AT GOLDEN WEST COLLEGE : WORKS FROM FOSTER ART COLLECTION ON DISPLAY

Walter Foster didn’t set out to be an art collector. But when the Laguna Beach resident died in 1981, he left behind more than 400 paintings, drawings, etchings and sculptures accumulated during 60 years of publishing a popular and prolific line of how-to art books.

Few of the artists in the collection are famous, and some have been forgotten--even by Lyle Foster, who now runs the business that bears his grandfather’s name. But the collection embodies the Foster ideal in art: clean, colorful landscapes, seascapes, still lifes and portraits.

Now, for the first time, 34 works from Foster’s private collection have left the company’s Tustin office for a public exhibit (through Dec. 4) in the Fine Arts Gallery at Golden West College in Huntington Beach.

According to Golden West gallery director Carl Glassford, Foster’s stature as an early Orange County entrepreneur and as a prominent figure in the budding Laguna Beach art colony scene also gives the show a historical interest.

Foster began publishing his guides in the early ‘20s. In those days it was a one-man operation: Foster’s Laguna Beach home doubled as a printing plant, where he would etch his illustrations directly onto printing plates and personally print, collate, bind, package and distribute his books.

The business prospered and grew. In 1960, Foster Art Service opened its Tustin printing plant and office structure, a familiar sight to commuters on the Santa Ana Freeway. Today there are 150 active how-to titles in the Foster catalogue, selling about 3 million copies a year, according to Lyle Foster.

“They break art down to a very simple hand-eye exercise,” said Golden West gallery director Carl Glassford about the Walter Foster books, which teach beginning artists basic techniques on everything from drawing a human head to painting still lifes and cartooning.

An illustration instructor at the college, Glassford still has Foster books from his days as a beginning artist. “I still get them out and look at them,” he said.

The Walter Foster Collection is on display at the Golden West College Fine Arts Gallery, 15744 Golden West St. in Huntington Beach, through Dec. 4. Hours are Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.; also Tuesday and Wednesday, 6 to 8 p.m.