Sunday, March 15, 2009
Faces
Because I never went to art school and never drew live models, I learned how to draw people by looking at art, seeing what I liked and how it was done. Which may explain why my style is as various as it is. Sometimes borrowing a cast of eye or a gesture from Max Beckman, organizing a landscape like Edward Bawden, setting the feet or rendering brickwork the way Ronald Searle did. These faces remind me a little bit of Graham Laidler (Pont), who drew English characters for Punch: the dotted eyes especially. A roomful of people like this becomes an exercise in repeat colors as much as anything, trying to create a balance of pattern and palette, and an even mixture of races, classes and genders. The art director was Mike Schacherer, then of Little + Co.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletesometimes your illustrations remind me of those by Beth and Joe Krush, who illustrated "the borrowers" and some of elizabeth enright's books.
ReplyDeleteand i have always wondered how two people, together produced one illustration.
here's one of their borrower illos
I read a few of those books. There were dozens of illustrators in the 50s and 60s who seemed like cousins, and I've drawn from all of them whether I'm aware of it or not. It's like received pronunciation, something you absorb through exposure.
ReplyDeleteIt would have been a fantastic art school that had such a rich selection of teachers :)
ReplyDeleteI recently did something like this as well. It was just to draw a crowd scene free hand, no pencils, no pre planning.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.xanga.com/Glitchworks