The Drawing Board

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Sibling Rivalry Finish

2010-02-11T13:32:00.002-05:00

This was quite fun. I had to go back in and make sure the valentine heart was readable enough as a heart rather than just a big red blob.

Sibling Rivalry

2010-02-05T14:57:00.002-05:00

This week’s Entertainment Tri-State cover is going to feature two acclaimed stage performers fighting over your attendance to their respective Valentine’s weekend shows.

Mark McVey will be performing with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 12 and 13 in Charleston. His sister, Beth McVey will be performing with the Huntington Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, Feb 13.

Here, I’ve got the ruff showing the two of them tugging on a heart. It’s a fairly straightforward composition and as always, I’m trying to keep the all-important faces large and close together.
I haven’t done Beth before but I did Mark’s about 15 years ago. I’ll dig that one out later after I’m done with this one.
This should be fun.

Symphony piece before Christmas

2009-12-30T16:18:00.002-05:00

Meant to get this one up before Christmas, but with the other holiday events, bowl game preps and my own vacation going on, I didn’t get time. Apologies.

This one was fun with the good faces of Marina Jurica, Kimo Furumoto and especially Ryan Hardiman. I met Ryan when he was a student in my dad’s illustration class at Marshall back in the late 80s.

Chris Daughtry

2009-11-13T16:46:00.002-05:00

I tried a little different approach as far as media on this Chris Daughtry. Rather that using straight colored markers, which has been my standard for years, I decided to mix it up a bit.
From my on-going presidential series, I relied on doing a basic pencil sketch, over which I laid heavy, bold markers – just to rough in the darkest values.
From there, I introduce pastels in pink, orange, brown and white colors from which I can blend a nice flesh tone right there on the paper. Using the side of the pastel lightly on the paper, then burnishing everything with my fingers. Burnishing this way allows me to emphasize motion and the relationship between the light areas and shadows. I then spray fix everything, then go back in with black detailing pen and colored pencil. I kept picking at it this way until satisfied. The challenge was to avoid making him look like Vin Deisel.

Bottling the Run

2009-10-24T08:30:00.003-04:00

Having such a busy week, I waited until the last minute figuring out what I wanted to do on this.
What stood out in my mind was the memory of last year’s game. The Herd was favored, but somehow found itself in a tight battle down to the wire.
A great opportunity to put it away was foiled when mulit-threat QB Joe Webb got the crucial yardage on a fourth-and-ten play. The drive continued and the Herd lost.
This season, Webb is again tearing up the ground on teams.
Some of the ideas I had early, such as a cowboy and dragons round-up in a corral, or lassoing dragons in a rodeo, were a little too involved for a mid-Friday. So I’ve kept it simple, stuck the dragon in a bottle and gave Marco the mallet.

Secondly, here’s the image from last weeks game against WVU. Just thought I’d point out what I did in PhotoShop to pull this off. I did the image of Marco and the Mountaineer pretty much as you see it. Knowing I was going to be blurring the Mountaineer’s legs a bit, I didn’t draw them complete and the actual drawn part was not too far below where you see it. I clipped the Mountaineer portion out and pasted it on a separate page. From there I just did a simple horizontal motion blur with an 800-pixel distance. That smeared the image unrecognizable other than some color and provided a nice lightening on the ends. I copied this blur, went back to the original drawing, selected the entire background and pasted the blur inside. After positioning it to line up with the running Mountaineer, I erased the portion of the blur that extended in front of the Mountaineer. I then flattened the original and blur layers together, then smeared parts of the Mountaineer to blend the transition of the blur to him. It was a pretty easy effect.
Oh and incidentally, “speed” ended up not being much of a factor in the game.

Avoid the Wave finish

2009-10-10T08:12:00.002-04:00

Its always fun to sketch big sweeping waves of green water.
As I was working on Tulane's homecoming queen, I'm thinking to myself "OK, how do you make a pelican look alluring?
Good luck today, Herd.

