Three Ridiculous Wishes

"Three Ridiculous Wishes" is a French fairytale from the late 1600s by Charles Perrault, as well as the basis for a recent assignment with the Cobblestone group. Long story short, a down-on-his-luck woodcutter is granted three wishes by Zeus (aka Jupiter) and ends up using them inadvertently and foolishly while arguing with his wife at home about the mere existence of these wishes. On the second wish he accidentally wishes for a stifling sausage or black pudding upon his wife's nose (depending on the version) and when all hell breaks loose he finally concedes that he must use his third and final wish to restore his wife back to normal.

Frontier Kids: Appleseeds Magazine

Had a lot of fun with this illustration so I decided to share it here. In the March issue of Appleseeds magazine the assignment called for a vertical full spread illustration to accompany some informational copy about what life was like for kids on the western frontier and what kind of chores it would have involved. We decided the image should of course depict many of the chores for boys and girls mentioned in the text (chopping wood, tending to animals/gardens, chasing vermin, etc.) as well as be something that would work in a long vertical format.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a serious affinity for the era of American westward expansion. Really, I have an affinity for any era, but the old West stands out to me because of the visuals - it was untamed rolling landscapes of plains, mountains, grasslands, lakes, forests, and deserts engulfing the tiny people and families who endured the hardships in hopes of new beginnings. For this illustration, I wanted to go the opposite, meaning make the kids seem bigger than life against the landscape as if they're overcoming it rather than being defeated by it. Of course once you think about larger than life figures on the western frontier, you immediately think of Thomas Hart Benton, right??

I used Benton as inspiration for this assignment, especially in the way that he composed his murals around the hard right angles of architecture (see image below.) I knew I had to deal with a rectangular box of some sort in the middle of my composition, so it just made sense. From there it was just about adding a modern children's illustration touch to it to help bring to life the text.

Kids on the Frontier

Design and layout by Appleseeds Magazine

Thomas Hart Benton

Charles Goodyear

Here's a cropped portion of an upcoming illustration of Charles Goodyear accidentally discovering the process of vulcanization. Experimented with using more crosshatching on this one than I normally would to give it that look that art reproductions had during the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Happy Fourth of July 2010

Did this little doodle for fun. Acrylic with pencil, 5x7. Also, while you're feeling patriotic today please enjoy this crazy rendition of The Stars and Stripes Forever played out on a single guitar by Chet Atkins. It was originally arranged by a Guy van Duser and I imagine there's only a small percent of super adept guitarists that can play it with such articulation. It's got the melody, bassline, even the very recognizable piccolo part. John Philip Sousa, are you seeing this??

Dueling Skate Decks

My two skate decks entitled "This Town Ain't Big Enough" are complete and will be on view along with many others starting this Saturday until the end of May in Lakewood. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a love for history in general - the Old West being one of my favorite periods - so this particular image was fun for me to develop.

I thought I'd share my process on this one. The idea began with two tiny, tiny thumbnails that resolved the basic composition and major shapes and lines. After developing the drawing further using reference material from the period, I transferred the gist of it onto the decks via grid drawing. Moving into the acrylic stage, I worked in varying layers of transparency and opacity, gradually building up the values and intensities. Originally I had planned to paint an opaque background on each deck but when I realized the wood surface was a very complementary touch I let it be, even at the cost of exposing pencil construction lines that had already been sealed in. For the majority of both paintings I used only ultramarine and burnt sienna along with gesso. A touch of cadmium red and yellow ochre highlight a few small areas.


Update: 5.02.09

The show opened tonight with a great turnout! Thanks to Keith Corocan for putting everything together and doing up the space nicely. For those of you in the greater Cleveland area, the show will run until about the end of the month.