EXTRACTS: Illustrators Issue 4 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

92 The Studio Illustrator Walter (Wally) Wyles loved painting watercolours of rumbustious Georgian scenes for women’s magazine serials and book covers. He used professional models to portray the main characters, but preferred “real people” to model for the supporting characters. When I was art director of Woman’s Mirror, a photogravure mass-selling woman’s weekly magazine published in London in the sixties, I commissioned him to paint the illustrations for a romantic serial “The Passing of Paradise Row” by Paula Allardyce. Wyles decided that he wanted me, the editor Joy Scully, and some of the other staff to model for him. My secretary Jean Hanlon hired the photographer and photographic studio; hired all the period costumes, and ordered sandwiches, beer, and wine. Joy Scully, who was well upholstered, and a very good sport, modelled as a whore-house keeper, and I was a highwayman which, Scully told me, was a piece of excellent typecasting. It was a very enjoyable day, and the subsequent illustrations were stunning, and very lively! Wyles gave Joy Scully the original painting as a token of his regard for her. Bryn Havord. l Walter Wyles ABOVE: Wyles had each of us photographed separately, and then made the composition for the opening spread from the individual photographs, which were taken in black and white. We were photographed in a variety of different poses: some of us were painted again as the smaller background figures, and we all featured in the background of the illustrations for subsequent installments. Picture of Walter Wyles in his studio by Trevor Sutton