Avoid the Wave ruff

2009-10-09T12:47:00.001-04:00

OK. So Marshall had a rough homecoming loss to defending conference champion East Carolina.
At first, I was thinking this was the time the Herd would get complacent and take it easy on a softer opponent, only to end up finding itself in a dog fight, and ultimately losing. It seemed to happen last year way too often. When you’re a team trying to earn the league’s respect, you don’t have the luxury of mailing it in — ever. The best teams never mail it in.
Anyway, I originally had Marco in a boat labeled “complacency” with the pelican riding the big green wave of confidence. Tulane had an optimistic off-season but opened with two dismal losses. It has now bounced back and is riding a two-win resurgence.

Now usually the Homecoming opponent is a mismatch and an easy contest. So here Marshall is as Tulane’s homecoming opponent.
I remember years back when Marshall was the homecoming opponent for the at-the-time lowly Buffalo Bulls. In that illustration, I had Marco running off with Buffalo’s homecoming queen ~ that was fun.
Now it’s the Herd’s turn to steal the queen from Tulane.

Ride That Float, Baby!

2009-10-03T10:26:00.003-04:00

Snyder was fun to do although the image was a bit small and with the 3/4 angle view of his face, I couldn't really accentuate how close together his eyes are. I may do a better one later ~ just for the fun of it.
Good luck today Herd.

Ride The Float! second rough

2009-09-30T16:43:00.002-04:00

Just an in-process rough to tighten the composition and establish some of the detail areas.

Ride The Float! rough

2009-09-29T12:42:00.003-04:00

I was thinking about the Herd riding their momentum into today’s game against East Carolina and since its homecoming weekend, the idea of the float came quickly. It will be fun doing the decorated float, the toilet paper, etc.

At first I was going to have the flatbed by itself, getting ready to run over a Pirate, but its not so much about the Pirates as it is about Marshall being prepared to go up against the defending conference champs.
Also, the idea of a float not being towed seemed a bit awkward. So, I’ll draw a big pickup truck. Now I need a driver ... Coach Snyder.
I always thought would be kind of fun to do a caricture of him. I'll need to give myself plenty of time this week.
More later.

Finish on Memphis

2009-09-28T10:19:00.001-04:00

Good start Herd.

Conference play begins

2009-09-25T13:29:00.002-04:00

Now that the Herd has had a chance to work out the kinks (and there were more than previously expected), it begins conference play — which is the only thing that this season’s success or failure should be measured. Still, a two and one record is the best Marshall could have expected, so it is right where it needs to be for this conference run.
This is a pretty straight-forward concept of rolling up the sleeves and going to work — not just for a winning season, but for a conference championship. Why should they sell themselves short?

How prolific this turned out to be

2009-09-15T11:24:00.002-04:00

Not a good thing at all. Two weeks into the season and I'm still waiting to see the defense we've heard about during the off-season. At least there wasn't significant injuries suffered.

Not an easy task

2009-09-05T08:09:00.002-04:00

Good luck Herd. Get this season off right.

A Matter of Perception

2009-09-01T15:51:00.001-04:00

My idea for this weekends Herd game against Southern Illinois deals with the perception that Championship subdivision teams are weaker and should be an easy victory. Yep, tell that to Michigan last year after blowing it at home to Appy State.
The Herd had a similar home humiliation when it hosted New Hampshire last year. Or, was it humiliation. What it comes down to is, Marshall is struggling in the upper division and it is facing the #7 ranked team in the “lower” division.
So here I’ve got Marco standing on the higher podium and still being dwarfed by the Saluki (Egyptian hunting dog ~ I’m not sure why) standing on the lower podium.
Marshall’s going to have their hands full.

Finish on Riverfront shows

2009-08-20T16:17:00.002-04:00

This one was pretty fun. With a hodge-podge of events going on, it was good to plop the guys into the car and completely disregard the roof of the vehicle — its almost like a Camden Park ride.

Weekend action on the Riverfront

2009-08-18T14:24:00.003-04:00

This Weekend, reggae and NASCAR-themed Symphony performances will grace the Harris Riverfront Park.

Lexington, Ky.-based reggae act, Rob Dread performs on Friday.

On Saturday, the Huntington Symphony Orchestra’s last Picnic With the Pops concert kicks off with “Rockin’ Down the Highway — NASCAR At the Finish Line.”
The NASCAR-themed show will include a guest appearance by Brett Rowe, driver of the Herd Racing’s NASCAR Nationwide Series car.

