Wayback Wednesday: Tylinter

I've been bad about Wayback Wednesday, I know. Hopefully I'll bank another couple of months to carry me through summer convention season. Things have been busy, and that's good, but it also gets in the way.

That said, here's today's installment. After Geauga Lake wrapped for the season, I tried freelancing for a couple of months. It didn't take. I didn't have the experience or the track record to make it work. A few years later, though, things obviously changed. But, until then, I found a job at The News-Herald, where I started off as a production artist. One of my co-workers there needed a caricature done of the owner of the Tylinter company in Mentor. (I think he was the owner. It's been a while. He may have just been a higher-up.) They were having a party, and it was to be his gift.

This is one of my first freelance assignments. I remember after the party, my friend said "His wife loved it. She said that she guessed it had cost a thousand dollars."

It hadn't. I'd charged $35. I was just starting out, didn't know what to charge, and priced what I thought was fair. I considered it a fancy amusement park caricature. Now, his wife was wrong about what I could have charged. I don't think this was a four-figure piece, but I probably could have charged more. It was a lesson in pricing. And trust me, if you want one now, it will cost you more.

But, I wasn't upset. I charged what I thought I should and got it. I was happy with that. And it was my first step on a journey that led me here to this studio. No looking back, only looking forward.

Wayback Wednesdays: Elephants and Whales and Rhinos, oh my!

Like most stories, this one starts with a girl. I was dating her during the summer of '91. I was working doing some signage at Just Closeouts, and that was the extent of my art work that summer. I wasn't particular satisfied, job-wise. So, even in my personal work, the apathy lead to hacking. It wan't bad, but it wasn't inspire, either.

My then-girlfriend asked me to draw an elephant for a friend of hers at work. The lady really liked elephants, I guess. But my girlfriend, picking up on what I'd been saying, said "You can just hack it out."

See, that's a line. I get to say that I hack. Nobody else gets to. She didn't mean anything by it, I'm sure, but the result was a Shakabuku moment. I decided to up my game, just out of irritation. I've got this theory that the "why" you do something isn't always as important as the "what". Sometimes I work out because I want to, sometimes because I have to, but the important part is that you work out, right?

So I went to the library and got some childrens' books, leading to my conversation with the section's librarian:

Librarian (noticing I was an adult with no kids with him): Can I help you?
Me: I'm looking for books on elephants.
Librarian: Are you looking for something in a… remedial… reading level?
Me: No, I'm looking for something with lots of pictures.

You kids today don't realize how great you have it with your internets and your Google image searches.

Later, armed with two kids books on elephants, I had this. It's really atypical for me. It's inked with rapidiograph, not brush. It's got an angular, almost scratchy, style that's not like me. I was really happy with it. I used it on promotional postcards for a few years later, and it's one of the rare pieces from art school that I can look at and not wince.

The work friend liked it. The girlfriend liked it. And then she broke up with me the next month. But that's another story altogether, and one which doesn't need exploring at this juncture.

I was happy enough with the elephant art that I did a couple more in the "series". I drew a whale for the next one (which I colored for a Kubert assignment), and did a rhino for a third. When I did the rhino illustration, though, it felt uninspired again. The pose and the style was becoming repetitive. So, I moved on to other things, but had a new style to tuck into my toolbox.

Wayback Wednesdays: Sweet Baby James

When I was at the Kubert School, one of my least favorite classes was caricature. I just didn't think that I was very good at it. I did get good enough that, in a bout of cosmic irony, my first job out of art school was doing caricatures at the Geauga Lake Amusement Park. And doing live caricatures at parties and events has been a chunk of my income ever since.

This was a third-year assignment in caricature class. We had to take a famous person and merge them with an object. I don't remember my other classmates' concepts, but mine was to take James Taylor and blend him with a musical note.

I picked Sweet Baby James for a few reasons. I really like his music, and had just seen him in concert in New York City at the Paramount Theatre (and he rocked!) so he was on my mind. But, in those pre-internet days, getting visual reference was always a hassle. You had to buy these things called magazines and books, rather than Google image search a name.

Stone knives and bearskins, I tell you.

And since I was a fan of James, I had a few CDs that I could use as reference.

This is one of the rare pieces from art school that holds up well. I really like the inking on the face, and the sharp lines on his bottom jaw that really get the angles on his face. The dimensional musical notes are pretty good, I think the font works well, and the rainbow music staff adds some needed color. The only thing that bothers me is the 4/4 signature that's a little off. Odd that the lettering, always my strong suit, would be the weak thing on this one.

And if you ever get a chance to see James Taylor in concert, especially if it's an outdoor venue like Blossom Music Center here in Ohio (about which he supposedly wrote "Got your baby/Got your blanket/Got your bucket of beer" in That's Why I'm Here) do go. He's just amazing.

Wayback Wednesdays: Fish

Here's a poster-sized piece I did in my second year of art school. As I recall, the assignment was to draw something with multiple animals. I've always liked fish, so I did those. The piece was done in Dr. Martin Watercolor Dyes on a 20x30 piece of illustration board. I used to really like working wet like this. I remember being pretty happy with this piece, but looking at it now, I think it needs much more contrast. Maybe some of the inks faded in the intervening years.

Wayback Wednesday: The Pajama Game

I was a pretty driven kid, all things considered. I've known all my life I wanted to be a cartoonist. And I actually made sure to take assignments to teach myself to draw on a deadline. I took jobs that I didn't necessarily want to do, or weren't in my wheelhouse, just to train better. Doing a more realistic style wasn't my strong suit, but I tried it here on my high school musical's poster for The Pajama Game.

Design-wise, and especially on the logo, I think I did pretty well. In actual drawing, oh Lordy is there a lot to wince at. Bad figures, deformed faces, steroid-induced bodies. But you get better by doing, right?

I also was in the stage crew for that musical, which was a lot of fun, and I wished that I had done that sooner. I waited until I was a senior and had a girlfriend in the cast to get involved. But I loved my time on that show, and still have one of the sewing machine pieces (lovingly referred to as the Satan Desks) that I designed for the show here in my house. I can't bring myself to get rid of it.