Final Piece

My client is one Eric Posman, a producer for ESPN and a sports writer.  Posman [...]]]> I just finished a commission that pushed and challenged my creative and technical skill set, and I outwitted my inner critic!  Here is the piece.  Keep reading to see how and why I created this piece.

Final Piece

The Client

My client is one Eric Posman, a producer for ESPN and a sports writer.  Posman came to me with a photograph of his children looking out a window of a high rise hotel in NYC.  His request?  He wanted a piece of work showing his children looking out into a fantastic world that reflects today’s culture with a twist towards the children and the incredible possibilities of their futures.  Sounds fun!  Sounds hard…

The Process

Brainstorming

I started this project with my trusty mind-mapping technique (fig A).  I fist made a list of nouns that refer to New York, today’s children, movies, books, and cultural icons.  I then did a free drawing that I am, quite honestly a little embarrassed to post here as it is very infantile, but it was so much fun to draw!  It also allowed my mind a chance to think visually. I really enjoyed it as a brainstorming activity, and I think I will incorporate it more often into my planning stages (fig B).

fig. A The Mindmap for Posman Project

Reference Collecting

From there, I began to collect references of New York and other characters and images that crept into my brainstorming sessions.  All-in-all, I collected over 60 different photo references some of which added to the ideas already conceived and some of them changed my ideas completely.

Thumbnails

My next step was to devise a composition or layout plan for the piece (figs C, D, E, F).  I completed several different thumbnail sketches that would have made my grad school professors cringe…  Thank goodness I wasn’t graded

Fig C

Fig D

Fig E

Fig F

Preliminary Drawing

After choosing the thumbnail I liked the best, I began my preliminary drawing incorporating the thumbnail, the references, and the results from the brainstorming sessions.  I drafted the drawing to size at 20″ x 16″.  I then made a few modifications with overlapping tracing paper.  It was at the point I was ready to meet with Posman again.  I wanted to get his take on the direction I was heading.  I also wanted to pick his brain about his children’s likes and dislikes.  Eric Posman was able to help draft the drawing in it’s final stages.

Preliminary Dawing

The Final Piece

Finally I was able to mock up the final piece in a digital collage combining my drawings, my references, and digital painting with my Wacom tablet.  This step is not one that I often use, but it made sense with the amount of information and imagery going on within this one piece.  I used this step as well to prepare a color plan for the final painting.

Color Planning Digitally painted

NOw for the final Art!!  Wooo Hooo!

After all of these steps, I finally get to paint the picture.  I first redraw the entire scene on Clayboard in pencil and then I inked the board.  After allowing the ink to dry, I sprayed the board with a healthy dose of Krylon Crystal Clear to seal the ink.  I painted the images with many different painting techniques, including wet-on-wet, glazing and dry brush.  After the paint dried, I reinked some of the areas.  The piece was finished with a protective coating.

Drum roll please….

Final Piece

I think I would have gotten an A+ on this guy!  Thank you for the challenge, Mr Posman.  Let’s do it again sometime!

Pat's New Artwork

Pat’s Rooster is a heavily textured acrylic painting with decorative sides measuring 12 in. x 12 in.  The texture is built from magazine pages, paper pulp, and Light Modeling Paste.  This piece was commissioned by Pat Turner in Americus, Georgia.

I can honestly say that I have painted more roosters this [...]]]>

Pat's New Artwork

Pat’s Rooster is a heavily textured acrylic painting with decorative sides measuring 12 in. x 12 in.  The texture is built from magazine pages, paper pulp, and Light Modeling Paste.  This piece was commissioned by Pat Turner in Americus, Georgia.

I can honestly say that I have painted more roosters this year than I thought was possible!  SO me being me, I had to push the envelope with this guy.  Pat Turner has been one of the most inspiring and loving mentors in my life. She has always kept her inner child very happy while teaching and influencing countless students, family friends, and foster children.  She loves all things authentic and infused with love, so that is how I created Pat’s Rooster.

I infused this piece with all of the fun and love I possibly could reminding myself constantly not to take myself too seriously and to explore as much as I could.  I built up the texture on the bottom half of the piece with black and white photographs of women and their daughters embracing.  As I ripped the pages out and shredded them, I thought of Pat’s daughter Mattie and the love they shared.  I added paper pulp as the texture for the top portion of the background.  Playing with paper pulp reminds me of being a little kid and making homemade paper in arts & crafts class, so including it in this piece was a way to invite my inner child to play as well. I used bright vivid colors as is often characteristic of my work, and I also added playful decorative details on the edges of the 2″ gallery canvas.

Playful Decorative Sides

As with every piece of artwork I create for someone, I took into consideration Pat’s likes and her personality to create a piece specifically for her.  In the great scheme of things, Pat was again a mentor to me just by asking me to do a piece for her.  I was able to channel the “Patness” which has influenced my work in a very real and wonderful way.

The Portrait of 230 Horne Street

This piece measures 20 in x 18 in.  It is drawn with archival sepia ink on a natural 80lb Strathmore paper.  Their are subtle highlights added with white Prismacolor pencils.

This original drawing was commissioned by Charlotte Cotton, who also happens to be my mother   This [...]]]>

The Portrait of 230 Horne Street

This piece measures 20 in x 18 in.  It is drawn with archival sepia ink on a natural 80lb Strathmore paper.  Their are subtle highlights added with white Prismacolor pencils.

This original drawing was commissioned by Charlotte Cotton, who also happens to be my mother   This is the house I was raised in.  This is the house that my single mother bought by herself.  This is the house that is tied to all of my childhood memories, and this is the house that will soon be sold to some other family.  It is enough to make my heart ache with sweet nostalgia. Gone are the days when my only responsibilities were washing the dishes or cooking dinner for our hard-working Mama. The days of birthday sleepovers of 15 girls and Jeff (my poor male cousin), the days of after school porch parties, the days of laying out in our bathing suits in the front yard – they are all merely memories now.