this - how long did it take to do a cover? How long is a piece of string? It obviously depended on the type of design I was doing. The few covers I did using film overlays and mechanical tints obviously took less time than an oil painting. Reckon an oil took about four days. Then you have to let it dry and then sponge fixative over it so that the lettering can be done in poster colour. I detest having lettering placed over the picture afterwards with an overlay. I like to think of a piece of work as one entity. I only ever did one cover with an overlay and that was for The Crumpled Cup by Henry Kane. Reason? TVB wanted to give the original oil to Henry Kane as a gift and he wouldn’t want lettering on it, would he? The cover was based on colour photos of the author’s goil friend. All my covers were drawn 50% up (this was the ratio we had always used at Ward & Copley and I was used to this format) with the exception of inspiration and techniques paint, pastel, pencil and pen ABOVE TOP: A thoughtful looking Denis poses in his first studio which he created along with living quaters for Dorothy and himself from the attic of the family home at 292 Derby Street, Bolton. ABOVE: The studio at Breightmet, notice the stagecoach on the shelf to the right and behind is the wall which featured on the back cover to the ninth Buffalo Bill Annual.