Two new portraits in my portfolio for 2017! First up is a digital portrait of pioneering Stonewall gay and trans rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, in the colors of the Transgender Pride flag for Trans Day of Visibility. When questioned by a judge what the “P” stood for, her famous reply was “Pay It No Mind.” Apparently this was the response she also gave to anybody who inquired after her gender.
Next, in watercolor, is Jesuit priest Father Daniel Berrigan, the Catholic anti-war and nonviolence activist. The composition is inspired by traditional icons of the prophet Jeremiah (a subject of Fr. Berrigan’s writing); the prophetic scroll includes an excerpt from one of his best-known poems, “Tulips in the Prison Yard.”
Martha P. Johnson, digital, 2017
Father Daniel Berrigan, watercolor, 2017
Recent personal art from my drawing board. I’m currently working on three separate publishing projects as well as client work, so squeezing in a few minutes to draw for myself has become both more difficult and more important!
One of my favorite ongoing gigs in the world is providing artwork for the business classes given by my wife, Katie Lane.
Katie is an attorney who specializes in representing independent creators, and she also devotes a sizable chunk of her time to education – introducing current and future creative professionals to useful tools for tackling the uncreative side of the industry.
If you’re going to be talking to artists, you’d better have a compelling presentation! We’re storytellers by nature – you can’t just unload a wall of jargon-y bullet points in Times New Roman interspersed with a few pixelated stock photos and expect to blow us away.
Luckily for all of us, Katie’s a great storyteller too, and her presentations are full of relatable characters who walk (and stumble) through tricky but familiar business scenarios. And luckily for Katie, she’s married to an illustrator who loves envisioning some of these folks…
…(and getting to use her fun black/white/grey/orange color scheme).
So here are some of my favorites from one of her most recent online courses. If you’re a creative pro interested in buffing up your business skills, learning more about how contracts work, or making negotiations a little less stressful, I highly recommend Katie’s blog and Twitter feed!
Another month, another set of daily drawings! Here are some of my favorites from the last thirty days.
Sirin and Negret from Kate Milford’s lovely middle-grade novel Greenglass House.
Here are some favorite entries from my “art of the day” posts from mid-July through late August. You can catch them each day on my Twitter account! I went on a bit of a tear drawing famous male dancers in black and white from photo reference, then headed back into female figures in color and from the imagination.
Also there’s an avocado.
Gene Kelly.
