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]]> Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:48:11 EST http://www.drawger.com/jeffdraw/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12831 I painted this series of illustrations for Carolyn Perot at Mother Jones magazine earlier this year. The challenge was to paint several complex narrative scenes with likenesses of real people, and in credible places, in a relatively short amount of time. I painted with FW acrylic inks, and watercolor pencil on BFK Rives printmaking paper.













]]> Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:11:43 EST http://www.drawger.com/jeffdraw/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12711 I painted a couple of Fiction assignments earlier this year for Rob Wilson at Playboy magazine.   The first assignment was a story written by the amazing Joyce Carol Oates. The name of the piece is "Loose Daddy." It is the story of a demented father who takes his unwitting son for a walk in the woods. When they arrive at the ruins of an abandoned amphitheater, the father begins to taunt the son. As his son cowers beneath him, the demented father beckons his son to the stage while reciting passages from Abraham and Isaac, and Macbeth, ”O hell-kite all!” For my reference, I photographed Cameron McHarg (as the father) in my studio. I shot Cameron from a low angle of view while encouraging a bird like shape. Then, inspired by the idea of a hell-kite, and deciding it was something like a fiendish bird of prey, I attempted to transform his eyes and nose into severe and menacing bird like features. As I was contemplating the background, I remembered an outdoor, arbor covered amphitheater in Brookside Park California and decided it a suitable nest for my hell-kite. Again, I used an up angle to frame the main character with creeping vines and leaves and wire. Alas, the story never made it to print. A few weeks later, Rob called with another amazing story entitled, "Passenger" by Jennifer Dubois. It is the story of a woman who thinks she sees a stranger and a neighbor’s child boarding a plane that she is on. The trouble is… she's a married woman on her way to meet her lover. She can't say a thing. And by the time she does, it's too late. This turned out to be another transformation piece for me, inspired by the following line, "In their worst nightmares, the ones that woke them up and brought them weeping into our beds, there were bears in the backyard, snakes in the living room."





]]> Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:31:50 EST http://www.drawger.com/jeffdraw/index.php?section=articles&article_id=11843























]]> Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:35:23 EST http://www.drawger.com/jeffdraw/index.php?section=articles&article_id=11217 In January 2009, I got a call from David Talbot. David used to be a writer at Mother Jones magazine. He had written a book titled, ”Brothers, The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years,” and he is a progressive journalist, bestselling author and media entrepreneur. He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of one of the first web magazines,Salon.com. Recently, he and his brother Steve, and sister Margaret, had decided to join forces and form The Talbot Players.  They were just wrapping up a book called Devil Dog, which David had written and Spain Rodriguez had illustrated. Devil Dog is the story of Smedley Butler (I would illustrate the cover.) David asked me if I might be interested in a new project; a book titled, Shadow Knights. Well, actually, it didn’t have a title when we first met at the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles.  But the idea of the book would be to tell the story of the courageous men and women who fought a secret war against the Nazi’s and Adolf Hitler.  People like Noor Inayat Khan, Harry Ree, Claus Helberg, Winston Churchill, Hugh Dalton, Brigadier Colin Gubbins, Selwyn Jepson, Jens Poulsson, Knut Haugland, and many more. All of these brave souls volunteered to serve as members of Winston Churchill’s SOE (an acronym for Special Operations Executive.) Some were well suited for the job, some were reluctant, and others were as unlikely as a butterfly.  But all of these courageous individuals risked life and limb to undermine Adolf Hitler’s fascist regime, and some paid the ultimate price. At Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France, you will see monuments to the French resistance fighters that will make you weep and cry.  This in part, is their story. The scope of this project was important enough to travel, so I decided to take a trip to Paris. I left on June 15th, 2009.  I wanted to see some of the real places where Noor Inayat Khan lived, fought and died for freedom.  Gary Kamiya, the writer for Shadow Knights, gave me addresses; places like 40 rue Erlanger in Auteuil, where Noor first arrived, No. 3 Boulevard Richard Wallace, mostly occupied by SS officers, 98 Rue de la Faisanderie, where Noor was arrested, Avenue Foch, 82 and 84, where the Gestapo headquarters were, and finally, Fazal Manzil, the house in Suresnes where Noor grew up as a child. It’s funny what happens when you chase a ghost. While visiting all of these places, I took 300 photographs, and tried to feel the spirit of Noor Inayat Khan. Feel it I did, so much so, that I had to play George Jones, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash on my head phones to keep the ghosts of war at bay. But I did it and I’m glad that I did. I perused the first chapter for this project on October 12th, 2009, and sent the last illustration on May 28th, 2010. Visiting these places gave me the grit to stay focused on a project that would take seven and a half months to complete, to research thousands of photographs from the internet, books, and magazines, to shoot 567 photographs of models and myself, produce 22 photographic comps, many more sketches, 22 full page paintings, and 2 covers for this wonderfully exhausting project. In the end, I give myself an A for effort, and a C+ for the work.  But this project was one for the ages, and I’ll never forget it. A special thanks to Owen Freeman for the 170 photographs he provided me from the Imperial War Museum in London, England, and to Paul Rogers for his outstanding typographic design on the covers of Shadow Knights, and Devil Dog. Also, thanks to the Art Center students who helped with this project, and to Kem Turner for her many, many poses as Noor Inayat Khan. Shadow Knights hits the book stands in the first week of October, 2010. 















































]]> Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:53:09 EST http://www.drawger.com/jeffdraw/index.php?section=articles&article_id=10814 I painted this portrait illustration of Bill Cosby for Fred Fehlau and the Playboy Jazz Festival.  Along the way, I documented the process by scanning the drawing (1.) then the drawing with shadow shapes (2.) then the added tonal washes (3.) and finally the finished result (4.) There were no pencil lines laid down to guide my brush drawing.  I draw with a Raphael Kolinsky #8, round sable, watercolor brush, and I start where I like.   The medium I used is FW Acrylic Inks, and the surface is BFK Rives printmaking paper. The image is approximately 20 X 20 inches.  I started in with Cosby's right eye and worked out towards the edges of the face, as opposed to starting with the shape of the head and working towards the smaller interior shapes. I find that I am much more sensitized to the topography of the head, and the life in the face when I proceed this way. When I was a student learning to paint portraits, my education consisted of observational drawing, awareness of line, shape, and tone, some proportion, technique, design, composition, the study of color and value of color, and the anatomy of light. Since then, curiosity and pedantic obligation has lead me to study Leonardo Da Vinci's proportions of the human head, and various anatomists identification of the muscles in the face and head; the obicularis oris, glabella, Levator labia superiors alaeque nasi, dilator nasi and greater alar cartilage of the nose, nasolabial furrows, nodes, orbicularis oculi, the philtrum, yada yada yada. Of course, anatomy is not drawing, and nothing can replace empathy for people, their character and personalities. For me, knowing correct proportion intensifies the wonder and glory of life's imperfect faces, and knowing something about the muscles of the head demystifies the subtle forms that are the underpinning of the human visage.  









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