Thanksgiving Newspaper Story Illustration

     My buddy, Bryan, called yesterday evening asking if I'd like to produce an illustration for the local paper. I asked him when it was due and he mumbled something about this week.  I asked him when this week and he replied trepidatiously "Uh, Tomorrow morning-this week."  Oh. that's why he didn't want it. 
     Why do most of my deadlines seem to be "tomorrow morning".  I said "No, thank you very much!" I wasn't going to get home till 10:30p.m., was already beat from working at the garage all day with Pat, and was getting up early for an appointment. Plus, the paper takes a notoriously long time to pay for design work. 
     However, as I began to consider the looming holidays, reason prevailed and I decided I could probably use the extra money. (75 big ones!  everything's relative.)  So, I turned on re-runs of the Andy Griffith Show and stayed up till 3 a.m. finishing an illo for this story about two sisters whose father brings home a couple of vagrants for thanksgiving back in 1961.  

Doing a drawing in pencil lets me produce very fine details, but I also like the texture of charcoal which also allows me to work a bit faster.  This was produced using both.  Oh, and this is Bryan's design, not mine.

This is what he sent me, based on the author's approval.

     The funny thing about working through the night is as the hours pass I work exponentially slower and begin making mistakes (note the sister's wonky glasses), so that in the last hour I accomplish as much as I do in my first 10 minutes.  Knowing this about myself I try to get as much done in the first couple of hours as I can knowing that from then on it's like bailing water from a sinking boat... actually it's nothing like that, but I'm to tired to think of a more accurate metaphor.

Soundtrax 2 Recovery

Recently I got a call from Michael McLean the celebrated LDS composer and, yeah, close personal friend.  I had completed a piece of design for him last year for his "Threads" album and tour.

I don't recall which font Deseret Book ended up going with.  Whatever it was Michael loved it.

    I picked up the phone and he was like "Jase!  My main man!  What's the stuff, cream puff?" and I was like "Mike!  What's up m'nerd?!"  After catching up he asked if I'd like a little work designing a new promotional poster for a new album he and his friend John Batdorf had put together.  It was an album geared toward helping and inspiring struggling folks.  After working through a few ideas this is the one we settled on.

You know how ice skaters make streaking across the ice backwards with one leg in the air while holding a lady over their heads with one arm look easy? (and, you know, it's not.)
   I wonder if this is like that.  Does it look easy?  'cause, it wasn't.  Especially for me, who never aspired to the lofty realms of graphic designer-hood. (mostly because I need to stay true to my artistic principles and am not interested in superficial things like money and food for my children)
  But what do you say to someone when you need work and they offer you something tuff?
"Pshhh!  Sure, I can do that.  Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!"
 
    I just typed out everything that might go on the poster and then began moving and cropping and stretching and smashing.
    One thing I try to be conscious of at all times is where the eye is wandering to and then trying to control that through hue (color) and value (how light or dark something is).
    So while I hope the whole piece has a very random type of texture to it there is actually a lot of order imposed on it.  Michael and John seemed pretty happy.  If anybody sees a poster out there steal one for me.

Happy Belated Halloween!

I like Halloween.  It's an opportunity to do something interesting and creative and every year I go overboard with the kids costumes.  This year I dressed them up as a family of dolls.  Not lovely dolls, the kind you give a sweet little girl on her birthday in front of all of her friends as she's shoveling angel food cake down her throat.  No, these were creepy dolls.  The kind you find in an old hope chest in your great-grandmothers attic.  We took Lucy to Abravanel Hall for the Utah Symphony's Halloween Concert.  Every year they also hold the states largest costume contest and Lucy entered as the doll.

The concert was excellent and just before intermission a couple of radio personalities from KSL came on stage to announce the finalists.  Lucy's was the first name they announced of the children's finalists and it was fun to see her stiffen, then jump in the air a little bit as she spun around to face us with a surprised "Oh!" She and I got to go back stage to the "green room" and meet all the musicians and the conductor or "maestro". (my personal lifetime dream)  many of them asked to have their picture taken with her and we got a few pictures of our own, most specifically, with the lead clarinet, (Lucy's a clarinet player)...

