Jack Kamen - Advertising Art

Advertising Art

After leaving EC, Kamen began drawing Sunday supplement illustrations and creating advertising art for a wide variety of clients: Esquire Shoe Polish, Mack Trucks, Pan American Airlines, Playtex, RCA, Smith Corona and Sylvania. For artist Tom Palmer, Kamen described one of his unusual painting techniques:

Did you know I used Prismacolor pencils along with an acrylic paint wash to create my paintings? I would use a smooth illustration board and apply my basic color in a very watery wash of acrylic, and after it dried I would start rendering with Prismacolor pencil. Then I would take an electric eraser, with a particular eraser, that when you erased anything, before you got down to removing color, you could mix the color pencil very, very smooth, almost like an oil painting. For instance, I would mix a puddle of acrylic paint flesh color and put that down as a watercolor wash. As soon as it dried, I would add all the details in colored pencil. In areas that needed correction I would paint opaque white acrylic and then go back and do color pencil again. The electric eraser blended all the pencil into a smooth look. If you look at a painting of Santa Claus, the beard is opaque white acrylic, put down as a watercolor wash, then the shading and gray tones were added in color pencil, the electric eraser gave the fuzzy look to all that.

He also drew all the comic book artwork for Stephen King and George A. Romero's 1982 horror anthology film Creepshow, King and Romero's homage to the EC horror comics. Although the bulk of the artwork for the graphic novel adaptation of the film was done by acclaimed macabre artist Berni Wrightson (along with his daughter who did some of the coloring), Kamen illustrated the cover.