Hip deep in a 1950s aesthetic drunk on smooth contours and polished palettes is the art of Brian Clarke, an illustrator whose lines informed much of the late '90s to the early Naughts. With a body of work that includes images for the Washington Post and Diesel Clothing, indoctrinating countless Junior High pop-punks with his iconic album art for Fat Wreck's long-runnning parody, Fat Music for Fat People ('sup grade 9?), and finishing a graphic novel written by director/screenwriter Adam Rifkin (Detroit Rock City), you'd be forgiven for thinking the 46 year-old Bay Area illustrator would choose to rest on his laurels.

Not a chance. Under the psuedonum of Les Toil, Clarke has devoted all his free time to his Toil Girls, an internationally renowned project focused exclusively on redefining average women—from overweight housewives to plus-size adult stars—into commanding plump pin-ups that echo the bawdy work of Vargas, Petty, and Coop.

Toil took a break from his piling commissions, discussing via email just why he prefers his art XL.

What do you find so appealing about the plump female form?
The full robustness of a larger woman. When a woman has extra pounds on her, where does she begin showing that extra weight? In her thighs, her breasts, her hips, her waist, her buttocks. What are the body parts that are distinctly female? Her breasts, thighs, hips, and buttocks. I guess that’s why I’ve always been amazed to see so many so-called heterosexual men go ga-ga over rail-thin women. Those feminine body parts are the first things to disappear when a woman shrinks herself to super-model proportions. I want a shapely goddess, not a school boy.

What sort of training prepared you for this?
I guess I began to aesthetically educate myself by tracing the covers of comic books. I started off tracing over cartoony-type comic book covers like Bugs Bunny and Dennis the Menace. And then I “graduated” to more realistic material such as super-heroes. I particularly loved Marvel Comics and the artists that drew Captain America, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man.

I took as many art classes as I was allowed to take in high school, and from there I ended up in art school where I guess the formal training began. I attended the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland and graduated from the San Francisco Academy of Art as an Commercial Illustration major.

What inspired you to start taking commissions, to create the Toil Girls project?
Way back in the mid to late 1990s, I wanted to impress this particular lovely plus-size model I came upon online with my art skills. I did her portrait in a classic pin-up style and she apparently enjoyed it so much she wanted to show her online friends, many of which were also big girls. A few of them offered to pay me to do their portrait and I ended up creating as many portraits as I could between my commercial art assignments (at the time I was paying my bills by taking on such commercial art assignments as illustrating magazine articles, book covers, box art for action figures, production art for movies, tons of CD covers for bands, concert posters, etc.).

I also began doing plus-size pin-up art for a popular sexy website at that time (circa 1997) called Billy Bob’s Cyber Shack. It wasn’t an x-rated site as much as it was a place where attractive big women could feel like pin-up queens just like their thin counterparts and display photos of themselves in saucy clothes. Billy Bob started a 'Big Beautiful Babe of The Month' feature on his site and the lovely lady chosen for that month would have her portrait drawn by me. I suppose that site was where my national exposure began. That exposure was definitely on a small select fringe level catering to us guys that go crazy over plus-size women, but I soon discovered that that crowd held impressive numbers not only nation wide but across the world. By the time Billy Bob’s site came to a gradual demise, I was getting quite a few more email inquiries from women interested in having their portraits done in that classic cheesecake pin-up style.

After I created my first website/pin-up gallery, there seemed to be an interest of sorts in being in that gallery. The term 'Toil Girl' was something I naturally had to steal from pin-up master George Petty and his Petty Girls as well as from Alberto Vargas and his Vargas Girls. Nothing original about the term Toil Girl but it turned into a title that held a measure of status among some BBW. I’d like to think the attitude of becoming a Toil Girl is as fun as my approach to creating their portraits. I take tremendous pleasure in collaborating with the client during the creative process, as the concept of each portrait typically comes from the client herself. If they don’t have a clue of where to begin, I’ll have them send me a quick little write-up about their likes and interests and that usually proves to be the impetus I can draw from. The part of the process I take seriously is my ability to render their likeness as true and as beautifully as I can, and to convey their spirit as best as I can based upon my exchange with them and the personal information they’ve given. I realized this was something I wouldn’t mind doing for a long time. 

Your pin-ups are stylistically different from the rest of your illustration work. How do you approach a Toil Girl?
I think I approach my Toil Assignments the same as my other art jobs. I strive for perfection. As corny as it may sound, I draw upon the spirit and dilligence of the pin-up masters the same way I try to channel the enthusiasm of all the other past artists I worship. Something that I know many artists do is, they’ll monitor how their art is progressing and they’ll ask themselves, is this painting as good as a Maxfield Parrish? Would Jack Kirby be satisfied with how this composition is developing? I do the same thing with pretty much anything I commit to paper.

But you also mentioned style. I used to render my art with traditional oil paint like many commercial artists of the past but that proved to be too expensive and way too time-consuming during this turbulent economy, so pen and ink and digital coloring is mainly how I do my art. If time allows, I’ll do an assignment with paint and canvas. But yes, my style is definitely different now than it was, say, ten years ago, mainly due to the medium I’m working with now.

There's a 50s aesthetic that works wonderfully with both your pin-ups and your more serious illustration. How did you develop this style?
By mimicking the work of the great artists of the golden era of illustration. Of course, in my feeble attempt to achieve what they’ve achieved, what comes forth is my own distinct style, and I guess that’s not ultra modern.