I asked her how far she got into the concert before she realized her costume made it difficult to play.
She replied "About four notes and then I was like 'oh no!'"
The reason Lucy isn't smiling in any of these pictures is she's afraid of damaging her make-up, which is pretty fragile.

and the Conductor who first had his photographer take a picture of them together for him.

Just before conductor went on stage.

Lucy was remarkably comfortable going out on stage in front of 2,700 people.  This year Lucy won second place by the audience, for which she won a gift basket with all sorts of cool items and tickets.  I'm buying the tickets for the Utah Opera from her and she's keeping the tickets to next years Comi-con.

On Halloween we have to get up very early to do the kids make-up.  There's no contest at the middle school, but the boys went on to win first at their schools contest.
    I guess these two experiences officially make me an award winning make-up artist, hmm?

Our last Halloween all our kids.  They don't look very happy, do they?

Woman at the Well? hmmm

I think there's a whole relief society fireside by that name and it really bothers me that they bogarted it.  Not to be discouraged I'll call this "Samaritan Woman at the Well".  That makes this a little more definitive, doesn't it?

    When it comes down to it I don't really know how I feel about naming art.  If it doesn't stand on it's own without the artist justifying it with a name that pulls it from the swamp of ambiguity then in one way or another it's a small failure.  I heard of a gallery in California where the gallery owner hangs no titles of any kind.  I like that.  Either its nice to look at or it's not.  You feel something or you don't.  There's a message or the artist has nothing to say.

    So on second thought this has no title.  Some people might look at it and see a woman who's trying to figure out what just happened with an uncanny stranger here at her favorite watering hole and others might just see a fairly competent figure and life study which, in reality, is what I wanted to paint.  I guess I'm not saying what it is.

I just think it's nice to look at.

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A few years ago our town and (Carnegie) library received an Eccles grant to remodel the historic building.  I wouldn't say that it had fallen into disrepair, more just heavily in need of updating, because our town is crazy about it.  It has the distinction of being one of the two most frequented libraries in the country per capita.  That means we all use it. Along with all the obvious needs the library board thought it would be so great to include art in the remodel, and they discussed a large mural that would be placed above the main entryway.  They called me and I was instantly jazzed about the idea.  After a couple of meetings I began some preliminary sketches and grew more excited as I went along and began to develop ideas. 

     Sadly, it all came to a halt when engineers discovered more and more that would have to be brought up to code in the old library and many grand ideas had to be abandoned, including the mural.  

I shelved most of the sketches pinning a couple up on the wall in my studio so I could walk by and sigh at them like a love sick girl for the next couple of years.  I really wanted to do that piece.  I even considered doing it as a speculative piece with the hope of selling it when I was done, but that's a real crap-shoot because clients all have unique visions and motivations, and the bigger the piece the tougher it is to find a space that fits it just right.  Plus, I'd lose my house before it was finished.

    Finally, a few weeks ago while doing some boring sign design I looked up and the sketches caught my eye.  I was about to sigh when I had a thought.  I e-mailed my friend Paul Sweat who I'd worked with before at Wasatch School District on their Legacy Mural a few years back.  For an ex-jock he's got the heart of a poet and is a true patron of the arts.  Also, he has a rather cunning perspective on how art can influence children, hence the Legacy Mural, (see earlier posts) so it seemed a natural place to start.  I explained the project and asked if there might be a place in his district for such a piece.

   He responded immediately with a message that began with "Are you kidding me?!  We will definitely find a place something like this!"

    After looking at some of the designs I had in mind He felt like the Jr. High would be a better fit for the mural and since then I've been sending them a potential vignette' or two a week while they consider if it's something their going to do.  Unfortunately, I haven't heard from them for a few weeks and I'm hoping they aren't cooling to the idea.

It all started with this idea of a couple of kids I really liked.

And an environment that inspired adventure.  This was the original idea but it didn't provide enough space to convey a whole world, so...

I added a very deep area to the left including a lost city, forest and lake with waterfall.  Now possibilities abound.  Yeah, I know it's hard to make out, but this is just to help me work out proportions.  There's no point in developing it very far because the design will likely change a lot.  Fortunately, Paul Sweat and Justin Kelly (Jr. High Administrator) have great capacity for vision and comprehension that doesn't require me to spoon feed them every detail before they understand.  I've worked with actual Art Directors like that and it can be very discouraging.

