Recording “Home”
I don’t do a lot of pro bono work (I should probably do more) but this cause and the people involved really resonated with me. its a CD cover for the “Make A Noise” EP, designed to promote the Tar Sands action participants and 350.org’s “Climate Impact Day”. The disc and its artists will be featured at the Sustainable Brands conference in San Diego in June… sponsored by 1% for the planet.
I’m really pleased with how this turned out. The screen print feel, the fact that it kind of blends illustration and graphic design (I love really both disciplines a lot, for different reasons), and something about the drawing of the boy. The drawings are loose and light and the whole process was very unfussy. Thanks to Gar and Sue for letting me run my own way on this…
Wow…. 5 weeks since my last post! Time really flies with three kids now. That being said, this one is from a number of years back, particularly more poignant for me now that I have daughters. This is another straight to the page drawing… was very happy with it at the time and still am. enjoy.
I’ve been very busy with newborn twin girls and a new business venture, so it’s been difficult to find the time to get something down. But found a hour today, found some photos that sparked an idea and got something down.
So, some transparency here… while this was a straight-to-the-page drawing, I choked on the third character (see below). I drew the head too small, placement wasn’t right…. as is always the danger when not sketching something out before hand (even a little). Now, I probably should have just gone for it and let the quirkiness be what it is, but I was REALLY digging what I had so far and I got vain.
The second image is the third character drawn individually and the first image is the final.
Related to this, I was listening to an NPR interview with my old friend Barry Blitt who was talking about his process and how he draws things over and over until he’s pleased with the nuance of the result. That’s pretty similar to how I like to work (particularly on personal stuff) but in his case, he has not embraced the computer. I on the other hand, have. So do I love the control? Yeah. Is it an crutch? Sometimes, yeah, no doubt. So I don’t know, there’s a part of me that wants to redo this 8 times until I get it right. and then there’s the part of me that embraces the control of the machine. and then there’s the part of me that blames it on my lack of free time. guilt/acceptance/guilt/acceptance/etc….
Regardless, I like it. Hope you do too.
As promised, here’s the next progression of “HOME”… added drums a few weeks back. Was interesting that during the session the arrangement of the song evolved… I added a break near the end of the tune that I wouldn’t of though to have in there until I heard the drum parts. There’s also a nice bluegrass/dance beat thing happening that was unexpected. Anyhow, still a lot of gibberish, but its coming along.
Found this one while video conferencing with a friend who recently moved to Toronto. He was giving me an art tour of his new residence when he paned past this drawing I’d given him about 6 years ago. This was based on some photos he’d taken from Comic Con of a bunch of Harry Potter fanatics taking a breather. I told him how I regretted not scanning the piece…. turns out I did.
BTW, my twins girls were born last week (!), so bit of delay between posts. More to come this week….
So, as I’ve mentioned earlier, I love drawing with a brush straight to the page. Meaning, no under sketch, no thumbnails before hand, just ink to paper and go. I love this approach because its very honest… it forces me to deal with my own lines, point of view of the moment, state of mind at that particular moment, and the results are often unpredictable but general something fun and interesting or creative or thoughtful comes from it. And then sometimes the drawing is HORRIBLE.
But this isn’t necessarily one of those times.
About 12 years ago I got commissioned to do a portrait of Muddy Waters for Guitar World Magazine, as part of a monthly series of blues musician portraits and bios called “The Axe Museum”. Dream gig… really.
Generally, I DO NOT use the “draw right onto the page” move for paid jobs because it tends to be so unpredictable, but for all of these pieces I did. If I didn’t like the first one, I do another, and basically draw until I got something I liked. And sometimes, when I had what I needed, I’d keep going for fun, often times pushing a design idea until it was exhausted.
The color piece to the left is the drawing that got finished and published (and its probably my favorite published piece from the last 18 years). The B+W drawing was one of the other ones that I did that didn’t make the cut. I always loved this particular drawing, but it was a bit too kooky for the series.
No one’s ever seen it til now. It’s one of those drawings that reminds me how much I love making pictures. Hope you like it.
The DeKooning drawing is bothering me. So here’s one I like… portrait of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
whew. Feel better now.
So, been waiting all day to lay down this De Kooning portrait. I’d found this fantastic photo of him that has great intensity and its been sitting on my desk for the last week and I finally decided to sit and make something.
And then I realize I’m out of ink. like, REALLY?!?! yeah, really. This has actually never happened to me before… ever.
I did happen to have this gigantic bottle of Higgins ink lying around but I remembered that for some reason, this batch of ink was very thin, giving me very watery lines when I tried to draw. Even more frustrating… I have this big bottle of crappy ink taunting me with its bigness and mishapeness and uselessness…
So I figured that was it for the night, until I remembered these two batches of Dr. PH Martins dyes that having been following me from studio to studio to studio to studio for the last 20 years. Seriously, I haven’t opened one of these since I was probably in high school. Not sure how they’ve lasted this long but I always loved the richness of the color and there’s nostalgia for me for these little bottles. Not even sure if they still make them.
They still make them. I looked it up on the interweb.
I REALLY wanted to draw, so I took out a couple colors, mixed em up into a brownish greenish tone that was sufficiently dark enough, and started to draw. And I started really liking the results….!
But, the drawing was not coming out great. so I took another pass…
about half way through, I ran out of ink, grabbed another dye and mixed it in, and low and behold, it turned out it was a strong bottle of black.
The results? Not sure I love the drawing, but there’s something fun about the two colors and there’s an intensity to the eyes and the lines in places.
Hmmmm. Now I’m not sure I like it. Maybe I’ll like it tomorrow.
Ugh, here you go.
Sketching…
