Ernest Hamlin Baker spends an average ten or 12 days doing a TIME cover--which he once described as "a graph of a New England conscience" (meaning his own). Characteristic of all our covers, which are researched and checked with as much fidelity as the accompanying cover stories, is the conscientious thought and careful attention to detail that goes into them.

Having recounted as much of the background and purpose of our covers last week as this space allows, I want to discuss this week some of the details of their production.

When one of our three cover artists arrives at Assistant Managing Editor Dana Tasker's office for his assignment, a selection of photographs of the cover subject are on hand, as well as biographical research and an up-to-date color guide (hair, eyes, eyebrows, complexion, etc.). With these initial tools at hand, the ensuing discussion is a joining and defining of the thoughts of editor and artist. The general objective is usually agreed on without much difficulty, but the exact method of achieving it--via a "photographic" or "interpretive" portrait, a symbolic or storytelling background, etc.--often takes considerable doing. Sometimes a rough sketch is worked out in Tasker's office; sometimes the artist spends a day or two putting the agreed ideas on paper.

Once the initial sketch is approved, however, the artist is on his own. Each of our three (Baker, Boris Artzybasheff and Boris Chaliapin) works differently toward the same end. Baker, for instance, spends hours examining the details of his subject's face before making a "cartoon" which is an "analysis" of it. By the time he is ready to paint (he uses tempera), he has completed the cover's interpretive background--"so that I know what the subject has to live up to." To Tasker's acute discomfiture, he is also likely to make minute changes right up to the engraver's deadline.

Although Baker has been accused of over-wrinkling his cover subjects, he claims that "those wrinkles didn't get there for nothing; each one means something in the development of the subject's personality." That may be one reason why he, along with Artzybasheff, does not like to do covers of women. Chaliapin, on the other hand, has no such inhibitions, and, as a result, has done most of TIME'S covers of women (Hedda Hopper, Princess Elizabeth, Deborah Kerr, et al.).

Each of these three artists makes his own special contribution to TIME'S covers. While Baker, generally speaking, typifies the solid reportorial aspects of TIME, Artzybasheff is by far the most imaginative of the three. Being a good journalist as well as a good artist, he invariably has suggestions to make on any given cover. The paper hat on Publisher McCormick's head, for instance, was his idea, although Chaliapin did the cover. The Veto Bug on the Gromyko cover is a practically perfect example of his restive mind. Artzybasheff (who paints in tempera and water colors) likes to read all available research in order to get hold of the story as well as the man. He finds this research invaluable in working out his interpretive backgrounds, of which he says: "They can become quite a Frankenstein after a while. There is a real trick to making their design timely and, at the same time, timeless."

Unlike his colleagues, Chaliapin works very swiftly (in water colors), averaging about three days per cover. Although his particular flair is for extemely lifelike photographic portraiture, he would prefer to paint from life and create impressions of his cover subjects rather than portray them in minute detail.

As far as TIME is concerned, working with Artzybasheff, Baker and Chaliapin has been a warm, stimulating, profitable experience, and our editors hope that these feelings are mutual. In helping us pioneer a new kind of journalistic portraiture, they have never balked at an assignment -- including these caricatures of themselves (see cuts}.

Cordially,

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