EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 18 © 2017 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

9 Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions (HA.com) Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions (HA.com) Gaines who was listening to the Yankee / Dodgers World Series game. Gaines, who had been prepped by Meglin, told Drucker, “If the Dodgers win this game, you’re hired.” The Dodgers won, and thus began a relationship that lasted 55 years. Meglin would later call Drucker, “Number one in a field of one.” With MAD as his platform, Drucker learned to work with colour for the first time, to branch out to new clients in the United States and Europe, and to continue to mature as an artist. Recently, Drucker looked back on his career, discussed how he drew all those caricatures over the years and described what motivated him to maintain his high standards of excellence even when he was “falling asleep with a brush in [his] hand.” Drucker said, “I use photographs for research but I don’t trace or copy them. Being an accurate copier doesn’t insure good likenesses.” And, in truth, part of the appeal of Drucker’s work is that it doesn’t look stiff or laboured the way that traced work does. Drucker said, “I didn’t do a lot of preliminaries. I tried to work directly. I didn’t want to work the life out of it and, not only that, if you wanted to make a dollar you didn’t fool around. You tried to get it right then and there.” In truth, Drucker