“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
– Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
The Meaning of Life 2.0
A new sketch made its way into my sketchbook the other day. Inspired by Auguste Rodin’s Thinker sculpture, here is a robot contemplating the meaning of life while sitting on top of a pile of discarded technology.
Our society today eats up the latest technology at a voracious pace. As soon as the next version of something comes out, whether it is a computer system, a smart phone, software, or music playing device, people just HAVE to have it even if their previous device still works and serves them well. How depressing it must be for a robot who comes to this realization.
Now excuse me, I think I hear my rotary phone ringing…
By the way, it has been awhile since my last Drawn & Quoted column (2012 – yikes). If you’d like to see more of these from the past, feel free to CLICK HERE!
A couple of weeks ago I shared with you the fact that Paul Coker Jr. drew me into his story in the August 2016 issue of MAD Magazine. He later gifted me with the original art which I received two weeks ago. Since he poked fun of my Disney past (CLICK here to see Paul’s version of me), I thought I’d make him a thank you “card” that was Disney themed. So, it was time to draw the fellas again – Mickey, Donald and Goofy.
I liked how the finished piece turned out, so I thought I’d take you through four of the major steps in creating the painting.
STEP 1: Sketch the Image
I tend to sketch out all my illustrations on my Cintiq monitor. I draw with a stylus right on the screen using Photoshop. I am a sloppy sketcher. Lots of extraneous lines come out of my pen as I look for the right shapes. Quite frankly, when it is a piece just for me, I don’t need to be any neater. I know where I’m going with it. If I am working on something for a client, I would likely clean up the sketch by going over it one more time to make it less sketchy.
A few sketchy characters.
STEP 2: Underpainting
Well, before I start the underpainting, I need to transfer the art from the computer to actual watercolor paper. I print out the drawing in black so it is nice and dark, and I put it on a lightbox to trace it onto the final paper. It is at this time where I draw nice clean lines, and I finesse the drawing a little by making little tweaks to improve it.
Once the pencil drawing is on the paper, I did a purple underpainting of all the shadows. This is a little thing I picked up from Jack Davis who just passed away this week. (CLICK HERE to see the eulogy I wrote for the National Cartoonists Society’s website.) The idea is to let the purple do all the hard work of creating the shading when I lay down the colors in thin layers later.
It’s kind of neat to see them in this monochromatic stage, but this is just one step in their quest for color.
STEP 3: Upperpainting
This is simply picking the final colors and painting them down quickly over the purple underpainting. I say “quickly” because A. you don’t want the paint to streak by drying before you can continue the color, and B. if you linger too long, you will start to smear the purple underpainting and get a muddy mess.
Almost done. Colors are in place, but now for some final touches.
STEP 4: Final Details
This final step involved using colored pencils to give the characters an outline which tightens them up, and I added colored pencil here and there to accentuate the shadows and to create highlights. Very rarely did I use white. In most cases, the highlights were created with lighter shades of purple, pink, blue, etc.
Here are the fellas all finished with colored pencil and a little paint splatter tossed on for interest.
So, there you have it – a super quick tutorial on how to create an appealing piece of art in a relatively short period of time. The more you do it, the less time it takes. Also, this fast technique creates a certain loose quality to the art which gives it more energy.
A few years ago, I was hired to create a portrait of Noah that was to be used as Noah’s profile picture on Facebook. Yes, you read that right. Noah was going to join Facebook.
Answers in Genesis, the organization in Kentucky behind the Creation Museum in Petersburg, had announced back then that they were going to build a full-scale replica of Noah’s ark. I was told by the ad agency hiring me that they wanted to set up a Facebook page for Noah where he could talk about the new Ark Encounter theme park, and answer questions from kids and the like. Well, tomorrow the Ark Encounter opens in Williamstown, Kentucky after all these years of planning and building. I’ve seen pictures, and think it looks pretty neat!
Sadly, I don’t think Noah ever joined Facebook. I never saw this portrait used there as it was meant to have been. So, five years after having painted him, it is time to let him “out of the ark” so to speak. His look is based on photos of Noah mannequins on display in the Creation Museum, but hopefully with a little more life and a twinkle in his eye. (Museum mannequins tend to creep me out a bit.)
This Noah was created with watercolor paint and colored pencils, just as they would have used back in Noah’s day. Well, maybe not EXACTLY like back then, but certainly no digital art methods were used back then.
Actually, come to think of it, it makes sense that they would have had WATERcolors available. (rimshot)
I know what you are thinking, and no, the dove is not trying to stick the branch in Noah’s ear.
The other day in a weird burst of thought, it occurred to me that Vikings must have had cats for pets. They were a seafaring people, and with all that fish around, surely there had to be cats. Maybe the cats enjoyed plundering and pillaging little mouse villages, too – who knows?
