The Weekly Art of Diving - The Sky Shark Part Three

 

Look out for more from artist Keith Watson soon!

The Unaffiliated Art of Diving - Part Two

Today we'll look at some of the interior illustrations from Jeppesen's sport diver manual. These are all taken from the first edition.

The manual had four parts (the equipment, the diver, the environment, the dive) and each part was split into sections.

the equipment

the diver

the environment

the dive

The inside title page was updated for the third and fourth editions (this is from the fourth).

The Weekly Art of Diving - The Sky Shark Part Two

 

Don't miss the final instalment next Thursday!

The Unaffiliated Art of Diving - Part One

Publishers Jeppesen are best known for their aviation training materials but in 1975 they ventured into the world of scuba diving with their sport diver manual. They weren't affiliated to any dive training agency so one might imagine this book would have been rendered superfluous by the agencies' own materials. This was clearly not the case as by 1989 it had had twelve printings across four editions. The same cover artwork was used for all four editions with some variations to the title. The fifth edition in 1992 saw a switch to a photographic cover.

A workbook containing multiple-choice quizzes accompanied the manual:

There was also an advanced manual. Although there were at least two versions of this book, it seems as though they were both considered the first edition as the later volume with a photographic cover was labelled as the second edition. The copy seen here ties in with the fourth edition of the sport diver manual.

Here we can see that fourth edition where they've added Open Water to the title.

The advanced manual seen here, titled sport diver manual volume II, ties in with the third edition of the sport diver manual which had volume I added to the title.

In part two I'll showcase some of the art from inside the sport diver manual.

The Weekly Art of Diving - The Sky Shark Part One

The Sky Shark first appeared in The Topper in 1968/9 followed by two further runs in 1971 and 1974. It was also a regular fixture in The Topper Book from 1969 - 1973.

The first story tells how Professor Jeremy Thatcher, inventor of the flying submarine The Sky Shark, is recruited by DIE, the  Department of International Emergencies, along with his niece Jill and nephew John. Usually they find themselves up against  CLAW, the Criminal League Against the World, but in this final story from the third series the mystery frogmen are... well that would be telling!

The Topper was published "every Thursday" (in reality it would have been in the shops the previous Wednesday to the cover date) so that's how I'm going to present it.

The artwork is by Keith Watson. Look out for a forthcoming post for more on him.

Don't forget to come back next Thursday for part two!

The Guided Art of Diving

Last year I featured a couple of Shlomo Cohen's Red Sea guide books. He also produced a number of other guides for publishers Seapen and I've got three of them here. Like the Red Sea guides they feature colourful, striking covers. I particularly like the grouper on the Bahamas book.