Covering the Beer Revolution

Sometimes work finds you. Usually when you already have more then enough to do. I was in just that state of heightened activity when my old friend, Jeff Maisey, owner/publisher of VEER Magazine approached me to create an illustration of George Washington raising a pint for the May issue. "When do you need it?" I asked him. "I don't need it until May second. That gives you plenty of time". "I'm leaving for Scotland on April twenty-fifth, so I'll have to have it to you by the twenty-fourth". And so it began.

Jeff's idea to have Washington raising a pint came from another venture of his, a new web site promoting Virginia Craft Beer, and with Virginia being strong in the "Founding Father's" department and George being such a recognizable figure, it was a natural. I decided to take a pop art approach to the piece, with bold colors, heavy lines and starburst background. Jeff approved my concept and I was off and drawing. I only had to reach into my pocket and pull out a dollar bill to use as reference for my portrait. I also served as my own hand model and used the camera built-in to my laptop to shoot a few images of my hand holding a pint glass.

I decided the final work would be done as a vector image in Adobe Illustrator, so that I would have maximum flexibility with color and scalability. I scanned in my drawings, George and the hand holding the pint were separate pieces and placed them in my Illustrator document. I tried the auto-trace feature on my scans, but my first drawings of George were too rough and I couldn't get the look I had in mind, so I created a larger, cleaner drawing of George (shown above) by doing a quick tracing over a blown-up image from the dollar bill and finishing details by hand. This image yielded better results with the auto-trace. I cleaned-up any unwanted artifacts and modeled the mouth into a smirk. All the coloring was done on separate layers above and below the outlines using the paintbrush tool controlled via mouse (next time I'll have a Wacom tablet). I finished the illo with the starburst background and sign plate with the tagline, "a revolution is brewing" and delivered my files via dropbox. In the final printed version, they added the Virginia Craft Beer title. The printed issue is available in the Tidewater region of coastal Virginia through the month of May.

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The Little Sketchbook

My last post was about a drawing that was the final drawing in this little sketchbook. The first drawing was done August of 2008 and was a study of an Egon Schiele painting. The last was the sketch I did of the Oscar Kokoschka sculpture , "Self-Portrait as a Warrior" in January of 2013. It took me four and a half years to complete this little book. It's dog-earred and heavy with ink now and I'm glad to reflect on the journey that it documents. This little visual journal has helped me reconnect with making art and though it has been a slow process, it's been worth the time. Part of the effort was regaining confidence in my ability to create art that has some value and meaning to me. Another part has been to spend time gazing with loving intent at art objects that inspire me, in this case primitive art. There's an unself-consciousness to primitive art that I envy and admire. The fierce, powerful shapes hold a magic that I don't often recognize in contemporary art. I hope by inscribing them again with hand and eye, that I might invoke some of their mystery.

The first drawing that I posted from this book was a portrait of Luis Buñuel. I drew him because I love his quote, "Thank God I'm an atheist". Some other drawings that I posted from this book included; a portrait of the surrealist Oscar Dominguez, an Edgar Allen Poe, an African Akan sculpture, another African mask, this time from Basonge, Zaire,  and a Mexican primitive piece, Tlaloc, the God of Rain. There were other posts from this book. If you click the "art" tag it will sort out some of them.

Now I need pick a new sketchbook to start on. This time I think I'm going to go larger.

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The Expressionist-Beatnik Connection

My latest drawing is of a sculpture by the Austrian Expressionist artist, Oscar Kokoschka titled, "Self-Portrait as a Warrior". It currently resides in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. I chose to draw this piece for several reasons.

First, I love the shape and power and emotion of this sculpture. Even though it's suppose to be a "Warrior", rather than looking fierce, I think he looks frightened. The second photo is of the original work (Courtesy of a blog called "Tall Tales From the Traveling Thornberries"). The second reason I picked it was it reminded me of the  underground comix artist Mark Marek who did a book called Hercules amongst the North Americans. The third and finally motivation was I think there is more then a passing resemblance to Jack Kerouac's running mate, Neil Cassidy; hence the "Beatnik Connection".

The coincidence is a bit uncanny as Kokoschka's sculpture was done decades before Cassidy was even born. Beat writing certainly have an expressionist feel.

This drawing finally completes a sketchbook that I've been working in for way too long. Here's the full shot of the drawing.

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I'm a Monkey, baby!

I saw this monkey mask at an exhibition at The Charles H. Taylor Art Center in Hampton, Va and took a picture. It's a simple, decorative piece, not a "real", "danced" mask. Even so, I like the clean shape of the face and the hair lines and the button eyes. I forgot to record any information about where this mask came from or who made it, so I did a web search for "African Monkey Masks" and I found that this is likely to be a mass produced mask from Indonesia. That's alright, it's still a cool looking mask and I enjoyed drawing it.

OK HW