But larger women are almost exclusively rendered as anachronisms. What is it about past time periods that work so well to define them?
Hmmmm....I don’t really know. Personally, I always think big girls are a great subject matter for goddess art due to their mammoth proportions and larger-than-life stature. But there’s no denying they just fit well in the Bettie Page and Rockabilly genre of art and photography.

Are there any particular women you've wanted to render?
That’s a tough one to answer because if you’re referring to well-known women, then I’d have to say no. There’s just not that many plus-size celebs that don’t hate their bodies, and the full-figured ones that don’t hate their bodies know it’s practically career suicide to stand up against a fat-hating society and entertainment industry. And I’d be afraid to approach most fat celebrities because by the time I would've created their portrait they might be sporting their latest NutraSlim body and want nothing to do with a full-figured image of themselves.

Everyone always tells me I need to get in touch with comedienne Mo'Nique about doing her portrait. I’ve admired most of the work she’s done in the entertainment field. There’s that new movie, Precious (2009), where Mo'Nique plays the mother of a large teen who has a destroyed sense of self-worth. From what I’ve seen, its pretty powerful and, interestingly enough, Mo'Nique’s character looks as if she’s the one mainly responsible for the erosion of her daughter’s character. It seems like the kind of role that was either difficult for Mo'Nique to play, or really easy. As an icon of large pride, I’m sure she’s endured quite a bit or rough terrain throughout her life. I’m assuming she’ll soon be recognized as a dramatic acting force to be reckoned with. Let’s just hope she won’t be thirty pounds lighter when she goes onstage to receive her Oscar.

Side projects tend towards catharsis. Is there a specific enjoyment you derive from the Toil Girls?
Most artist wants to believe his or her art transcends from being just a pretty image on a canvas or from being just an attractively-shaped piece of clay. They want to believe their work has made a positive and definite difference to the world. Aside from the narcissistic urge to have my art seen by as many people as possible, I can’t help but to look at the legacy of such people as Martin Luther King, John Muir, and Ghandi that wanted to make the earth a better place for all, and attempt in even the smallest way to make the inhabitants of this planet smile or think in positive terms about those that they may have once ridiculed. And there’s also that strong interest to continue the tradition of a fantastic art form, but to do so in a more open-minded way that no longer restricts the subject matter to one particular size, shape, color or age. But in all honesty, I really, really, just like drawing big, sexy women.

You've collaborated with screenwriter/director Adam Rifkin on a variety of film and TV projects...
In all of his movies, Adam has to include the Blump’s lady. She’s like the Betty Crocker of Blump’s Foods, and often he’ll have me do a new ad or two for each movie. He asked me to design a Blump’s Burgers fast food restaurant for his movie Detroit Rock City (1999). With his TV projects, he’s had me create elaborate illustrations to help sell a project to certain major TV companies. I had great fun doing these cheesy horror movie posters that were used in the background on a children’s show Adam helped to create called Bone Chillers (1996) for ABC TV. Some of the mock movie posters were 'Zombo the Killer Clown,' 'Eyeballs The Robot Meets The Ghoul' (Eyeballs later became one of the four protagonists in our graphic novel Shmobots). Oh, and 'Mummies From Venus.'

How did you begin working with Adam Rifkin, especially on the booze downing Shmobots (Boom Studios)?
Adam had seen an illustration I did for the cover of a movie-appreciation magazine called Film Threat. It was back in 1986 during the ‘zine era when angry young men and women took on the big industries and satirized them in print.

I did this elaborate painting of singer Karen Carpenter feeding her dinner plate to her dog (she died of anorexia). It was a harsh bit of parody that I’m not necessarilly proud of, but it caught the young screenwriter Adam’s attention and he contacted me through the publisher, Chris Gore, about doing a bunch of crazy art for his movie The Dark Backward (1991). He had me create about sixty pieces of art for a fake food company in the future called Blump’s. I still to this day get emails from fans of The Dark Backward asking if I’m the Blump’s artist.

It’s an extremely twisted and great movie. Interestingly enough, there’s an orgy scene featuring two massive porn actresses weighing about 350 pounds each. There’s another movie Adam wrote and directed called Denial (1998) where he, himself, played an 'FA' or Fat Admirer, so I can’t help but  entertain the idea that there’s some part of Adam that may appreciated the female form at its fullest!

And hey, Rob Lowe, Wayne Newton, James Caan and Judd Nelson are the stars of The Dark Backward! Those actors will either never forget their participation in that film or they’re trying their best to forget their participation in it! But yes, I’ve been working with Adam in one capacity or another in many of his cinematic projects since then. So now it’s graphic novels. I guess it was inevitable he’d send a couple of his screenplays and ask me to turn them into illustrated books.

With so much keeping you busy, is there a project you'd kill to work on?
I would love to just paint again. Paint whatever I want and not have to worry about deadlines and how appetizing the product I’m hired to illustrate is. As much as I love creating Toil portraits, there’s still that great effort to make sure the woman in the art looks like the woman who hired me—or at least render her in a way that satisfies her. It’s fun work but often I dream of just getting out the old oil paints and painting whatever’s in my head at that time and answering to no one. No doubt we all have that dream, don’t we?

Will you ever retire the pen to focus on other projects—magazines, film—or is it larger ladies for life?
Hopefully for life! I enjoy this way too much. Even if people lose their taste for my big girl art or a more talented artist blows me out of the water I’ll definitely continue having a great time rendering the ample female figure. The “rush” I get from reading a testimonial from a Toil Girl client about how her portrait sincerely touched her and made a positive addition to her life is a feeling I’ll want to know for as long as I can.

Pot smoking robots or plush women?
Definitely the women. Robots are typically void of curves.