New Murder Mystery Cover Sketches

Revised rough sketch as approved

I'm working on a new murder mystery book cover and thought I would give a sneak peek at the cover sketch process.

You may remember the cover art a year or so ago for "Murder on the Bucket List". This was the first book in what was hoped to be a series of mysteries involving a group of seasoned older ladies. Well, the book apparently did well enough to merit a sequel and so I get to do this cover as well.

Rough sketch options

This one called Murder Under the Covered Bridge. The opening scenes involve a period photo shoot and the protagonists discovering a body on the banks of a river spanned by a classic New England covered bridge. I came up with four possible solutions from which the client selected one. I did a revision of the idea to better accommodate the type treatment and it was approved. I'll be working up the final drawing and art next and will post the final art when it is finished up.

Alabama Story

I recently finished another piece of art for Pioneer Theater. This one for a new play that will have it's world premier this fall called Alabama Story written by Kenneth Jones. The plot revolves around a little known incident (at least I had not been aware of ) that happened in Alabama during the racial tension of the late 1950's.

In 1958,  Garth Williams, famously the illustrator for Charlotte's Web and the Little House on the Prairie books, wrote and illustrated a charming little tale of two rabbits who frolic together and fall in love. At the end of the book the two rabbits  wed in a ceremony attended by their fellow woodland creatures. Innocent enough, right?

Well in the racially charged South, this book became the center of a firestorm because, in the book, one rabbit was white and the other was black. The book was censored and a lawsuit raised to remove the book from the state funded library system. The story revolves around a white librarian, her childhood friend who is a black man and various other lawyers and State legislators who are immersed in sorting out this murky topic.

As I began sketching the art, and admittedly before I read the script, I thought it would be fun to use the rabbits as symbols for the racial tension. Early sketches revolved around the idea of the black and white rabbits and the book that precipitated the argument. Even after I changed the setting to the library shelves, the client felt that the furry rabbit angle gave too much of an impression that this was a children's play so that idea was scrapped.

I still wanted to evoke a feeling racial tension and imply the idea that the story somehow revolved around books, so we switched to the idea of the black character and the white librarian being on opposite sides of the the divide, in this case, a stack of books. The light filtering from the left side illuminates her as she reads and the the other side is symbolically more in shadow.

After this idea was approved, I set to work. I took photos and proceeded to the final drawing and rendering. I think it turned out pretty well considering my deadline was cut about three days short due to a planned excursion with my son. I had to scramble to deliver the art before I left town which included a 2:00 am bedtime one evening. I don't enjoy the late nights and avoid them as much as possible, but sometimes the deadline just has to be met, regardless of the lack of sleep.

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.

Boys' Life Sketches

"You know the Grady house is haunted, right, Evan?" This Boys' Life fiction story opens with young Evan being scared by the boys in his neighborhood. He turns the tables on the bullies and discovers that the sound they heard was just Mr. Grady's pet monkey which needed care after the old man's accident. Evan also figures out that Mr. Grady is an interesting person and worthy of his friendship. For the opening spread, I wanted to portray the moment when the two wanna be bullies are taunting Evan to enter the house.

I came up with several idea sketches and proposed my three favorite ones to nBoys' Life art director, Scott Feaster. I usually will only present my favorite idea and then show others if the preferred one does not fly, but in this case, I was intrigued with all three and would have been fine if any of the three had been selected. The final drawing needed a little more width and more of a  dilapidated feeling was given to the house. I enlisted my son and a couple of family friends to pose for reference and then I finished up the drawing. As soon as it is approved, I will render it in color using Photoshop.

Geronimo Finished Drawing

Here is the final drawing for one of the Boys' Life illustrations I am working on. I always take my thumbnail drawings and enlarge them to use as the basis for my final drawing, adding detail and making adjustments as I work. I recently purchased a portable light table that has been very helpful in this process. For years, I created my final drawings on tracing paper right over the top of my enlarged thumbnail drawing. This allows me to retain the shape relationships, proportions and overall arrangement of elements that I carefully established in my concept sketch.

Tracing paper is a terribly non-archival surface and these drawings will probably fall apart in short order. I always figured I had the physical painting though, so I didn't worry about it.  Since I am painting more digitally these days and there is no actual painting, I decided it might be nice to have some sort of artifact from the process other than a pile of pixels on a hard drive. I am now creating more finished full value drawings which I then scan and paint over digitally in Photoshop. I am really enjoying the drawing phase of the process and like having something physical left over as a result. This drawing is on 100 pound smooth finish Bristol which, by using the light box, I can see through well enough to get guidelines from the enlarged thumbnail drawing.

