Peter and the Starcatcher Poster

Some of you may be familiar with the Peter and the Starcatchers series of books by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Well, the story has been turned into a play that recently closed it's run on Broadway and is now being staged in other parts of the country. I had the luxury of picking a play to illustrate from several of the plays on the Pioneer Theater Company schedule for next season and this was among those on the list. I guess being old (or at least having a long track record working with the theater) has it's perks. It was a tough choice between  this and The Crucible but Peter ultimately won out.

For this one, I went through an unusually high number of comps before we settled on the winning design. At times this can be frustrating, because personally, I felt that they were all visually compelling and any one of the designs could work. But, I have learned over the years that the client is the one that has to be happy and I am hired to make that happen. Here's a run down of the idea sketches:

The theater wanted to play on the pirate idea, so the first two were pretty straight forward pirate cliche scenes with a nod to N.C. Wyeth.

 Idea three hinged on the "magic flying dust" that is being transported via old fashioned steamer trunk. I thought it would be fun to focus on that aspect of the story since everyone in the play wants to get their hands on it. That idea was liked except the creative director wanted more of a focus on the pirate ship.

 So the next idea I had was to do a split screen of sorts with the top of the ship above the water and the hull being shown below the water. The twist was to show the hull as a pirate skull. Great idea right? I love this one and will probably finish a version like this for fun, but the theater thought is was a little much. "Just a regular hull" was the directive, so back to the drawing board.

After decapitating the skull from the ship, it was obvious that there was something lacking in that big empty space. It needed a little magic, so I decided to let the sky full of stars filter down underneath the water. I intended to leave the area open for the title treatment, when I thought to myself, "why not do your own hand lettering?" Having done a few projects over the years with my own lettering, I decided to give it a shot. 

I came up with a nice "piratey" style that feels like it could have washed right up on treasure map. The theater loved it and agreed to bump up my fee to cover the hand done type. Moral of the story, if you happen to get an idea or two shot down, keep after it and find a way to make it your own. If I had not decided to tackle the lettering myself, I doubt I would be feeling so good about the final result. Who knows, maybe I will get more chances to do hand lettering after this.

Monster Sketches

I'm working on a fun project that includes a poster and eventually a complete board game. Client has given me really good creative freedom that sparked the characters I came up with. I'm looking forward to populating the project with these guys in all sorts of fun situations. I'll keep you posted on the fun as I go along.

Sugar Bean Sisters Sketches

Creating art for theater is always fun because the variety of stories is ever changing. I have had the opportunity to do numerous play and opera posters and I never get tired of it. Something about the blank slate and the open possibilities inspires me. I am currently working on a poster for a Footlight Players Theater in Charleston, South Carolina for their upcoming production of The Sugar Bean Sisters. The play focuses on two spinster sisters who live in a shack in the swampland of Florida. One pines for a husband while the other anxiously awaits the aliens to return and take her away. After a discussion with the theater director about poster concepts, it was decided that the poster should include elements of the UFO as well as the swamp locale. I set to work and these four sketches were submitted to the client. Ultimately they settled on sketch four, which happily was my favorite as well. I'll post the final when I finish.

Some Bird Drawings

I am working on a little easy reader project for an educational publisher dealing with different birds and where they lay their eggs. Here are a couple of the drawings.

I have been quite busy lately and as usual, the blog suffers. Hopefully things will get back to routine soon.

Boys' Life Poster Ideas

Boys' Life Poster Idea 1

Poster Idea 2

Poster Idea 3

Here are three ideas I submitted for a Boys' Life commemorative poster I am working on. The concept was to celebrate the outdoor aspect of scouting and to have the magazine plainly in view as the scout enjoys an outdoor adventure (#3 is less obvious as he holds the mag rolled in his hand). I liked both 1 and 2 but they liked idea #2 the best, so I will now be working up more involved sketches based on that idea as well as scheduling a photo shoot. I'll have to locate the right age and look of model with a full uniform. Should not be too hard with all the scouts in my neighborhood.

Rebirth of an Unused Concept Sketch

Heart Girl-  12" x 16" Mixed Media/Acrylic

In a post last week, Amy mentioned that the concept sketch for my Songs of Power book cover looked a lot like another one of my later paintings. She was correct. I used the drawing as the basis for a painting I did for Love Communications. They used it on their website and also printed a five foot tall version for their office lobby.

Concept sketch from the Songs of Power cover project

I thought I'd show you how that sketch eventually became another painting. That is one thing about doing numerous idea sketches.Even if you don't end up using an idea at the time, there is no telling where that idea or composition might turn up later.

Revised drawing that was used for the above painting

I keep a file of all my sketches and refer back to them from time to time to see if there is a gem in there that has gone unused. I may have posted this image before, but even if I have, it's worth a look alongside the sketch that inspired it.