http://www.drawger.com/scottbakal/ Mon, 20 May 2013 09:46:18 EDT FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://drawger.com/_images/drawger_leo_logo.gif http://www.drawger.com/scottbakal http://www.drawger.com/scottbakal/index.php?section=articles&article_id=14214

Out of the entire story, there was this one scene in the book where the main character was having a sort of 'wet dream' about a mysterious snake handler that was helping her out on her property while she is working on her house. A mysterious man; snakes; sex - you can do the math on this one. I decided to go for it with my sketches and Irene went with it. A few of them might have been a bit overt but sometimes, you have to take a chance and see what sticks. This piece is a little tighter than I normally go. Lately, I've been in the mood to render and my vision for the piece required it. I've been combining a bit of rendering and graphic-ness to my work lately but I'm not sure if I'll continue doing it as I am starting to feel a bit restless and want to be more expressive as I normally am in my work. Still, I really love this piece and very happy it came out the way it did. Thank you Irene at Tor! It was a fun job and got to watch quite a few reruns of Columbo while making all those scales.



Here are the sketches I sent in to Irene and below are some process shots during the course of the painting. I did have a false start there early on when I put a black texture down all over the piece. I couldn't see the transfer anymore. With some other paintings, its not so bad but since this painting was so involved I had to rethink how I needed to do the piece. I ended up re-prepping the board and starting from scratch. It was no biggie - I thought I was going to save time, instead I spent more time. Such is life.



]]> Mon, 20 May 2013 13:46:16 EDT http://www.drawger.com/scottbakal/index.php?section=articles&article_id=14177

I was invited by Dave Murray, illustrator and owner of the Garrison Creek Bat Company to create a custom bat for an upcoming celebrity charity event for the Toronto Blue Jays. Each bat is custom made by being turned on a 50 year old Rockwell lathe before being hand finished. The auction happens at "The Curve Ball", which is the charity gala happening May 13th on the Rogers Centre field. It's a huge event with tickets running at $600.00 a piece with many of the baseball players themselves attending the event. Unfortunately, I have prior commitments and cannot be there in May but I am trying to set something up for July for a visit - check out a game and hang with my iller friends up in Canada. The charity is the Jays Care Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the Toronto Blue Jays. From their website: "Since 1992, Jays Care Foundation has created opportunities for children and youth in need by providing access to programs that promote regular physical activity, encourage the pursuit of higher education and impart fundamental life skills. The Foundation has made possible the building of dedicated, accessible, safe youth spaces for recreational programming, inspiring engagement through the sport of baseball. As the charitable arm of Canada's only Major League Baseball team, Jays Care is making a Major League effort to invest in Canadian children and communities from coast to coast." There are 15 artists who created bats and I hope they all sell at the auction to help raise money for this amazing foundation. My bat is called ‘Propulsion’ – named for that power one wants when they are up for bat - also connected to the concept of the foundation; having the power and help to succeed and thrive. As a teacher and long time advocate for student scholarships, I think programs and foundations such as this are immensly important to the future of so many young kids and I am honored to be part of this project. Thank you Dave for the invitation and a special thanks to Kristina for being a sport and modeling for me.



A few process photos.



]]> Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:20:03 EDT http://www.drawger.com/scottbakal/index.php?section=articles&article_id=13973



Love makes the world go 'round. Love is all you need. In time for February's Valentine's Day and the season of love, is the new issue of Yoga Journal in which I was fortunate enough to get a call to do their feature story. I had originally wanted the opener to be a darker and sadder piece. You may be able to get a sense of what I was thinking in the thumbnail. I thought that starting off the feature with a dark brooding non-love piece would be a nice contrast to the happier 'love-ly' ones later on in the article.  In the end, lighter hearts prevailed and I eased up on the mood of the opener. The article is about the practice of Bhakti yoga, which is about love; about healing yourself and filling your heart up. Two of the sections within the article are about filling your life with love through song and nature which ended up being the focus of the artwork.









]]> Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:02:21 EDT http://www.drawger.com/scottbakal/index.php?section=articles&article_id=13797

It's been a long while since I've posted anything from my sketchbooks. Usually, I'll post stuff from my work sketchbook along with the finsihed art. These are from my 'play' sketchbooks where I mess around and just let be whatever will be. Here's a sampling from Sketchbook #23. Sometime during the end of this year into the New Year, I am going to be cleaning up my websites including my Drawger blog here and start making more use of the galleries which I haven't in ages. Until then, please enjoy my visual ramblings and Happy Thanksgiving!















My Mom last year on dialysis after quadruple heart bypass. Her blood was flowing through that machine.