So I’ve got Kimo Furumoto with baton in hand, driving the Herd car with Rob Dread on the back.

Father of Our Country

2009-07-17T16:16:00.003-04:00

From the in-process Presidential Series.
One of the tricky aspects of doing caricatures of historic figures is the obvious absence of photographic reference. Gilbert Stuart was renowned for capturing a subject's essence, and this portrait is based on his eyes. Washington sat for him dozens of times and they were not especially fond of each other ~ Washington hated the drudgery of sitting, which Gilbert picked up on, thus making a decent portrait a special challenge for one who could sense so easily.
Stuarts versions are consistent in their facial structure, unlike earlier, romanticized versions by other artists. As I looked for reference of less celebrated leaders, such consistency becomes unattainable. Or in the case of our 7th President Andrew Jackson, a later-in-life photograph looks little like the romanticized portraits ~ so I'm going with photographic reference, in his case and president #6 John Quincy Adams ~ the earliest president ever photographed.

Time for Roy Clark

2009-06-19T11:16:00.002-04:00

The summer has shaped up to be super busy. And its been a bit hard to get time for drawing ~ but I HAD to make time for one of the ultimate pickers.

3 Doors finished

2009-05-19T08:08:00.003-04:00

Some of you have asked me what sort of medium I use for my illustrations. The News Industry, is one of only a few places where your product is virtually re-invented everyday. News happens very quickly and it's shelf-life value is extremely limited.
Assignments need to be done quickly and cleanly, and newspaper illustration should be no different.
I use colored art markers on tracing vellum. I can lay down color quickly, and don't have to wait at all for a project to "dry." Using tracing vellum allows me to copy over my previous sketches, and since it is a dense-surface paper (won't allow color to bleed into the fibers) I can better blend colors to give a watercolor effect. I could even push lighter colors into darker ones, but I usually work from light to dark ~ laying down my black lines last.
Now for today's piece, you'll notice the colors are weird. Well, my markers are drying up. And since the illustration ran in black and white, I used what available colors I had and approached the piece as a value-only illustration, that is, I obviously didn't consider the color itself, but rather the darkness or heaviness of the color. You know how when you squint your eyes at certain colors, some look darker than others (like red, is usually darker than blue).
In this piece, I pushed this aspect a little, just for the fun of it ~ using colors I rarely choose.

Enjoy!

3 Doors Down

2009-05-18T12:00:00.002-04:00

Got a quick preview for 3 Doors Down concert. Usually what I'll do, after finding some decent reference, is make a quick "impression sketch" ~ just taking the initial facial shapes of each of the band members and how their features are arranged on their heads. These are obviously VERY rough. The reference I found featured their former drummer, so I need to find a good image of the new dude.

Later, I'll get into a more detailed rendering.

Quick One for Heritage Farm

2009-04-30T16:59:00.002-04:00

Here's a quick Entertainment cover done this week for the Heritage Farm. I had short notice so I didn't get to do much verbiage. Aside from the Mike and Henriella Perry reference, I looked for and found a nice buckboard wagon for reference, and because of cramping of the composition, abandoned a brief idea to include a goat off to the side.

Finish on obesity illustration

2009-04-25T14:48:00.002-04:00

I had fun with the cool light of the television cast on one side and the warm light of the sun on the other.

Establish form first, then work toward specific

2009-04-24T13:17:00.003-04:00

For front page layout, a horizontal main image works best as the art can be seen above the fold ~ to be seen better in newspapers sold in street corner boxes. So I needed to reconfigured the ruff.

Here is the illustration in process. Using a dark colored paper and working the light colors back into it. I’m keeping the shapes rough and geometric and I will gradually tighten the image, add more color and punch the highlights. In college, my drawing professor had the class work in black and white pencil on mid-range grey paper. The idea was for us to draw from life, only the darkest shadows and the lightest highlights. In doing this, it was really surprising how much one can leave out of the illustration and still come away with real solid image. The middle areas are suggested without being specific. This helped us concentrate on overall form and solid structure, rather than zeroing in on detail that ends up on a shaky, ill-conceived structure.