Tuesday Spill: Steig’s Trees

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Every artist has their own graphic vocabulary — those favorite elements they return to again and again. Some do it out of habit, others out of affection (love even!). I recently looked at a lot of William Steig’s work. One thing that occurred to me as I looked through: he really liked trees.

For example, here are some Steig New Yorker covers and childrens book covers:

I’ll only show one sample of his many tree-centric New Yorker drawings (it’s easy enough to Google them…here’s one, and here’s another and another and another) but take my word for it: there are scores of them.

Here’s one from the issue of October 20, 2003:

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William Steig’s A-Z Entry:

William Steig (photo above) Born in Brooklyn, NY, Nov. 14, 1907, died in Boston, Mass., Oct. 3, 2003. In a New Yorker career that lasted well over half a century and a publishing history that contains more than a cart load of books, both children’s and otherwise, it’s impossible to sum up Steig’s influence here on Ink Spill. He was among the giants of the New Yorker cartoon world, along with James Thurber, Saul Steinberg, Charles Addams, Helen Hokinson and Peter Arno. Lee Lorenz’s World of William Steig (Artisan, 1998) is an excellent way to begin exploring Steig’s life and work. New Yorker work: 1930 -2003.

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Note: The drawing of “Steig’s Trees” at the top of this post is my homage to Mr. Steig’s tree drawings. It also happens to be the way I’ve been drawing trees for decades, obviously influenced by the grand master. So thank you, Mr. Steig.