Cashmere Bouquet - The smell of love.

Time's a little short today, so this'll be a quickie. Cashmere Bouquet is pushing hard for the "You'll be beating the men off with a stick!" angle in this ad. It's a pretty easy way to move some product - promising women the dream of eternally smelling poofy, and that poofiness drawing the attention of golden-hearted Ken dolls of questionable sexuality.

Fantastic painting though. The loose-but-gorgeous brushwork reminds me of Gil Elvgren, though there were a number of pinup artists who painted in a similar style. There's no signature on the piece, so we can only guess who did it. If you zoom in a little bit to the clothes or flowers, you can see bristle marks and brush strokes plainly. But, the faces are handled a little more carefully , as they're the focal point. The artist still displays the "paintedness" even in the faces. This is the mark of masterful rendering, and it's not easy to get that balance of looseness with realism. Then there's the use of the characters' arms to guide your attention around the composition. Click through to a huge saveable version.

If you like this kind of stuff, there's a Gil Elvgren book published by Taschen that you can get for about ten dollars, which is a steal. Full color plates all the way through. I just picked it up a week ago. It's brilliant reference for anybody who may need to draw or paint some idealized women.