EXTRACTS: The Art of Commando (illustrators special) © 2019 The Book Palace (144 PAGES in Full edition)

71 can I do that (likeness). I’ve spoken at some length with Ian Kennedy and he said to me, “I tried to avoid that situation” Sensible chap! Once or twice in the office people would come to me and say, “What about doing a retirement card for so and so?” And I got to the stage where I’d have to say, “Well look if I do it for one, I’m going to have to do it for everyone”. Not that I objected to doing it but it did become very time consuming, Peter. You start a very large ball rolling where people say, “Och but it won’t take you long”, but it does… PR: Well, Gordon, one final question, which is always of interest to artists, did you have any artists that you held in high regard when you first started? GL: No, no, no… I had nobody to follow. What came, was what you saw. That was it. No! I used no one as a crutch to lean on. It just never occurred to me. I just did what I did. a gentle style just evolved, What did make my style evolve was, all the editors, they all wanted a lot of detail and lots of stuff that came in from abroad was not detailed. And I was there in the office once a week and there would be discussions about this. And one book that George Low made me do… I don’t know but horses came into it. But I actually did a bird’s eye view of a man diving into a ring of soldiers. And do you know how