Robert Kennedy portrait
Posted by James O'Brien at 11:39 pm on June 6th
Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy's assassination. Today's NYTimes had an op-ed section of essays written by his children. The essays feature nine illustrated portraits of Kennedy done by Leanne Shapton, Andrea Ventura, Tina Berning, Vivienne Flesher, Thomas Libetti, Laura Carlin, Paul Davis, Brian Cronin, and Isabelle Arsenault.
Feeling left out and a little somber on the anniversary, I decided to have a try at it using the same observational process I'm using for my thesis. I think I used the same reference as Andrea Ventura.
I was 6 when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. There is this foggy memory of me sitting on the floor in the living room in front of the TV watching the news. I could feel that my parents were sad, maybe they were crying (my mom anyway, my dad never cried). I've always connected this memory to John Kennedy's assassination but I was not quite 2 at that time so maybe it was Robert Kennedy's death.
Cubist city
Posted by James O'Brien at 10:56 am on May 16th
Here is a piece I did recently for Convene Magazine (via Shostak Studios) for a story about Convention and Visitors Bureaus. I was off an a Paul Klee/Cubist Picasso slant, using abstract color shapes to suggest a shifting cityscape that the hands have arranged and constructed.
Below is a closer view of the right side of the spread.
Holiday card image
Posted by James O'Brien at 4:44 am on January 24th
This image was for a real estate brochure in Florida. I decided to use it for my holiday card, seemed to fit in a color manner, in some ways (I reddened the orange a bit), a positive new year image. The end process took a slight bend from my normal method, slightly less chaotic then a previous image, but still some messiness about. Below is some process, separated layers. Not sure if it explains the method much, basically one texture, recolored and masked on multiple layers (that's the secret folks!). Additional textures add some blips and blops here and there.
Chinapod
Posted by James O'Brien at 3:50 am on January 4th
This image was commissioned by Business Week for a story about iPhones in China. As I waited (and waited) for sketch approval, assuming the story must have been killed, I decided to go ahead and finish the image as a little exercise using a new texture. The next morning, I sent a quick note to the AD to check in and included a screenshot of this finished image. His reply acknowledged that the story had in fact been killed, no comment on the image. Then the following week, he decided they wanted to use this piece and asked for a hi-res version. But unfortunately, they went with a photo in the end rather than this image. Illustration can be a fickle business.
Creating texture
Posted by James O'Brien at 10:00 pm on December 29th
I've had a number of students ask me how I create the textures I use in my work. There are several ways of creating texture but here is the one I most often use.
First, I find an image to use either by scanning something in or finding an appropriate image online. This one is from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (Daguerreotype collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-2439)
Next, I go to the Image menu and change the Mode to Indexed Color. This allows me to limit the amount of colors within the image. I set the Palette to Local (Perceptual), set Forced to Black and White, and turn off the Dither. Then I determine how many colors the image needs in order to create an interesting texture. For this image, 7 colors separates most of the scratches from the rest of the photograph. After clicking the OK button, I switch the Mode back to RGB. This doesn't change the color palette but just allows me to work in the RGB mode again.
Next, I choose the Magic Wand and uncheck the Anti-alias box and uncheck the Contiguous box. Then I click on the color of the texture I want to capture, in this image it's the tan color making up most of the scratch marks. With the Contiguous box unchecked, the Magic wand captures all of the tan rather than just one contiguous section. I then copy and paste these tan pixels onto a new layer and hide the original image layer. I delete any recognizable or large areas of texture, in this case erasing Lincoln's hands, head, and shirt as well as some of the larger texture bits.
Finally, I copy and paste the texture bits to thicken them up, depending on how thick I want the texture to be. I rotate the pasted texture and move these pasted areas around to make the texture appear more random. I also rotate by 90º increments in order to avoid creating any anti-alias pixels. I lock the transparent pixels on this texture layer in order to quickly change its color. Locking the transparent pixels allows me to quickly change the color of the texture by holding down the Option key and hitting Delete (to fill with the Foreground color) or holding down the Command key and hitting Delete (to fill with the Background color). You can also use the Edit>Fill command or use the Pencil or Brush tool for this step. Since the transparent pixels are locked, no new pixels can be created so painting on the layer will only change the color of the existing pixels (but keep in mind that if you use the Eraser tool, rather than erasing pixels, you will be painting them with the Background color).
So that's it, pretty simple actually once you know the steps.
Welder
Posted by James O'Brien at 9:49 pm on December 29th
This image was for an article discussing an impending shortage of skilled welders, an interesting story for me since my father was a welder. I remember showing him with pride a bead weld from shop class in college. He was proud since I was the artist rather than the mechanic/hunter/fisherman, that was my brother's path. But my father was really an artist at heart, just a generation too early. Or maybe it was the small town expectations. I struggled a bit with this image. Lately I've been less interested in concept, thinking more about portraits and subtle emotion. So it was a challenge to show a need for something, in this case welders. The concept I arrived at was the dashed outline suggesting "you could be here" or "missing." By the way, I still have my father's welding mask which look much like this one.
NPR calendar and 3x3
Posted by James O'Brien at 10:58 pm on November 17th
I had a busy summer, started the MFA program at Hartford and had a number of projects (not to mention a bit of teaching). Back in August, I received two big boxes of the NPR calendar I contributed to, above (top) is the image. The copy on my page (February) reads: "As I write this, I am listening to the classical music stream from my local station, KSJN 995.FM in St. Paul Minnesota. I enjoy listening to a wide variety of music and programming NPR has to offer. The music becomes a part of my work, flows through it, as it is doing with this woman's knitting. The music is interwoven with the work, in this image, literally becoming a part of her project."
I also had two images selected for 3x3 (middle and bottom images), nice surprise. I'd forgotten about entering that one and had resigned myself to being snubbed by the competitions this year.
Bus sketches
Posted by James O'Brien at 1:07 am on May 23rd
I've been more of a designer than a drawer lately, so I thought I should get back to it by using my bus rides as opportunities for some observational drawing. Here are some so far from this week.
