The foundation of a great painting is a solid drawing. At least that was my goal when I worked on this book cover illustration for Orison Books. The collage features a firewheel — sometimes called Indian blanket — blossom, shotgun shell and expansive Texas landscape.
![DSCN3395[sqr-tilt-dallas]](https://coffeehousejunkie.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/dscn3395sqr-tilt-dallas.jpg?w=840&h=840)
Nearly completed pen and ink work on the cover.
![DSCN3390[sqr--dallas]](https://coffeehousejunkie.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/dscn3390sqr-dallas.jpg?w=840&h=840)
Detail of the firewheel flower blossom.
The purpose of thumbnail sketches is to advance the concept of artist, art director and editor to a final product. It seems like a lot of busy work, but three elements are essential: brainstorming, mind-mapping and closing the gap. The following images illustrate the process of thumbnail sketches as it relates to a book cover illustration. ![DSCN3558[sqr-tilt]](https://coffeehousejunkie.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dscn3558sqr-tilt.jpg?w=840&h=840)
Three thumbnail cover comps presented to the publisher a couple months back. ![DSCN3560[sqr-tilt]](https://coffeehousejunkie.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dscn3560sqr-tilt.jpg?w=840&h=840)
Full-size book cover sketch to gauge color temperature and composition of elements.
![DSCN3405[...]](https://coffeehousejunkie.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/dscn3405.jpg?w=840&h=840)
The challenge with working outdoors is no internet connectivity and barely a mobile device signal. It makes checking emails and updating social media status and blog posts nearly impossible. But, really, the technological detox is quite rewarding.
The contract job orders are nearly complete. Word of mouth has lined up another job in the… well… I cannot really disclose the location at this point. But I will say that the red and white oak trees provide wonderful shade and an orchestra of bird song. Or is a symphony of bird song?
The office. Outdoors. Clear skies. For the last couple weeks I’ve been contracted to paint… well, I cannot disclose what I paint at this point. Not where. But it is a beautiful day to paint some art.
Last Friday night. Using natural light, I worked on an illustration until sunset. Without a formal art studio, the best place to draw with pen and ink and to paint with watercolor is at the east window. As the time grows close to the longest day of the year, this allowed for more time spent doing art work. But when the light fades it is time to switch tasks and clean brushes and pens.
A challenge motivates me to think of solutions. In this case, the challenge was inspired by a reader of this blog who commented: “It would be lovely to cover a little box with beautiful words…” Great idea!
After a couple concepts and a couple drafts of what I hope are “beautiful words” here is a custom origami box of poetry. The reward is to watch the user/reader pick up the box and decipher the order of the poem.
“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
Gustave Flaubert (via absynthe-words)
“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”
Leo Tolstoy (via subcreation)
After a very long hiatus, “Strange Familiar Place” will be back in print. Or at least it will be in a very limited capacity. More details on that later.
The creative non-fiction comic “Strange Familiar Place” first appeared in The Indie. Inspired by the works of Harvey Pekar, Jessica Abel, and Eddie Campbell, I wrote and illustrated “Strange Familiar Place.” Eventually I collaborated with illustrator and comic book artist James E. Lyle on six comic strips.
Comic Stroll, a publication of the local chapter of the National Cartoonist Society, will feature that collection of previously unpublished comic strips. Read the evolution of what started as a couple drawings and became a creative non-fiction comic:
More details about Comic Stroll distribution will be made available later.
Something hides in the closet. Below the button down shirts and dress slacks for work, behind the winter wardrobe of sweaters, vests and jackets, and against the back wall is an old black leather portfolio with handles. Years ago it was a mandatory item for any and every graphic design student or young professional with goals of becoming an art director, illustrator or creative director. I pulled out the old portfolio and the oversized heavyweight document envelopes behind it and entered a gateway to another time and place.
Like time travel, I am back in the 1990s. There were three main portfolios I presented. One presentation was corporate, ad agency design samples. The kind of material that ranged from logo design, brand campaigns and the like. The second presentation was print design. That portfolio exhibited all manners of print designs from brochures, books, direct marketing collateral, magazine spreads, cover designs, etc. For presentations, I would rotate the design samples in the black leather portfolio based on the interview. Sometimes I presented a hybrid of both that included work that featured my copyrighting and marketing pieces. But the third portfolio was my favorite–the illustration portfolio.
