Throwback Thursday #20 – Old Man at the Door

“Old Man at the Door”, children’s book illustration, color pencil, 2004.

In 2004 I was 25 and a friend of mine studying Early Childhood Education asked me if I could illustrate a children’s book she wrote for one of her classes. The story is an odd little tale called The Pancake Story, a story passed down to her in her family. Having had some interest in illustration, especially children’s book illustration, I loved working on this project. It was the first time I ever actually attempted to illustrate a story and I think it planted a seed in my brain to do children’s book illustration.

With this kind of artwork, any medium imaginable will do. I first sketched out rough ideas in my sketchbook to decide how the scenes would look. Then I roughed out a scene in pencil and then inked it with a dip pen and india ink. I’m not sure why, but I chose color-pencil as my medium for color and I am really happy with how it turned out.

Throwback Thursday #19 – Crumbling

“Crumbling”, ink & pencil, 2003

I graduated college in 2002 and the best way to describe those years after is me being lost. I had no significant other, I had nothing going in the way of my career; I kind of knew I wanted to be an artist but of the many divergent roads art can take you I didn’t have anything really pulling me one way or the other.

I did, however, start experimenting with different drawing mediums and in different styles. It was sometime around here when I really started trying a dip pen with India Ink and discovered a huge love of ink drawing (previously I had really only used ball point pens, or at best, fine liners) and then I fell in love with the brush pen. I also started exploring doing non-cartoon fine art a little more on my own. This takes a lot of self initiative when you’re no longer in school and being assigned to try things. In drawings such as this one done in 2003, when I was 24, I really challenged myself to try and capture my current emotions in my artwork and create a more profound, finished piece of work (99% of all my drawing had been just doodling in school notebooks or the backs of assignments).

It’s hard to really pinpoint where some things really got started, but at this point I was finding more and more the kinds of art that really inspired me. I took a new interest in surrealistic art like MC Escher and Salvador Dali, I was always listening to techno and trance music and was drawn to “trippy” art. I really liked art that juxtaposed realistic situations with the surrealistic and made a powerful statement at the same time. In “Crumbling” I was trying to illustrate this lonely state I was in and then feeling rejected at the same time.

 

Throwback Thursday #18 – Scary Town: Presence in the Room

“Scary Town: Presence in the Room” 5 of 10, lithograph, 2002.

In 2001 and 2002 I was enrolled in lithography classes at Mesa State College (now Colorado Mesa University) I abhorred the class the 1st semester I took it. The laborious process of sanding down a stone and inking it up and especially having to draw with special wax pencils was just not my cup of tea. The second semester I took of lithography, when I was 22, I started to get the hang of it and was producing a little better art. I was really inspired once I got the idea to do a series called “Scary Town”; each image an illustration from a supposedly true scary story told to me by close friends. Most of the stories were from one girl I knew and all of her stories were about the town she grew up in (hence, “Scary Town”) This particular piece was from a story she told me about spending the night at friend’s house when she was a little girl. One night she could clearly sense a presence hovering over her as she slept. The details are a bit fuzzy now, but I think she could hear this thing breathing just over her face.

 

 

Throwback Thursday #17 – Desire (Ann Sothern)

“Desire” (Ann Sothern), charcoal, 2001

In my college drawing classes we had a weekly drawing assignment (much like we did in High School). Most of the time the professor would give a word; some concept, to draw. This drawing was my charcoal rendering of the word “Desire”. It was in 2001 when I was 22 and even though the internet was there and even Google at that time, most of us still scoured magazines for drawing reference photos. (Maybe because Google hadn’t yet come up with their Image Search). I can’t remember now if this picture of 1930’s actress Ann Sothern represented Desire to me in her expression, or because she’s a pretty woman which invokes desire in me. Hmmm.

 

I found the original image online