Every year for as long as I can remember.... the first thing I do on January 1st is to write Jim Burke and see if I can again talk my way onto the line up for Dellas Graphics Calendar. Always (so far) he has reluctantly conceded. This year we had been in the city for the shows at SI and were walking around looking for those great little shops only New York has, when I stumbled on a window that had a huge statue of Chan Chu. Chan Chu, or Jin Chan was the wife of a little known demigod, who stole the "Peaches of Imortality." As punishment for her offense she was turned into a three legged toad. She is always depicted on a pile of Chinese coins. Rumor has it this mythical creature is said to appear during the full moon, near houses or businesses that will soon receive good news (most of the time, the nature of this good news is to be wealth-related). This seemed a perfect visual for the calendar. It was Lee's Idea to make it into kind of a crazy firecracker package... So perfect.
I let Chan Chu sit around for a couple of months and knew it was getting close to the deadline so I emailed Jim to see when the art needed to be there. I had gotten busy on commissioned work and just sort of forgot. He emailed back we had a couple of days. I was caught up waiting for approval so I sat down and thumbnailed off another idea. Okay it's a bit silly, yes but a frog fly fishing seemed to scream out for a stinger of flies. Nice fat ones! juicy delectable morsels. I did a sketch and jumped into final. This one turned out just as well I think. Well, completely different. Thanks so much Jim Burke. It's always such a joy creating these little guys with you. You are a true rock star of an art director.
Always a joy working on these illustrations for SooJin. This one had so much potential from the start. Exploration of directions included lots of ideas that I thought would work. SooJin likes the flat earth, No.11. I was drawn to the safe harbor, No. 10, or the unknown dangers awaiting in No.9. But 11 maybe shows navagating through troubled waters, and went with the original title/concept; Finding A Way- Danger everywhere Lacking a safe harbor, if you work/look hard enough, you'll find a way.
When I started on this little painting I wanted to give it a decorative border. The border was really time consuming, Took a long time and certainly gobs of coffee to stay focused and get through it. When I got to the Sea Monsters I was painting them in bright colors and sort of screwed them up. Just wasn't working, so I painted over them black and added detail back into them. I would have started over, but that border...ugh! didn't want to do that again.
So I keep working at it hoping to salvage the painting. I almost scrapped this one several times and just completely start on another painting. I finally get it where I am liking it and scan it in and start tweaking in Photoshop. I give the ship a kind of a mystical glow like St. Elmo's Fire to draw more attention to it and a subtle compass rose to reinforce the nautical theme. I think it turned out pretty well. Seemed a bit dark at first but when I saw it in the magazine, I liked the darkness. Big thanks to SooJin. Always a pleasure working with her.
Thrilled to have a 3x3 feature coming out soon. Written by the fabulous Goñi Montes. It's been a while since CA did a feature on my work. 3x3 is one of the smartest pubs around so I am so thrilled to be included with the great artists that have been there. I will be Number 63. So I did a couple of new pieces that will be included in the book. Including an Op-Art piece that was so much fun that I did several for Charles to pick from. If you want to order advanced copies here's a link. 3x3
I have always been nervous about portraits. I draw from my head, so when SooJin called with this project, I thought it would be challenging. In the brief she said that “Joanne Segars, Chair of Pension Europe (PE), the association of workplace pensions in Europe, and the chief executive of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).” She was “crowned” chair of PE in November at a time of unprecedented change in the regulatory system in Europe and during the Eurozone in crisis. The new published headline works so perfectly... "Joanne Segars: Battle Ready For Europe."
My original idea was to do a royal portrait based on an old portrait of Queen Victoria, or one of those classic portraits. Joan of arc was really a second thought, but it was the direction SooJin liked. I wanted to do it in the style of a few little gouache paintings I had been experimenting with. I want to give credit for reference; I used a Painting by Sir John Everett Millais of Joan of Arc painted in 1865 titled:"Joan of Arc" for reference in the armour. Some photos I took over the weekend in the mountains for the backgrounds...
Thank you SooJin for letting me do this little painting. You can see the weekend in the mountain served as inspiration for the background and the feel of the painting.
Here are a few more of the little gouache drawings that I have been playing around with…
"The Industrialist"
Some old friends on Facebook kind of prodded me to do a version of Eustace Tilley's famous New Yorker cover, I thought it would be funny to do a kind of dark industrialist. I love crows so why not make him a crow as well. I love the limited color pallet.
"The Mouse Widow"
This was another moody little illustration. I was trying to use another animal head on a human figure like the goat headed lady. This one also in the snow but set in the ruins of an old abbey... Liked where these were going so try a few more...
"Bad Luck"
The idea for this painting came for something I remember someone saying about southern women having "snakes under those petticoats" ...The idea that they are not quite as tame and gentle as people think they are. I took it to a more magical realism. a dreamlike scene of a figure walking through the forest and leaving a trail of snakes everywhere she walked.
"Tinkerbelle"
The idea for this painting comes from an old book that Lee had found. "The White Bird" by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. It's the first place that Peter Pan appears. In the story he describes the fairies; clothed in leaf skeletons. They were not the sweet little visions that we think of. I want to try Tink again and maybe use some elements large to make her look small. The figure I used made for a kind of a campy pin-up instead of a fairy. This version of Tink became a bit more like a goddess of the KILL....
"Death Waits"
actually the idea for this piece came from an email for my rep about a possible book cover for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue,"a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story surrounds the baffling double murder of Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter in the Rue Morgue, a fictional street in Paris. Newspaper accounts of the murder reveal that the mother's throat is so badly cut that her head is barely attached and the daughter, after being strangled, has been stuffed into the chimney . The murder occurs in an inaccessible room on the fourth floor locked from the inside. Neighbors who hear the murder give contradictory accounts, each claiming that he heard the murderer speaking a different language. The speech was unclear, the witnesses say and they admit to not knowing the language they are claiming to have heard.
The publisher was looking for an existing piece to pick up, I said I could do a new illustration if they were interested...
Detail of the gouache painting....
Nothing ever came of it. But I have this image in my head of death waiting on a rooftop . But I think it needed something to give it a little twist. Sort of seemed to need that little egde. But the weather's just too damn nice out so have to leave till later...
