Shadows

From an old book, Fun with a Pencil by Andrew Loomis, I learned how to create accurate shadows for invented scenes without photo reference. I teach the technique in one of my illustration classes, sometimes to the chagrin of students who try to make it way more complicated than it is.

I used the system in this early illustration for a magazine article on private chess clubs in New York City. Above each table is its own light source. The sconces on the wall woudn't provide enough light to interfere with the lights above the chessboards.

I've used this method a lot, but not all the time. As I tell the students, it's good to know it even if one doesn't use it.

The lesson

There is one in this somewhere, I'm sure.

Sea Change

Who doesn't feel this way sometimes these days.

Lady Gaga

I see Lady Gaga as a combination of Madonna and David Bowie. While her music is not really my taste, a little too "pop"/dance (the latter of which I do very badly, so I don't do it at all), I do like "Bad Romance". Even that song would have probably never been heard by me but for the gym I sometimes visit, with its top 40 radio station blasting, about twenty minutes apart, that and every Ke$ha, Katy Perry, etc. sound to make the airwaves.
But my preferences aside, in interviews she makes references to her "little monsters", fans who feel outcast, uncool, nerdy, all those things which, if one is considered such, makes adolescence much more difficult than most adults realize or remember. So I have to admire her for reaching out to that demographic and giving them a feeling of acceptance.
Her stands taken in favor of gay marriage and the humane treatment of animals, while maybe not that radical or surprising, still show an interest in more than just draining cash from the pop music trough. So here's a little tribute for Lady Gaga, and another sample for the "Neo-Retro" style for me.

Roger Hane

Artist Roger Hane's work exemplified the look of mass media art in the early 1970s. His career and life were tragically cut short by a stupid, senseless murder committed by juveniles bent on stealing Mr. Hane's bicycle during a ride through Central Park in 1974.
His work was among my earliest influences as an art school student. His cover art for Carlos Castaneda's Ixtlan and C.S. Lewis' Tales of Narnia books were poured over like holy texts, every detail studied and marveled at.
Vanguard Productions, the publishing empire headed by my buddy J. David Spurlock, has published Roger Hane: Art, Life and Tragedy, a review of Mr. Hane's work and a fine selection of his paintings. It is available at the Vanguard web site and on Amazon.com.

A Separate Reality, by Carlos Castaneda, featured one of Roger Hane's signature paintings. Today it's surrealistic imagery may seem tired and trite, but Mr. Hane was among the first mass media artists to adopt the language of surrealism into popular art.

I have to confess I have never read a word of the Narnia series. I bought all of the books only for the cover art.

This piece was commissioned by DeBeers in the early 1970s.

Harvest Moon

A true "harvest moon" appears when the full moon rises in Autumn at about the same time the sun sets, providing some light for farmers to continue their work. The perspective of the moon when it rises, surrounded by building and trees, rather than the open sky when it's higher, and atmospheric conditions give it a large, orange color, like a giant pumpkin.

State Fair of Texas

The State Fair is a great yearly tradition in Texas. Located at the Art Deco Fair Park in East Dallas, the grounds were the site of the Texas Centennial celebration in 1936. Every October a new round of exhibits, concerts, wild food (besides the requisite Fletcher's Corny Dog, every year's "menu" features a fried version of something, such as beer, butter, Coke, ice cream, etc.), livestock shows, games and rides dominate the local population for three weeks.
In the past I've been commissioned to provide images for the Fair in a couple of different contexts. Here they are, with an oldie from my art school days.

Below was an illustration for Texas Monthly magazine, depicted the iconic figure of the Fair, Big Tex. He's a 52 feet tall statue that speaks to fairgoers in an appropriately big, booming voice. I concentrated on his head in this image, particularly on one feature, which has always intrigued me: his ventriloquist dummy style lower jaw that permits him to tell everybody about the latest happenings.

This one appeared in the Dallas Morning News. I wanted to take a different point of view on the Fair, celebrating an element that often gets overlooked. The livestock shows happen at the beginning of the fair. 4-H, FFA and professional livestock handlers compete in different venues for prizes and recognition. The winning animals are sometimes sold for tens of thousands of dollars, kicking off college funds for their proud owners.
In high school my farmer/rancher dad insisted I take part in FFA (Future Farmers of America; which did not at all apply in my case) and raise a show calf in all four of my high school years. This piece was based on an actual photo of my poor skinny self with my massive first show calf. I won't be reproducing that pic here.
The often distinctive patterns on calves inspired this big guy's Texas flag motif.

Finally, I created this piece for an illustration class at East Texas State University (now Texas A&M Commerce). The great Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame member Jack Unruh was the instructor.
The collage media was a departure for me, and something of an experiment. The piece went on to win First Place in its Illustration category at the Dallas Society of Visual Communications Student Show in 1977.

Peaceable Kingdom, for now.

This is another "Neo-Retro" style sample. One of these days this will lead to something. I keep telling myself that, anyway. (Click the image to see it a little bigger.)

The idea originated with a logo (see below) I designed for my high school alma mater's alumni association. The school mascot is the Bulldog, and the Association wanted the dog to be a part of the design. It's simple and gets the job done.

