It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of album cover art. It’s safe to say that it’s probably the single most influential image source I encountered as a child. That’s why I put together this post for my friend and Creative Director Extraordinaire Irene Gallo over at Tor Books for their website. I gave her well over 50 different album covers so Irene decided to break it up into 4 parts. Here is the first installment.
Continuing from a previous post, this was my first large scale mural project. However, Charles has done more than a few murals in his time and developed a few techniques and tools to make the job easier.
There is a lot to consider when doing an outdoor mural. Weather plays a big role. Staying hydrated in 90 plus degree heat and Baltimore humidity is a job in itself. The last thing either of us wanted was a bout of heat stroke three stories up on an eight inch board. The wind plays a role too. If the winds are too high, beyond 15/20 mph, paint starts to dry in the can between strokes. This is solved by keeping a spray bottle of water handy. Worse yet, the wind can make paint fly from the brush and land someplace all ready completed. Of course rain stops all progress and we had to wait for the wall to dry before we could start to paint again. Water kills a mural faster than anything.
Another challenge was height. I had to lean heavily on my balance and the ability to ignore fear of bodily harm. I got really uncomfortable on the top level and spent as little time as possible up there. I’m not really afraid of heights, more of an unsteady platform. While the scaffold was stable and bolted to the wall in a few places it still rocked and wiggled. And the boards were only 8 inches wide. It wasn’t all bad though. I did have fun monkeying around on a what was basically a three story Jungle Gym. I managed to loose a few pounds, tone up and get a tan too.
We could not have done the job without scaffolding, but the most annoying part I found was to paint an area that was covered by it. It’s like trying to draw around a corner. The scaffolding sits only a few inches away from the wall and obstructs it, so there is no good angle. One either has to stoop down and paint below “ground level”, or balance on tiptoes and paint out of reach.
Speaking of out of reach, Charles has some pretty ingenious methods for working on areas further than arms length away. A tool of his own creation was a bamboo stick with compressed charcoal on one end and a paint brush on the other. We would use this to sketch out the subjects. The long stick allowed us to not only get some distance and see what we were working on, but also gave us the ability to make a stroke two or three times longer than our arms can alone. Another important ability, considering when I work on a canvas my strokes are maximum only a few inches and we had such a huge space to cover.
When drawing the church and museum we used an 8 ft 1 x 2 as a straight edge to keep everything in line and in perspective. One of us would stand 50 or 60 feet away from the wall with the reference and holler to the other one on the scaffold telling them where to put the straight edge to make a line. It took a day just to draw the church in charcoal.
Another can’t do without; a reference book. Charles and I pulled together a lot of reference to make this mural happen. We printed out one page shots of what we needed, then stuck them in a photo album that we had on site. Everything was in there. The buildings, flowers, people, logo, and insects.
Another indispensable tool was Charles’s truck. It did doubled duty as a mobile paint box and an extension for a ladder after the scaffolding was removed and touch ups had to be done.
In the end we used 15 gallons of primer, and had over 60 individual gallons of colored exterior paint at our disposal. Beyond that we mixed up 16 special colors that we put in small Tupperware containers and we each had our own soda crate tray we carried up and down the levels. It took us a combined total of over 400 man hours. Just over a month and a half from start to finish.
Maybe next time we get a bucket truck or accordian scaffold like Chuck Close uses.
Next installment we’ll see the whole mural come together in a video.
Continued from a previous post, featured prominently in the mural are local landmarks like The Great Blacks in Wax Museum. Charles and I spent an afternoon touring the exhibitions and gathering reference at the museum itself. Not only would we have to include the building in the mural, but we also had to fit in a hand full of notable African-Americans from Baltimore.
The museum sits on the corner of East North and Bond Street and houses a wax figure tour of African-American History in life-size diorama form. Most of the exhibits are small and fit just a figure or two posed in an environment appropriate to the subjects history. For example, Billie Holiday looks like she’s singing in a club and the Tuskegee Airmen stand on a runway. Unfortunately the most memorable exhibits of the museum couldn’t be put into the mural. Aside from those profoundly influential historical figures like Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass, the museum also features some startling displays of the atrocities visited upon African-Americans in their few hundred year association with the white man. Namely the Middle Passage and Lynchings.
