Sports Casualties is a series of illustrated collector cards I made in college. The class featured different visiting faculty. These instructors would visit for four classes and have the students do an assignment that was similar to the instructor's style or real-life commissions.
The assignment was to create four sports themed posters. We had no choice of sports. Cricket, Polo, Tennis, and Golf. Ah, the sports of the elite. Everyone can relate. I was less than thrilled to do this, but I had to find a way to turn it into something I would enjoy. I knew everyone would be doing super-realistic watercolors and beautifully rendered ink drawings since that was the style of the instructor. Maybe that was the point? I'm not really sure. In any case, I was willing to be the fool and show up with something out of left field (pun intended). I felt... no... I KNEW it was my obligation to to do something totally freaky. I was, and still am, a huge fan of Wacky Packages by Topps and had collected them for many years. Pretty much anything Topps is cool in my book. Around this time, Topps' Garbage Pail Kids were really big and there were lots of gross-out stuff on the store shelves: booger candy, slime... so why not do something that mom will hate? These were conceived and painted very quickly as I never intended to do anything with them beyond this class. I can't recall what grade I received, probably a "B", but I do remember the critique was very brief. The visiting professor said something along the lines of, "Ha, ha. Now here we have something very different. Perhaps some more of this, some less of that. Interesting"–YES! INTERESTING! They're exceptionally strange, almost Dali-esque. As crazy and violent as they are, I tried to keep them funny. I'm sure that's debatable, but I'll defend it.
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Time to step back in time... I was playing Brain Salad Surgery by ELP the other day. I thought it would be fun to take a selfie with the cover over half my face. I posted it to social media and of course received many accolades, primarily in the form of "ELP ROCKS!". But, it was really a lot more to me than just a fun selfie. The cover art* with its gatefold opening is very famous and I don't need to go into any great detail about the amazing artist H.R. Giger, best known for his concept designs for the original Alien movie, nor am I in anyway comparing myself to him. He was and always will be in a class all his own. Four months before starting college as a freshman, I had undergone major facial reconstructive surgery. My jaw was broken, my chin pretty much removed and reshaped. To this day, I am quite conscious of this experience and have some regrets about it. It all came out well, but it was not without issues that persist to this day. I used to cover my face with my hand a lot when I was young. Here's a photo of me at my college drafting table. Ahh... the days of hand inking. One of the first assignments for an Introductory Illustration class was to do a self portrait. It's a typical assignment, one I see a lot of. I think it may be a way for the teacher to get a fast glimpse into the mind of the student. I don't recall the exact details of the assignment, we may have had to incorporate some sort of personal element into the portrait. I went out and found an old lawn mower engine and lugged it back to my room. That's where most of the shapes in my self portrait came from. It's a small 8" x 10" acrylic painting. All monochrome. It was one of my first paintings and, despite its naïve approach, it has held up over time and I don't mind seeing it (unlike a lot of other earlier works of mine). Throughout college I continued exploring mechanical and cubistic interpretations of faces and things for my fine art painting classes. Some of them quite large and typically of friends and other art students. Today, it's pretty obvious why I did this. But at the time I didn't really give it any more thought than "this would be an interesting thing to draw". I always thought I would continue this type of art, but the next thing you know, I'm illustrating for kids! That's another story. Most of these paintings and drawings are gone now, a few sold, a couple commissioned, and most given away (if anyone reading this has one of my paintings, send me a photo, I'd love to see it! — and no, I don't want it back.), but most of them were destroyed. A couple that survived are more commercial illustrations — a pencil drawing of "Madona and Lizards" and "Good News" (an acrylic painting of George Harrison). I would have benefited from doing more research into mechanical parts, looking at Giger paintings, etc. — but, I tend to put my reference away and make things my own for good or for bad. So, here they are. A few very old paintings from college days. I'm considering doing a new updated version of this self portrait. My painting has gotten a lot better since college. Maybe even the George Harrison painting? Quite a few of the ideas I had in college were good, I just had trouble pulling them off. I've always said and firmly believe that it's the idea that matters, not how slick something is rendered. Time to get painting. Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends! * The ELP cover art by H.R. Giger was stolen at an exhibit in 2005 and is still missing. |
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