I liked the drawing, so I decided to adapt it to another piece. The idea of a stack of supposedly at-odds animals came to mind, so I added the cat (which is either yawning or laughing, I don't know which) and the bird. I was going to incorporate an insect of some kind, to continue the food chain, or at least adversary, theme. I decided a pteradactyl gave the image an edge or oddity or something it needed.

Summer

Still working on the "Neo-Retro" illustration style, in this case an attempt to make it a bit cleaner and more "commercial", if I may make such a confession. But it is illustration, after all, and illustration exists in a commercial universe.
The background is a mix of watercolor and photographic collage elements. For example, the rim of the swimming pool is a photograph of a concrete surface.
One might think the young lady enjoying the pool (and yes, if you see a resemblance to Roy Lichtenstein's "Girl with a Ball", there may be one) is a little on the pale side, especially for such an obviously ardent Sun worshipper. Her whiteness balances the great expanse of white at the top of the image.

Altpick.com "Member Focus"

Today my Neo-Retro illustration style is the "Member Focus of the Day" on altpick.com as of Wednesday, May 5. Altpick is an illustration portfolio site and the "Member of the Day" gets his/her work showcased on the banner of the site's home page, with a link to the member portfolio page.
This was a nice and unexpected surprise. Here's what it looks like, for anyone who doesn't see it live, since someone else will be the Member of the Day tomorrow.

Illustration Friday - "Ahead"

Instead of just "Ahead" let's do lots of heads.

Illustration Friday - "Rescue"

Illustration Friday - "Brave"

"Brave" is today's "Illustration Friday" topic.

Sounds good to me, Mr. President.

I would just ask that you go forward, not pull back, just as you demanded of the Congress tonight. Yes, you can. Most of us want to and will do whatever we can to help you.

And after watching your meeting with the Republican Caucus on Friday the 28th, I want to add "Well done, Mr. President". That needs to happen more often.

Welcome to the Corporatocracy.

The Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" gives corporations free rein to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence political elections and legislation. It makes corporations persons, just like you and me. Except that you and I don't have billions of dollars to buy politicians with.

Blast from the past

Cover art for Taito video game, "Kiwi Kraze".

Today I received an e-mail asking about buying the original of this illustration for a video game package. Unfortunately I don't have the original, one of the few I don't have. It was commissioned twenty years ago. An interesting sidelight (I hope) is that I was chosen as illustrator for this project based on another piece, pictured below, which I had done for "Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine" a few years prior.

While I'm glad to have been considered and chosen for the job (and I knew/know I could pull off such a project), I've always been baffled at how the connection was made from looking at the magazine piece, obviously a moody, low-keyed color, fairly quiet "mystery" thing, to the loud, energetic, cartoon-based cover of the game. There are birds in both examples, I guess.

"The Owl in the Oaks", cover of "Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine".

There have been other times when this vision isn't apparent with the decision-makers. Often an artist may have an image of an apple in an illustration portfolio, and be asked straight-faced, "But how do we know you can draw or paint bananas?" I'm glad the people commissioning this illustration weren't so myopic.

White Christmas

It snowed in Dallas, Texas on Christmas Eve for the first time since 1926, certainly the first time in my lifetime. The snow remained Christmas morning, but had melted away by the afternoon. Still it was a pretty cool event.
A few years ago I had been commissioned by the Dallas Morning News to create an image for their Christmas Day issue, based on what would happen if it did snow on Christmas Eve. Obviously that wasn't such a far fetched possibility, since it has snowed as early as Thanksgiving some years and we usually get winter storms in January, but the odds of a snowstorm of any significance on December 24 itself were not that high. In this case the temperature had reached the high 70s on Wednesday the 23rd. Snow the next day is what we call "Texas weather".
Above is the piece I created for the Morning News. Who knew it would be prophetic?
I hope everyone reading this had a great holiday (whichever it may have been) and will have a much improved 2010.

Happy holidays

This was commissioned last year by the Dallas Morning News for their Christmas Day issue. The Flying Red Horse is the unofficial symbol of Dallas, mainly because it adorns the top of what once was the tallest building in the area, and its neon shape could be seen from miles away.
In some circles there is a lot of sensitivity about the use of the term "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas" as a greeting but the fact is the association of holidays at this time of year originated before the birth of Christ. Winter Solstice has been celebrated since Man first realized the sun would return after the darkest and longest night of the year. The Romans celebrated the feast of Saturnalia and the early Christians attached their celebration of Jesus' birth to that festival in order to discretely observe their preferred event without being fed to lions more regularly than they already were.
Of course Hannukkah predates Jesus' birth by a century and a half, and Kwanzaa, created in 1966, is observed in the African American community in honor of family, community, and culture.
Anybody reading this probably knows all of this, and the point is all of the nonsense about a "media war on Christmas" and whether or not a decorated indoor tree (the concept of which dates back to the Druids) is called a "Christmas tree" or a "holiday tree" or any of the rest of the manufactured controversies and victimhoods we read and hear about are irrelevant to a time of year everyone can find something to appreciate and celebrate. So do it, already.

Illustration Friday - "Music"

Too soon?

Illustration Friday - "Infinite"

Back to "Illustration Friday", with this week's theme of "Infinite". The great illustrator Don Ivan Punchatz has had an infinite influence and inspiration on many of us in our artistic endeavors.