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Deer in the Headlights, Financially Speaking...

OCTOBER 11, 2011

I had already been procrastinating on a little book cover, when I got a call from Mihn at the Times. Another spot illustration to be done.  This time the theme was the fear keeping people frozen and hindering our echonomic recovery. The headline in the text kind of pointed directly at the concept of having some figure caught up and frozen with fear.  Seemed pretty straight forward. Mihn sent me the article wednesday night and the deadline final was set for Friday 3:00 pm est, so not much time to screw around. I read the article about as far as I needed to ge thinking about concepts and left it till Thursday am to start on thumbaniils. I got in around 8:00 and made coffee, did some emails and about 8:30 started on thumnails.  At 9:30 I sent them over and called to let him know they were there.  I tried some different things I thought would work. Old clichés, you know, being afraid of your shadow, mouse /elephant, caught in the headlights, etc. Then I thought about the painting that Edvard Munch did of The Scream. I thought that could make a pretty funny little parody. Lee liked it too.So cross my fingers and with any luck......

I piddled around on a tattoo design till about eleven and then called Mihn again just to check in. He loved the Edvard Munk parody and so did Lee. I thought this would be a fun one.  I wanted to paint it just like the painting, but with a bull in the forground, and a bear instead of the couple in the background....Too funny.  I thought I would get my walk in first though. Everyday I drive out to Stone Mountain for my daily walk collecting recycling at our local state park. ( It's really about an hour and a half including drive and hike up the mountain ect...) Mihn called me back a little quicker than I expected  with the news "they wanted they're original idea of the deer in the headlights." When I did the little thumbanil and scanned it in the original idea was to just put dollar signs in his eyes this thought with the shadow came later ....

 I finished my walk and got back to the studio about 1:00. I did the sketch and transfered it down and then started airbrushing. Lee and I were suppposed to meet our son and his family for their anniversary at "Trader Vick's" a campy Tahitian restaurant (They got married in Hawaii), so I needed to finish this one By 5:00. Not so hard right? it was a simple image and as long as I could stay on task, well except for the Michelle Bachman Youtube, and some drop in company, I almost made it, but saveded it till in the morning instead of rushing it. Friday moring I hit the studio pretty early and By 9:30 I had finished scanned and tweaked out the drawing added the shadow and question marks,and sent it for Mihn to review. Only one version this time...So the rest of the day was free to head back to the mountain. work on some personal work and go climbing with my good friends Goñi and Holly  . Looking back at it I could have done something more complicated but this image worked with the article. We'll just have to save the "Munch" till another day...
Instead of bugging out and going climbing.I could have stuck with it and tried a bunch of photo-shopped variations

Or made it darker

Or brighter...

Or made bunches of them....

or turned them into candy....


But somehow the original worked without all of that....and we had a blast climbing...Looking back at these pieces I think the face does show up better without the shadow. But the shadow adds a little something conceptual in there and the face couldn't goo dark and have the shadow read.
© 2024 Bill Mayer