One thing is for sure – after a hard day’s work of marauding, a tired Viking would probably enjoy putting his soggy feet up by a fire and exercise his sensitive side by petting a purring kitty as he drifts off to a Norse dreamland.
The ferocious Viking and his trusty kitty in tune with the purr of the sea.
Welcome back to work after the long holiday weekend! You know that’s where you are as you read this. You were too busy relaxing and having fun over the Memorial Day holiday to bother keeping up with Facebook and other such time wasters on the net. We all know that’s what the first hour or two back at work is for anyway!
While others may be dragging in grumpy about leaving behind their weekend experiences to sit under the lulling pulsating hum of fluorescent lights and in the warm gentle glow of a computer screen with the hint of weak coffee in the air, take this opportunity to be the optimistic happy cat in the bunch.
There’s always one.
As for me, I’m at the beach today. My smile is genuine.
This year the National Cartoonists Society is having their annual Reuben Awards convention weekend in good ol’ Memphis, Tennessee. As part of the festivities, members were asked to create some Memphis-themed art that could be used for several purposes:
Decorations on the tables during the awards dinner.
Art to be used by a Memphis travel bureau to help promote the attractions of the city.
The choice was obvious – since Memphis is the home of Elvis (which is all I really knew it for, having never been to the city in my life), I chose to illustrate the Memphis Zoo with a slight nod to Elvis, of course. I present to you The King of the Beasts.
King of the Beasts
While this is not quite a velvet Elvis painting, it is a real painting nonetheless. I procrastinated a little in creating it, but ultimately decided it’s now or never. To ease your suspicious mind, I broke out my long-unused gouache paints, some of which needed a little reconstitution with the aid of some Kentucky rain. Basically the paints needed a little less conversation, a little more action. The only part created digitally are the words, so there is a nice painting there for one lucky bidder TONIGHT! Sales are final in benefit of the sick kids – bidders can’t return to sender.
Yes, that last paragraph was a little corny, but please don’t be cruel with your comments.
Today I thought I would use my abilities to indulge my secondary interest in filmmaking, which is film music. I enjoy film music so much that there is a whole category for it here on the ol’ blog.
I saw Disney’s new version of The Jungle Book on its opening weekend three weeks ago and was completely mesmerized. It has to be a pretty tough gig to take a beloved Disney animated feature, and create a new version of it that is live action, er, animated as well. Director Jon Favreau did a fantastic job of making something old new again not only with the story, but with the eye-popping visuals.
Aiding the visuals in a huge way was the music by veteran composer John Debney. The original Jungle Book was charming in large part because of the music that aided the storytellers. John skillfully wrote a beautiful jungle score of his own that immediately captures your attention, and then audibly gives the audience a nostalgic thrill by weaving in some of the well-loved songs from the original movie. It was enchanting.
It struck me that this was the fourth feature film collaboration between director and composer. Jon Favreau and John Debney first worked together on 2003’s Elf (a personal favorite Christmas movie), 2005’s Zathura, Iron Man 2 in 2010, and now The Jungle Book. Each outing has proven that they make beautiful music together.
I was so enamored with their latest collaboration that I felt compelled to get it down on paper. Ironically, I celebrate their digital masterpiece by using the traditional art tools of watercolor, gouache, and colored pencils. May I present to you, The Two Jons/Johns:
Jon Favreau as King Louie dancing in the jungle with frequent musical collaborator John Debney as Baloo.
I for one can’t wait to see what their next project together will yield, but you can be sure it will be a swingin’ good time!
Oh, by the way, this is the second time I have illustrated John Debney. The first time was when he worked on one of Jon Favreau’s earlier films Iron Man 2. If you’d like to see that painting, CLICK HERE!
Today is the British monarch’s 90th birthday. She is longest reigning monarch in Great Britain’s history, and the first sovereign to reach the age of 90. I wish her all the happiness one can possibly have with a life as public as her own.
Her Royal Highness
Believe it or not, I do happen to have my own Queen Elizabeth story. A few years back I was working on a TV show for Disney called My Friends Tigger & Pooh. It was a CG (computer generated) series that ran for two seasons on the Disney Channel, and became notorious for eliminating Christopher Robin and replacing him with a little girl named Darby (voiced by a very young Chloë Moretz).
As we were preparing the first season to air, we were told that an aide to Queen Elizabeth had called the head of the Disney Channel to voice an opinion on behalf of the queen. “Queen Elizabeth understands that the new Winnie the Pooh series does not include Christopher Robin. The Queen is not amused.” Apparently Queen Elizabeth had a certain fondness for Pooh Bear because, like the queen, he had also been born in 1926 when his first book was published. Queen Elizabeth and Pooh grew up together.
So, due to that phone call, we included Christopher Robin in just a couple of episodes to appease her royal highness.
