Over the years I have made extensive use of costumes in my illustration work. The better the costume, the more help it is in creating a good illustration. Sometimes I have raided the thrift stores and resorted to re cutting and resewing my own creations. But while I lived near Hollywood and did work for film advertising, I was able to make use of a great resource: Western Costume. That warehouse contained many thousands of beautiful costumes created for and rented to motion picture production companies.
In a single large room dedicated solely to medieval male tunics I would paw through hundreds on triple story racks to find just the one I wanted for a book cover. Not cheap to rent, but worth it.
Below is a picture of one I chose which is being worn by "Rocketeer" artist and pal Dave Stevens for a book cover illustration.
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| The same tunic in the 1980's and 40 years earlier. |
Some years later while watching Errol Flynn's "The Adventures of Robin Hood" I realized that from the myriad of tunics I had picked one from that film. They kept them in good repair through the decades.