Professors, peers and even my first art director advised it was the weakest of the three. The general critique was that technique needed improvement. So I kept working on improving technique and execution. A black cloth case bound sketch book always accompanied me almost everywhere I traveled. I’d sketch landscapes, still lifes, portraits and tried various techniques using pencils, Sharpie markers, charcoal, ink and watercolor. But soon I learned that I could earn more financially and find more consistent work with digital designs.
It is not that I abandoned illustration. A few years ago, a national news magazine featured one of my illustrations on the cover of its annual books issue. Earlier this year, another illustration was featured as a book cover design. Also this year, a few spot illustrations were published in a book.
As I look at these old illustrations and sketches, I see a younger, self-doubting me at a time before home computer, internet, or smartphone entered my life. Back in those days, the only entertainment devices I had was a stereo set with a five-CD player, a stack of maybe 30 audio CDs and a shelf full of books. Through the portal of this time capsule, I see the mistakes and accomplishments with a new perspective. Hidden away in that closet is a portfolio of dreams, aspirations and ideas that was slowly replaced with a portfolio of duty and responsibility. A thought occurs to me as I examine an unfinished sketch of a female portrait, did I focus on pursuing a career path rather than a vocation? Maybe that is a thought I should hide in the closet while I bring some of these illustrations into the daylight.
Sometimes a few notes of music follow you for days are weeks or years. Sometimes a line of poetry haunts you like a memory you can’t quite recall. It’s like rain, it permeates the air, wets the ground, even makes tea taste more pronounced.
Here’s part of a story I can share with you. After I was at university studying art and design, I found an audio CD in a music store titled Jazz for a Rainy Afternoon. What attracted me to the album, a compilation, was the fact that the cover art reminded me of a sexier version of Gustave Caillebotte’s famous painting. I purchased the audio CD. It was background music initially. Something to edge off lonely days as a poor graduate beginning a career in graphic design. About the same time I discovered, and purchased, a copy of William Kistler’s poetry book America February.
I have always enjoyed poetry and music, but reading Kistler’s work was rigorous for me. Light verse and traditional poems, the variety that fill American and English school book anthologies, were what I was familiar with. But Kistler’s poetry was a new dish for my inexperienced palate. Equally, understanding the musical selections of Jazz for a Rainy Afternoon as more than a background soundtrack was challenging.
A line from one of Susan L Daniels’s poems has captured my attention this past week—the way jazz and poetry sometimes do. The speaker in the poem answers a question, so you like jazz, by saying: “…the answer is no/I live it sometimes…” That’s what I have come to enjoy about the complicated progression in a song or a poem that avoids a clean resolution.
Jazz and poetry work into you. It takes you down that familiar path of a rainy day afternoon, a common enough subject, but it is a variation of that theme. Never the same way twice. Like reading a poem as a school boy and reading it later as a graduate and later as a professional. Same poem printed on the page, but different. Always different. But familiar, because you “live it.” There’s more to this story. Maybe I’ll share it with you on another rainy day afternoon.
The window is open on a warm late May day and a cool mountain breeze moves the curtains like papery fingers. Occasionally, I glance at the Japanese maple outside or the grape vine wildly clinging to a handmade, crude trellis of found pine limbs….
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UPDATE: This blog post is available as part of an audio podcast.
Listen now:
Or listen on:
PodOmatic: coffeehousejunkie.podomatic.com
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/coffeehousejunkie
E-book: This blog post will be featured in a forthcoming e-book. More details coming soon.
Warhol is beloved by the right and the left for exactly the same reason: he performed a ritual purging which seemed to deprive the art work of its complexity, freeing both those in power and those fascinated by it to talk about what really interests them, namely power in the land of commerce.
—Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, BOMB 21, 1987
New art show @izzyscoffee
Painter at work on an #avl mural.
Another #avl mural. Remember what was there before the new mural?
An #AVL mural on Lexington.
#avlnews Artist at work on a downtown mural.
New downtown mural in progress.
For years have pushed art making away from me. Partly due to lack of space and consolidating my paintings into small sketchbooks. Then I replaced paint for pen and ink, and drew smaller images into Moleskines until my drawings disappeared into lines of characters trying to form poems…
Now, I want to start painting again…
(Image source via creativeinspiration: 472239364: artpixie: love letters and skypaints: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinycastles/3912498882/)
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