The following are odd sketches,
 thumbnails and ideas for
 vignettes in the mural.

Back in Black

I'm not really in black.  I think it makes me look huge.  But I'm posting some of the stuff I've been working on.

                                                                     Midnight Book                                                              
                                                             Click on image to enlarge
I did a small commission in which one of the characters was wearing this quilt.  I really didn't get a chance to develop it and wanted to revisit it in earnest.  It was a fun study to do and I think I'm going to do another "quilt painting" at the bidding of my friend and colleague Dean Kleven.  For now it's just going to sit on the wall at my mothers gallery up in Heber until I get enough paintings together for my own show.  In real life I hate my cat but I like what he brings to this piece.  What you don't see are the 4 hands it took to hold him in position while I photographed him for reference.  He was ticked and still refuses to come into my bedroom, which is exactly the way I want it.

Fifty Films

5 days ago I got a call from Tom at Fifty-Films asking whether I had ever done any auto type painting.  I told him I had done a little and he asked if I thought I could do a custom paint job on an entire plane over the weekend.  At first I thought "no way" but the money was right, even after beating the next lowest bid by $500 and I'm not working on anything with a strict deadline so I thought I'd give it a try.  They needed me to paint a wrecked plane at a set in Salt Lake to match a sound plane they had filmed in Nepal.  The color references weren't great but after a few corrections I think it went great and they were happy with the result.

The wrecked plane before the matching paint job.

The sound plane in Nepal

The plane after the paint job.

I guess this weekend they're going to slam the whole thing into a hill side somewhere.  Oh well.

I like to paint for kids.  They're unapologetic for their enthusiasm and think that every stroke of paint is pure magic.  I've had a couple of opportunities to do work right in front of them in elementary schools and I never get tired of their questions and excitement.  Here are a few of the things I've done for kids.

This is my friend Jason Strate.  He was a technology teacher and JV football coach at the time.  He asked for permission to have something painted on the wall in his room and was denied.  So we did it any way.  He has since moved to Principal position at the middle school and this painting is still on the wall.  He's also shaved that goofy goatee.

This is one of the earliest and simplest pieces I've done.  

This one is painted in the school my wife Kay teaches. That's the school in the background.   They're the "Reading Thunderbirds"
Those are my kids on the back of the T-Bird, not Harry Potter.

This is my son's room.  We're plane enthusiasts.

One of the things I enjoy doing is art around town, mostly because I live in a town that really needs it.  We have an old-timey Main street with very old buildings, many of which have old fashioned wall adds that have long since worn away with the passage of time.  So, once in a while when things are slow,
(more often than I'd like) I'll do something around town in the way of redesigning and painting something true to period.

This is on the side of what the town now calls the "Pyramid Building".  Home of the town paper.  When first built it was...well isn't it obvious.  The bricks in this wall were in awful shape so I stuccoed it first and painted bricks back in around it.

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This and the next one are on an old garage in Fairview

You see them coming and going.

We actually have a Luthier in town.  (Violin Maker)  I've always wanted to do something like this on his shop and finally asked if he'd donate a wall.  I started this one last fall and got snowed out before I could finish it.  I'll get back and finish it when the weather cools off.  I can't wait to see it finished.

...he went out and began to publish it much...

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This is a piece I did this winter and I was pretty pleased with the results.  I've been thinking about the natural reaction some must have had to the savior's miracles.  I think we forget that miracles were as rare then as they are today and especially in the case of the healing of a leper, a man you might have passed many times on the street must have been a disconcerting thing.  Let alone what it must have been for the leper, to be redeemed from a literal death sentence physically and socially.

     As always, I probably bit off more than I can chew and there are a bunch of different reactions and stories in here if you look for them.

I started off with this very simple color sketch I did in the computer, working out the perspective, relationship of the main figure and the savior and other figures in the design, a basic color pallet.  yeah, those are photos of me on the left and my friend Dean Kleven on the right.  I don't develop things very far before I've made up my mind and just get started.

Then I photograph each of my models individually and place them in the composition.  If you look around I use the same people several times.  I figure that while I have them in the studio it's a good time to exploit them.  Anyway, this is where I work out a lot of the details and why I love photoshop so much- it probably saves me days of work.  

I then drew the piece on canvas from this finished composition and started painting.  In all I probably have a couple of months in this piece.