The Middle Passage Exhibit draws visitors in by passing them through the hold of a slave ship circa 1750. Wax figures of all ages are seen chained and bound in horribly insufferable conditions. Torture devices hang on the walls and a display of the women’s quarters on the ship are passed off as a “rape” room. It’s a hard pill to swallow and one walks away overwhelmed. The Lynching Exhibit will leave viewers with a similar feeling. Traveling down to the lower levels of the building this display covers the walls from floor to ceiling in newspaper articles, letters and journals describing just about every lynching in US the last 150 years. The display’s brutally maimed bodies rival those of a Grindhouse Movie and includes a collection of lynching “Trophies” in jars. Sometimes I just can’t believe the stuff we do to each other.
The top floor is more of a Baltimore specific experience. Notable community leaders abound and their histories trace some proud Baltimore traditions. Overall The Great Blacks in Wax Museum is an enlightening experience and it’s clear to see the museum holds a strong place in the heart of the community. Charles and I left there, thoughts swirling with the history of the city. Building and rebuilding in our minds the underlying forces of the neighborhood through time. Next it’s off to the mural to prep the wall. Let’s get paintin’ !
In an earlier post I mentioned that I did some key frame animation work for Patrick Arrasmith for an undisclosed client. Patrick was hired by Psyop, an animation a digital effects studio in New York’s Lower East Side. We both thought the commercial would not air, but much to our surprise this AT&T spot showed up on TV last weekend. Patrick did the animation of the whale smashing the ship while I worked on Ahab.
At the beginning of August 2010 Charles Lawrance and I began our biggest piece to date. A mural for the Baltimore Office of Promotion & Arts. The wall measures about 25 ft x 75 ft and is on the side of Joseph P. Lock’s Funeral Home on N. Central and Hoffman Street and is part of a neighborhood beautification project. The wall faces a lot that has recently been converted to neighborhood garden space by local volunteers.
Charles has done more than a few murals for the City of Baltimore and had this project all lined up with sketch approved before I came on board. He’s well known for his wildlife and nature painting, which is one of the reasons he was selected. But rather than do a straight up nature scene he wanted to include some significant neighborhood landmarks and famous African Americans from Baltimore. Prominently on display would be St. Frances Xavier Church, the first African American Catholic Parish in the United States, The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum and the Apollo Theater. Charles managed to squeeze it all into the sketch with plenty of room left over for butterflies and foliage.
But we still had some research to do. Who would be the notable figures to appear in the final piece?
Patrick Arrasmith asked me to create some key frame animation art for a top secret television commercial he has been working on for a big time client. What we have here is a reaction shot of Captain Ahab after witnessing Moby Dick destroy a ship. At the moment it’s unknown whether or not this will make the final cut. Or if the commercial will even happen. It would be a shame if it doesn’t get used, but that’s the nature of the advertising world.
Kiss “Destroyer” was my first record ever. I actually got it on 8 Track, believe it or not. I had older cousins that introduced me to Kiss and when I saw that cover I was enthralled. I spent hours listening to that record and staring deeply into the art. I was especially drawn to Gene Simmons boots. I still want a pair of those. So you can imagine how happy I was to stumble across this interview with illustrator Ken Kelly, who created not one but two painting of this iconic image. Thanks Ken, for this epic cover. And thanks to my cousin’s Greg and Doug for setting me on the path.
I’m diving headlong into the 21st century with my first ever painting available on E-Bay. I created this piece in 2003 and it has since toured the country and been a finalist in the Society of Illustrators Annual Exhibition. Both in New York and LA and appears in ILLUSTRATORS 46. It has also hung in two exclusive bask stage exhibitions at the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore in private rooms occupied by the Police and Foo Fighters. You can bid on this original painting of Jimi Hendrix here. It is a watercolor on Strathmore board. Won’t you give poor Jimi a home?
Inspired by Christopher McDougall’s book Born To Run, this sketch features close friend an confidant Glen Stoffel setting a pace down the East River in Manhattan.