]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:31:07 EDT http://www.drawger.com/scottbakal/index.php?section=articles&article_id=13661





I really enjoyed and love the piece I did earlier in the year for Irene Gallo at Tor - in fact, it is probably one of my favorites this year. A few weeks ago, Irene emailed me to create a new piece for another upcoming short story called 'Am I Free To Go?'. After the first go around of the 55 page story, I was all over the place. The story is written in a rather fragmented way so the second time around, I really had to hone in on what was going on in the story. I finally found a few visual cues that I thought would work very well together. Not to give too much away because you should read it, there was a connection with jail, inmate clothing and long stem roses that were perfect for a neat visual. After the first read, I knew this was going to be a very limited palette focusing on red and the image started to build in my mind each time I read it. It eventually got to the point where the three thumbnails above - which is essentially the same thing - was the only thing I thougth would work for this job. I presented the three as the 'idea' more than a finished sketch. Irene loved the idea and trusted me to do the right thing with the composition and let me do whatever I needed to do. The screen shot of my computer shows the original thumbnail and the cleaned up sketch of the woman which I continued to play with...mainly just arm and leg lengths and slight changes in the body. The image to the right is the the final composition I decided to work with -  I did change how many stripes are on the clothing while I was doing the final painting. I also wanted to render out the image a little more than what I usually do which I think mixed well with the more graphic and expressive stuff I do. It was great fun to do this piece and so easy and wonderful working with Irene.



]]> Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:48:26 EDT http://www.drawger.com/scottbakal/index.php?section=articles&article_id=13524

I love working in a sketchbook. Unfortunately, since moving to Boston three years ago, my sketchbook work has fallen by the way-side. Living in New York, it was easier to do reportage drawings in the sketchbook because of all the mass transit I used to take which offered me specific alotted times to play around. In Boston, I don't ride mass transit so if I am home, I am usually working on jobs. I really shouldn't make excuses and just get out of the house and do it. This past year, I was honored to be asked to go on a mission once again from the Society of Illustrators Air Force Art program which gave me the opportunity to get out and document again - and I specifically wanted these paintings to have some qualities of my sketchbook work. The SOI/AF program is something I love and adore doing on a lot of different levels. The first is making art but also, it is looking into a world that I have very little knowledge about. So when I am asked to contribute by being shipped off somewhere to create art about what I see, I get excited. It's great looking into a world that I can learn from and get to experience things that are rare for any 'civilian' to see. 



I was flown out to Tacoma Washington to Lewis-McChord Air Force base and was asked to observe the 'Air Force Rodeo'. It is something that hadn't happened in a few years because, as I understand it, the wars. It is a well-needed activity for people serving to see family and blow off some steam before they fly back to where they're stationed. The 'rodeo' is a few days of competitions between flight teams, maintenance teams and every other part of the AF that you can think of. Teams from all of the bases across the world fly here. There were so many activities to see that I began focusing on one group which was the maintenance team from Ramstein AF base in Germany. They were competing to be the best maintenance team. They were so helpful and wonderful explaining their roles and stories about some of their missions that I thought it would be cool to do a few paintings in honor of them and their work maintaining these 20 and in some cases 40 year old planes.



They were amazingly meticulous with caring for the plane(s). Every spot and speck of dirt...literally, grains of sand were searched for and removed not only from the plane but from the surrounding area around the plane. The painting below is the crew walking in a line about 100 feet around the entire area searching for anything that may float or fly up in a heavy wind and get on the plane including checking themselves from top to bottom...even looking for errant blades of grass on the tarmac. These are the guys that make sure the flight crew has a fully functioning plane to fulfill their missions. They have to be fast, accurate. Important missions and obviously lives are at stake.



Spending some time with the maintenance crew was wonderful as I got to crawl around the plane and base at will. The bonus was that I was able to observe the flight crew one morning starting at about 5am plan their flight through a valley to a drop zone miles away - and actually go on the flight with them and see the drop from the cargo bay in the back of the plane.



This was my second mission and I think I've finally learned what I really need to do on these trips. The first mission was for a brief 2-3 days at a small learning camp in Colorado. Unfortunately, I had gotten terribly sick on the way there and during the mission. It was a horrible experience and I don't think I got out of it what I should have. I barely remember it and the art was due the same week so there was no time to develop a series. This time, I really got to see and understand more about the Air Force and see the possibilities of what I could do as an artist. Even though I did six pieces, I wanted to do more work. All that is expected of me was a single painting but I had to get as many as I could done before the deadline. It is wonderful learning about all this and experience something that I would have never in my wildest dreams ever think I would be part of. I am truly honored to be asked to participate in this. A special thank you to the Society of Illustrators and Chair and Co-Chair of the Government Services Committee John Witt and Victor Juhasz who both went on missions this year and did incredible work themselves.



I was told that maintenance crews are rarely documented in the art for the air force and that they are excited to have artwork focused on that aspect of the Air Force as part of their collection. These paintings were exhibited at the Society of Illustrators during the month of September and in the middle of next year, will be exhibited at the Air Force Museum in Ohio at which time, they will become part of the US Air Force permanent art collection.

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