She's Crafty

My sister-in-law, Tanya, has begun a craft services business here in Utah.  She's a master chef, having been through UVU's culinary arts program and a successful actress as well, so it was a natural place for her to place herself;  catering for film production.  The only thing she needed to validate her as the premier craft service company in the area was a kick but corporate design.  I get a big kick out of creating new characters, so, I did this for her birthday.  The girl is modeled after Tanya with just a smidge of my mother.
     "Crafty" is the term people in the film industry use for whoever is providing the catering service on the set..."Who's crafty?" someone might ask.  "Oh, she's crafty." would be the reply.  So that's the name of her company.

Here's her business card.

So, at the completion of my job with ADP I was asked to bid another job that was very interesting to me.  It was based on an idea of their general manager, Roger Sybrowski.  He was eager to emphasize the importance of each individual member of their large team at each location and had always liked the imagery of a puzzle; each piece representing a person.  Just as in a puzzle if a single person was missing the missing piece leaves a very big hole.... you get the idea.

      I liked the idea and immediately began putting together photoshopped mach-ups for Roger, to see if we were on the same page.  Here are a few examples of what I imagined he was talking about.  

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The text at the top reads: "Every Person Counts"

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I tried it with different complimentary colors.

Anyway, in the end he really like an idea I added at the last minute that was a little more contemporary, making the point that ADP was a modern company that necessitated modern design.

The reason for the round shape was to hint at ADP's global presence.  

    This was just a rough idea, so after he chose to go with this idea I went back to the studio and refined it quite a bit.  I redesigned the entire thing on a carefully measured grid with a forced perspective to emphasize  a globe shape.  I then contacted several fabrication companies about the cost of some of the design elements I didn't want to mess with, like the electrical, (it will be lit with LED's because they don't get hot) and the neon which goes around the perimeter to add a very space-age finish to the whole thing and hides the wiring inside.  Approximately 56 portraits will be rendered on the individual white puzzle pieces.  I would love to see this in real life and think that anyone would be astounded as they passed such a collection of portraits.

This was the piece I think sold the idea to Roger at ADP
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Final proposed design in it's proposed place at the main employee entrance.

It's the nature of the business to have invested a ton of time into a proposal and bid, and while I think they liked the design at ADP it's hard to say whether or not they will finally order the project, so for the present time the project is shelved till further notice and I'm going to work on a couple of personal "spec" pieces.

  The Wasatch Legacy Mural  or  "Honoring the Past While Looking to the Future"

This mural was definately another favorite. It was also a very unique challenge because of the deadline.

 I was contacted in October of 2009 by a committee in Heber City, Utah responsible for the building of their new $63,000,000 High School.  It was to be the finest high school in the state and they were looking for an art project that could be the "crown jewel" of the new edifice.  They talked about doing three murals in what is the very grand enterance, or commons, each mural of one of the three schools that has been the home to Wasatch High over the past 100 years.  Each mural was to be done by a different artist.  I was excited to be considered as an artist for one of the murals but quietly mentioned to  one of the board that having three murals displayed immediately next to one another in different styles and in different "pallets" or color schemes might not be as successful as they might hope.  I wondered how I could talk them into doing something different so I went home and did a couple of sketches.

When I brought them back I suggested that in addition to the actual buildings we might tell the story of Wasatch High through the people and programs.
Fortunately they loved the idea and before I knew it I'd been contracted to produce the entire project, now one monumental mural 50 feet wide by 10 feet tall.
     Unfortunately, this proccess actually took several months and by the time I received the green light there were only 5 months left until deadline and the open house of the new school.  This was a project that I would have usually taken 9 months to a year to complete.
Another challenge was finding studio space big enough to stretch out a 50 foot by 11 foot canvas.  I looked all around the valley and finally found an amazing old building on old main street here in Mt. Pleasant that was 51 feet long; just barely long enough to house the giant custom "easil" I had to build for the canvas.

I worked around the clock, 6 days a week to get it done and literally finished it 2 or 3 days before it need to be installed.

Here's the finished piece

Here it is installed

Detail 1

Detail 2

Detail 3

Detail 4
Me on the right holding the edge of the canvas back

This was the letter of recommendation Principal Paul Sweat wrote for me following the project.
Pretty glowing, huh?