Sign In Boards

I’ve been doing a lot of Sign in Boards for weddings and celebratory events lately.  What I like about doing these drawings is each one is different and challenging due to the variety of interests each person has.  From a woman celebrating her 80th Birthday featuring her home and garden to a Kindergarden class given one as a thank you gift to their teacher..AKA the biggest BRUCE fan in the world.  They are all fun to do!                                                                         So what’s next?  Am I going to  have to draw a Boston marathoner running through a pile of Gatorade cups on their way past Fenway Park?   Opps! To late!    Just did that one last week.    

Colored Pencil vs. Watercolor

My best work is usually my rough pencil sketches.   By the time I take those sketches to finished art though, I occasionally  lose the spontaneity in the line quality.  So  to me, certain  jobs are a struggle of producing a final image that the customer wants and what is pleasing creatively. 

Often I use watercolors in my finished pieces but when it comes to doing realistic portraits (not caricatures)  I tend to frighten of their quick drying time. Basically because the art might  look ”overworked.”  That’s why colored pencils are a bit more in my comfort zone during serious commisioned portaits.  You can still overwork them but it happens more gradual and you can catch it. The problem though is something I do within an hour with watercolors might take me a full day when it comes to layering  the multiple colored pencil tones.    The attached images show a dog in watercolor (which took me about 2 hours) and a little girl portrait in colored pencils (which took me about 6.)  Maybe I should start doing 3 or 4 watercolors of the same subject instead of doing one colored pencil drawing.  It’ll take the same amount of time– the customer will get extra art and it’ll force me to get better at watercolor portraits.  I’m kidding of course because I  know that each medium offers a different finished look and has a subsequent different appeal to each customer’s individual taste.  Plus, I also like working with different material.  Except papier-mache.  That stuff is NASTY!!!

Jay Leno Uh Oh

Back in the early 90’s I was pretty ambitious. Working 30 hours a week at night while I worked 40 hours plus at the studio during the day.  All in an effort to keep my doors open and carve out a niche for myself in the Massachusetts art community.

At the time, a local radio station  (WAAF) was  located a few streets down from the office building I was in.  They were always very kind in giving me some work.  From T-shirt designs of their ”on air” personalities to POP’s signs for their “on location” booths. The drawing assignments were always something unique and fun.  One particular assignment was very small (I think I drew a speaker saying LETS ROCK!”) So instead of receiving a nominal fee, they offered me four tickets to see the stand-up comedian Jay Leno.  I was a big fan of Jay myself  long before he was on the tonight show so that was an awesome payment for me.

The day before the show, I did a pretty elaborate cariacature drawing of Jay and  then came up with the crazy idea that I might actually be able to present it to him from the radio station. (I know…pretty sneaky.)  On arrival to the concert hall an hour before the show was to begin, I went to a predetermined location to retrieve will call tickets. It was there, art in hand that I asked if I could present Jay my drawing.  A rather mean woman took it from me and said “I’ll see if I can get this to him but there is NO WAY you can go backstage to meet him.”  My heart sank.  Since this wasn’t really an official WAAF job but rather my own sleep deprived effort of meeting my favorite comedian, what could I do?  I simply found my way to the nose bleed seats and pouted figuring Jay would never get it.  About 15 minutes before the curtain was to go up, a woman’s voice came over the P.A. system and announced, “Will the Artist from WAAF please come to Stage door B.”  My wife poked me and said, ” Hey Scott, that’s YOU! You’re the WAAF artist!!!”   Totally shocked I found my way to the stage area and the once mean woman I’d  previously given the art to was now very pleasant. She happily said, ” Hurry up, Hurry up! Jay wants to meet you!!!”    I won’t bore you with all the meet and great details but lets just say there was a lot of me just nodding up and down and smiling at Mr. Leno.  To paint an even better image, picture the movie A Christmas Story. The scene in which Ralphie finally makes it to Santa to tell him he wants a Red Rider B B gun but instead freezes and just looks at Mr. Claus bewildered.   That was me.   Anyho, Jay couldn’t have been cooler  even if I wasn’t especially talkative back. He did ask me why I drew him on a sports bike though.  “Well,  I’m a big fan and I know you like motorcycles”, I stammered out.   Jay laughed and said,” Well, I do like motorcycles but  Harley’s, Indians and Triumphs_ Not these things.”      UGH!

So, that particular night was a roller coaster of emotion for me. And here’s the photo evidence  of my brush with comedic greatness to prove it.  Funny thing…. if you look at Jay’s face, you can actually see his disgust of being depicted on a Ninja instead of a Sportster. Or at least I can see it.  I’m sure the art went in the trash.  Or did it?    Jay—- are you out there?

Caricature T-Shirt Art

I keep files on all the different sports so I can referance body positions and equipment styles.   Found these VERY-VERY old  priliminary sketches of some players from the early 90’s tucked at the back of my basketball file.  I remember that I had started doing NHL hockey caricature shirts for an upstart company and they were looking to branch into the NBA at one point. Although the quality of  these yellowed pencils embarrass me now, (although I actually  do like the lettering) looking at them makes me long for the days when almost every player on every team could be featured on your chest in multicolored silkscreen.   So Come on! Let’s get another t-shirt  company to bring this style back again! 

Pirate ARRRT!

