Peter Bramley, first art director at National Lampoon; at 60

Peter Alan Bramley was still a student at the Massachusetts College of Art in the 1960s when he sold one of his early works. In the tradition of starving young artists, Mr. Bramley, instead of asking for money, traded it for free meals at Joe & Nemo's, the former hot dog emporium, in the West End.

Peopled with tiny Celtic and medieval figures, the large pen-and-ink drawing was titled ''The Castle," according to family accounts, and the owners of Joe & Nemo's fell in love with it.

''The Castle" may not have made Mr. Bramley famous, but his role as the first art director of the sophisticated and irreverent humor magazine the National Lampoon, in 1970, did. His time there was brief, but it was the highlight of his career. Mr. Bramley died of complications of pneumonia at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., on April 12. He was 60.

Mr. Bramley, who grew up in Braintree and drew sports cartoons for the Quincy Patriot Ledger as a boy, was art director for the National Lampoon's first six issues, before he and the magazine parted company, according to Scott Rubin, editor in chief of the magazine, which is now published on the Internet. Mr. Bramley's family said he later did freelance work for the magazine.

''Peter gave it a more alternative '60s look," Rubin said. Mr. Bramley was also involved with the spoofs the National Lampoon ran of newspapers and magazines. ''I think [founder] Matty [Simmons] felt, and rightly so, that the magazine had a limited appeal and wanted it to reach a greater audience," Rubin said. ''Though he didn't last through six issues, Peter did establish a graphic sensibility that would be built on by others for the next 35 years."

Mr. Bramley helped establish Cloud Studio in New York in 1967. It was an alternative-culture studio that combined an interest in comics and theater with commercial art and illustration. His comics earned the attention of the National Lampoon founders, who hired Bramley and his partner, Bill Skurski, in 1970 as art directors of the first few issues.

Simmons, who founded the magazine in 1970 and is now a Hollywood producer, recalled Mr. Bramley as ''very much a man of his times who dressed like a hippie in strange uniforms and far-out clothing. He was a very nice guy but a little too esoteric for us."

Mr. Bramley remained flamboyant in dress all his life. ''Peter was a very humorous person, very quick-witted," said his wife, Nano Riley. ''He wore a derby in winter and a straw hat in summer and painted designs on his canvas shoes. He always wore a moustache and a goatee."

One of five children, Mr. Bramley started drawing at an early age, said his sister Roberta Bramley-Hassett of West Yarmouth. ''Until he was punished, he'd be drawing on the walls of his bedroom," she said. He was 13 when the Patriot Ledger published his cartoons, she said, and when he graduated from Braintree High School, he knew his career would be in art.

One of the jobs Mr. Bramley had while in college was as night watchman at a Brookline residence for senior citizens. He roomed in shabby student quarters with Skurski, of Los Angeles and formerly of Salem. They would work together on many art projects.

As an artist, Mr. Bramley was multifaceted. He was a cartoonist, caricaturist, and muralist. His former wife, Florence (Duguid) Bramley Hill of Keyport, N.J., who married Mr. Bramley in 1966 as they were completing their courses at Massachusetts College of Art, said children's illustrations remained a constant in his life.

''In college, it became evident that Peter could master in a very short time any medium or subject that interested him," she said. ''This talent and the skills that support it remained evident throughout his life."

For much of his life, Hill said, Mr. Bramley created children's illustrations for himself and would do the more commercially lucrative book covers for clients, including covers for science fiction books. He designed the cover for Ray Bradbury's ''I Sing the Body Electric" and record covers and posters for musicians, she said.

In New York, according to his sister, Mr. Bramley's work was featured in several underground comic books of the period. She said he was instrumental in starting two national humor magazines, Apple Pie and Harpoon.

When Mr. Bramley moved to St. Petersburg in 1984, his art took a new turn, and he created whimsical and colorful public murals of Florida's flora and fauna that won him much notice and a beautification award from the city, Riley said. His painting of winged pigs on the ceiling of a local restaurant, Dave's, became a tourist attraction, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

In addition to his wife, former wife, and sister, Mr. Bramley leaves two sons, Gareth of Westminster, Md., and Lymond of Philadelphia; a brother, Steven D. of Sharon; and two granddaughters.

The family is planning a private service this summer to scatter his ashes off Cape Cod.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this obituary.