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OCALA, Fla., May 19, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- The Florida artist who drew the iconic Coppertone girl losing her swimsuit to a feisty cocker spaniel has died at the age of 88.
Joyce Ballantyne Brand, who died Monday at her Ocala, Fla., home, had recently suffered a heart attack, said her daughter Cheri Brand Irwin.
It was daughter Cheri, 3 years old in 1959, whom Brand drew as the pig-tailed Coppertone girl. Brand used a Bronxville, N.Y., neighbor's cocker spaniel as the model of the dog tugging on the bottom half of the little girl's swimsuit, The Los Angeles Times said Friday.
Born in 1918 in Norfolk, Neb., and raised in Omaha, Brand attended the University of Nebraska and the American Academy of Art in Chicago. By age 25 she was drawing for Rand McNally and painting murals for movie theaters. During World War II, she drew for a pinup studio.
Brand said she was paid $2,500 for the Coppertone girl and dog, equivalent to about $17,000 today -- and $2,000 more when she had to re-create them after the originals were destroyed in a fire.
In the mid-1970s, Brand moved to Ocala with her second husband, Jack Brand, a TV executive who died in the 1980s. Her first marriage ended in divorce.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
