Santa's Special Delivery...Beer!

Here is another commercial illustration job from the 90's. It was done for the FX Matt Brewing Co. out of Utica, NY. I was given a very rough sketch of what the client wanted for their gift catalog cover. I gathered good reference and submitted a final sketch for approval before I moved on to the finished painting. Believe it or not they did not even supply me with very good reference for the Schultz & Dooley beer steins. But I was lucky that one of my brothers actually owned those mugs and so I borrowed them and set them up near my drafting table. The piece was completed in two days with gouache 12" x 18". That time frame was very typical of my deadlines for advertising work in those days.

Holiday Lights

I have been involved with an extensive project this past Fall season that required me to dig up and document all of my old illustration jobs. With 30 years behind me, this was a daunting task and I rediscovered some forgotten art. Several of these had a holiday theme which I completed for various clients. Since it is technically still the holiday season, I thought that I would show a few of them this week. This first one was done for General Electric back in the late 80's and like many of these jobs, I had to leave an area "open" for type. This was the GE holiday lighting catalog cover and when it was printed the designer used the dark blue area in the lower left for type. It was done with oil on canvas, approximate size 18" x 24".

Whale of a Demo.

This is another oil painting demo that I did in-class for a Personal Focus course at RIT. I completed this a few weeks ago and it's a portrait of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. I worked on a 12" x 16" canvas with a dark to light and thin to thick approach. Like my last post (Elvis), I worked with larger brushes and talked about thinking in terms of volume and large shapes when depicting hair. Students usually make the mistake of trying to show individual strands of hair when they tackle this problem. You will notice on this portrait of Mr. Melville that not a single strand has been rendered. It is so much fun to work this way and I love the challenge of trying to capture form with the fewest possible brushstrokes.

The Real Elvis (and not on velvet)

We just started the winter quarter at RIT last week and I realized that I had not posted any of my in-class demos from the Fall quarter. I will show several of these over the next week or so. This is an oil portrait of my all time favorite musical artist. I refer to him as the real Elvis; Elvis Costello. I have been a fan since his very first album which was released way back when I was in college. This is a "wet" oil technique that was completed on a 12 x 16 canvas panel in a few hours.

It is done with large brushes only for a more painterly look ( nothing smaller than a #4 flat hog hair bristle).