I work closely with a sign company which gives me assignments I normally wouldn’t receive.  This particular restaurant was looking to replace their weathered sign and update their overall dated look.  They did want to keep the same dimensions of  a giant round plate on their roof the same though.  So they hired Graffiti Works and Graffiti Works hired me to do the art.  My instructions were simple.  Keep the art round…make it a Pirate .    I did 5 or 6 sketches (two small ones shown here.) They picked small elements from ALL the drawing and I did and we added them into one design.  I then simply did the finished art.  That easy.  Now all I need  is the Pirate’s Cove to order some new t-shirt designs from me, maybe some new menu illustrations from me.  And finally, put extra sprinkles on my ice cream cone.

Dog Gone It

I’ve done this topic on my blog before but I was thinking it might be interesting once again to see how an image starts out with the HORRIBLE  sketch I’ve done in front of my customer and then how I take it to finished art.  The middle image here is the  watercolor under painting. Originally I’d planned on going darker with the pencil/charcoal final painting but I figured it was best to  ease back and let the colors come through more.

The Price is Right – opps!

Here’s two caricature drawings I recently finished.  The single person was done in one day while the multiple person caricature took twelve days.  The way I normally charge customers is each drawing has a base price, and then you take on a small fee as you add people to the art.  With the football drawing, that means I had to charge a base  price plus 18 extra people.  Seems like that would be expensive but when all is said and done,  I did the math and my payment was less than minimum wage over the 12 days I worked on it.  I could have made the same money if I had only done three individual drawings but I can’t soak my customers.  My accountant who knows I’m not really driven by money looked at my numbers and suggested I start working at McDonald’s again.  Which got me thinking.  

After being away from McDonalds as an employee for so long,  could I STILL paint in catchup, mustard and Big Mac sauce as good as I used to?  LOL

Mountain Bike T Shirt Art

I’ve done a lot of artwork over the years that has ended up on T-shirts.    There was a time that I actually had a small T-shirt business in which I would race my mountain bike on weekends and then after I was finished, I’d sell T-shirts to other competitors.  Lots of fun and I think I actually made some money.

How elaborate a t-shirt design can be has changed a lot over the years.  Back in the day, I think my most elaborate design had 5 flat colors.  Now you can mix that many and come up  with what looks to be hundreds of colors.  Still… people like what they like and complicated isn’t always better.  Case in point– the mountain bike club I belong to (Team Bums) has been around since 1989 and there had been a recent interest in doing some “Old School” Retro styled shirts again.  I jumped at the chance to do them. The team consensus was to only do a few colors on white shirts.  Keep it simple!!!  Kind of fun to do this style of art again and the experience has rekindled my interest in selling shirts again.  Hopefully this time it won’t be from my car’s trunk.

Tombstone Art

Although I consider myself to be a humor artist,  there have been many times in my career that I’ve illustrated scenes depicting people or pets that have passed on. Nothing humorous about those pieces.

  I’d recently done portraits of some of my own family members, and it’s not work I ever want to do again.   That said– I was actually very happy to illustrate a scene for a customer a year or two ago that was to be placed on her husband’s grave.  (See picture on the right.)  The widow brought in dozens and dozens of pictures and eventually commissioned me to  draw their 6 vintage cars, the car’s trophies, a dog, a house, a flower bed, a wishing well and the couple hugging each other.    She recently sent me a photo of the end result and I’m just blown away by the overall quality of the final image on the tombstone.  I’m very thankful, honored and HAPPY that this customer hired me to do her SAD art.  I can only hope that her husband likes it.

You have a big head Mr.

After 20 years or so of being in business, lots of  jobs blend together.  The good ones are  memorable while the bad ones stick out even more so.  As mentioned previously, I worked at McDonald’s for 14 years so dealing with the public was never anything I had a problem with.   The customer truly is always right.  Yet one of my early memories of dealing with an irrational customer for my own business revolved around a caricature assignment. I think I was still in my first year in business and the job was to draw individual caricatures of a high school hockey team.   I think it was eleven drawings total so it was a REALLY good pay day that early in my career.  When the mothers from the booster club came to pick up the drawings on completion, one of the moms was very happy while another became increasingly frazzled as she looked at all the framed drawings I had presented in my studio.   Finally the frazzled mom burst out…”WHY IS MY SON’S HEAD SO BIG??”    I then said pointing at all eleven drawings laid out “Um,  they’re all big that way.”  She then said “But my son’s head is bigger than the others!”   Looking at all the drawings, her son’s head actually was a little bit bigger in relation to the other kid’s caricatures.  But after all– it was  a caricature and each were supposed to be a different scene for the position they played on the ice.   I then said “Well, does it look like his face?   She said “Why yes it does —- but his head is truly not that big in real life!   I honestly don’t recall what was said next but Mom then began to cry.  Not a small tear in her eye but sobbing crying that frightened me.  Probably the other mom too.   Needless to say,  I did what I learned to do at McDonalds. When a customer is not happy, you do not charge them.  And needless to say, the mom still took the framed art with her.   After they left I waited a few minutes and took a walk down the hallway to the restroom.  Just by chanse they were still waiting for the elevator in the building I was located in.  Ironically, the mom was now laughing.   So… I learned that day that the customer is always right AND I was a sucker.