posted: January 31, 2010

In the spirit of the invitation extended to me by Scott Bakal to be on one of the jury panels for the Student Scholarship Competition at the Society of Illustrators this Friday, I thought I’d post some work by one of my favorite students, my son Thomas. Tom is currently a senior at Cooper Union. I’ll be judging college-level work, but since I don’t have many scans of his more recent art, I’ll post some work he did in high school, starting with a self-portrait he did freshman year, circa age 15. In my unbiased opinion, he was good even then. He attended an excellent private high school, Cambridge School of Weston, that is strong academically and in the creative arts. He owes a lot to the talented and dedicated art faculty and great facilities at the school.

There’s not much chance he’ll follow in his dad’s footsteps down the illustration path. He’s more interested in installations, video and performance art. But maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t want him beating me out of any jobs. Despite his leanings toward conceptual and abstract art, he can still draw like hell.

Academic stuff

posted: December 2, 2009

Some people can multi-task by doing several different things at once to accomplish multiple goals. I’m only capable of uni-tasking by doing one thing at a time which can be used for multiple purposes. Such was the case for this illustration. Initially, I wanted to do a piece for the Drawger Security Code Show hosted by Scott Bakal, where you can bring to life those weird 8-letter code words you have to type in. Then I thought I’d get some mileage out of it by donating it to the Members Open at the Society of Illustrators. Proceeds from the sale of the artwork go to the Family Center’s Art Therapy Family Support Program. The show opens tonight from 6-8 p.m.

New Stuff

posted: November 2, 2009

I posted an article back in April 2007 about “Icons + Altars”, a fundraising exhibition at the New Art Center in Newton, MA. (You can see it here). I like to participate when I have time because I can stretch out artistically and try new approaches, usually in three dimensions. (I have a latent need to build things). And it’s always fun to create something within inherently broad parameters.  So this article is about the two most recent pieces I did for the show.

My concept for “Birdhouse” loosely relates to a book called Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg. In it, the author makes a compelling case that birds and other animals have much more intelligence and “emotional depth” than we have given them credit for. She trained an African gray parrot that had a vocabulary of 100 words, could add numbers and sound out words  and understood concepts like  bigger, smaller, more, fewer and none.

 I used an actual book as the roof of the house to symbolize knowledge. The bird house is covered with pages from a book, inside and out. The two illustrations on the roof combine the elements of books and birds. The right side of the roof opens and the nesting material is shredded pages from a book. There are also two plastic birds that chirp, one poking its head out the front and another inside.

This next piece was for last year’s 15th Annual Exhibit. I wanted to do something that incorporated the number 15 in it. As I was playing around with my materials, I thought that I could also turn the work into a tribute to one of my favorite artists, Jim Dine. The objects are nestled in the cut-out pages of a book. I wonder what’s up with the book theme the last two years. How either of these projects relates to icons or altars, ummm, you have to use your imagination. I guess you could say books are iconic! So if you happen to be in the Boston area on Friday, November 13th, you’re invited to the opening.

Icons Altars

posted: October 4, 2009

Here are two prints from a fun project that I’ve been working on this year. My good friend and illustrator/fine artist Julia Talcott converted an outbuilding on her property in Newton, MA into a printmaking studio with an apartment above it. She organized a group of local artists that she knew for the purpose of producing a suite or edition of prints based on a theme that we, as a group, would decide upon. Fellow Drawgerite Leo Espinosa was involved initially, and it was his fervent desire to not be limited by a theme. So he came up with the title for the edition: “(Un)Limited.” The group then decided that we still needed something to tie all the prints together so, inspired by a print on Julia’s studio wall, we agreed to all work at consistent dimensions and to use the same two colors, red and blue. Six artists contributed to the edition, each producing anywhere from 1 to 3 different images. The edition is 15, so everyone had to print 15 copies of each of their images. We are looking into exhibition opportunities.

For (Un)Limited, I relished the opportunity to do work that was not client-directed but would allow me to follow my aesthetic impulses wherever they wanted to go. After sketching out various concepts, I had the idea to do a series of images combining yoga positions and snakes. The intent was to create visual metaphors that would juxtapose the beauty and suppleness of the human body with the equally supple and graceful reptilian form. While most of the participants did woodcuts, I chose to do my prints in the intaglio process so that I could achieve a certain level of detail. Julia does not have etching facilities at her studio, so I worked with drypoint on a plexiglass plate, rather than the traditional acid-etched zinc plate. It was a time-consuming process, much more difficult and less spontaneous than simply drawing on a piece of paper, but the discipline of working this way was interesting to me. I plan to continue doing prints for this series, but not necessarily  editioning them all. Another Drawgerite, the great Rob Dunlavey created three beautiful images for the edition. He also posted some pictures of the artists at work on Flickr. Here’s the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robdunlavey/sets/72157615005253831/

New Stuff

Recent Articles

Topics

Archive

Portfolio (13)

Portraits (13)

Children's Books (24)

Icons + Altars (7)

Witschonke is teaching at TutorMill, an online mentoring site for students of illustration!