Geronimo Rough Sketch

This is the approved concept sketch for a project I am doing for Boys' Life Magazine. The story follows a boy in New Mexico whose best friend belongs to Geronimo's Apache tribe at the time when they were being forced onto the reservation. This scene depicts that final fireside chat before Geronimo surrenders and a separate small band of Indians escapes into the Mexico territory.

I want to create a dramatic lighting scenario as well as an interesting color palette. Frederic Remington did a whole series of these type of night paintings that I love and I hope to capture some of that same drama in this one. I am especially interested in the capturing the balance of the interesting cool greenish grays from the moonlight against the warm oranges that the firelight throws off. We'll see what happens, but I like where it's going so far. Just took photo reference, so now on to final drawings.

Get - Frederic Remington: The Color of Night

Angel Sketches

I'm doing a piece for Angels on Earth magazine right now. I was given a sketchy outline of the article this will accompany about a woman who found herself being comforted by an angel in a field of buttercups following a car accident. The art director mentioned that sometimes the stories are deleted or altered after the art is finished, so the image needed to be more vague.

Version two is the same layout without the woman. I think the first version has more emotional and narrative heft, but I obliged the request and came up with the alternate. I am still trying to get the AD to let me do the first. What do you all think? 

A Christmas Carol - Sketch

 

I am working on a poster for Pioneer Theatre Company to promote their production of  A Christmas Carol - The Musical. I was not aware that there was a musical version of the famous Charles Dickens tale so I was immediately intrigued. There is a version of this production on DVD that stars Kelsey Grammer as Scrooge and, Jane Krakowski, Jesse L Martin, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jason Alexander. I was impressed with the lively musical numbers (by Disney's Little Mermaid song smith Alan Menken (music) and lyricist Lynn Ahrens) and it's faithfulness to the story. I submitted several sketch versions to the client and this was the one we agreed on. The challenge was to give a feeling that this is a musical production rather than the normal dramatic version, so I added musical notations to the swirls of snow to achieve this effect.  I'll post the finished version when I wrap it all up.

Rip Van Sam - Sketches

I am working on an illustration for Liberty Magazine at the moment about the "slumbering" of Protestant values in America.

 The concept is to have Uncle Sam be asleep like Rip Van Winkle with a bible in hand. Here are the four composition sketches I sent to the art director.

 I like the top one best, and they follow in descending order of preference. Each one works in its own way, and I think I would be satisfied with any one that gets selected, so I'll see what the A.D. says..

Sticking To The Thumbnail Sketch

 

Thumbnail sketch

One of the things that frustrates my students and consequently me as a teacher is how often a successful thumbnail drawing is abandoned in the sketching process. I will often look at a good thumbnail and then, when I see revised drawings, wonder what happened to the flow, design, rhythm, etc. that I remember from the first sketch  Granted, some changes may be intentional and for the better, but if you lose the essence of the thumbnail- that thing that attracted you to the design and got you excited in the first place- then you are essentially starting over.

 

I always thumbnail out my idea first, before taking any photos. This allows me to solidify in my mind things like angles,  pose, lighting and basic composition. I then use my sketch to dictate how the photo shoot goes.

 

I match my models as closely as I can to the thumbnail idea. Sometimes the photo shoot suggests other options, and it's a good idea to take those photos as well, but I rarely go into a photo shoot without solid sketches.

 

If that happens, then I am letting the camera dictate the design of my piece and not my imagination. I think my imagination is usually superior to the mindlessness of a camera, so I try to not let the camera decide things for me.

 

I also take lots of detail shots as sometimes the angles and poses in my thumbnail are not comfortable or realistic for my models to capture in real life. I use the detail shots to get the info I need. I then take my thumbnail, lay tracing paper over the top and make my final drawing using details from multiple photos. Failure to use tracing paper in this stage of the process is the downfall of many a good student thumbnail.

 

I enlarge my thumbnail and use it as the "bones" of my design. I add the details or the "muscles and skin" over the top on the tracing paper. I can still see the original design and thus I can follow it, preserving the space relationships, rhythm and compositions that I carefully created in the thumbnail sketch.

 

If I had abandoned my thumbnail during the creation of this piece, I would likely not have been as happy with the result as I am. As you can see from the photos, none of them match my drawing exactly. I had to rely on information from all the photos as well as my thumbnail to arrive at the final sketch. There were even modifications in the final painting stage that were made to reflect more accurately the vision I had in the thumbnail stage. Trust your thumbnail. It usually does not lie because, if done well, it contains the bare essence of what you hope to express.

There is a great book by Ron Schick about how Norman Rockwell used reference photos called Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera. It shows how Rockwell's process very closely mirrors what I and countless other artists use to get the information for their paintings.

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.