Crockett johnson biography youtube

Crockett Johnson October 20, — July 11, was the pen name of the American cartoonist and children's book illustrator David Johnson Leisk. He is best known for the comic strip Barnaby — and the Harold series of books, beginning with Harold and the Purple Crayon. From until his death Johnson created over a hundred paintings relating to mathematics and mathematical physics.

Eighty of these are found in the collections of the National Museum of American History. He explained his choice of pseudonym as follows: "Crockett is my childhood nickname. My real name is David Johnson Leisk. Leisk was too hard to pronounce -- so -- I am now Crockett Johnson! By the late s, Johnson was art editor at several McGraw-Hill trade publications.

In , he began his cartooning career by contributing to the Communist Party publication New Masses and subsequently joined the publication's staff, becoming its art editor and redesigning the magazine's layout. He remained with the magazine until and embarked on a career drawing comic strips in a series in Collier's magazine named "The Little Man with the Eyes".

In , he developed the Barnaby strip which would make him famous for the left-wing daily newspaper PM. The children's book Harold and the Purple Crayon was published in Johnson also collaborated on four children's books with his wife, Ruth Krauss.

Crockett johnson house

Johnson created his series of more than mathematical paintings inspired by geometric principles and mathematicians. Later, he began to construct using his own inventions. Most of Johnson's abstract images are painted with house paint on the rough side of a two-by-three foot piece of masonite, save those he enlarged to four-by-four, he explained in a letter.