Steve's Dusty Portfolio at The Back of His Closet

Harpo

2010-01-02T06:24:00.001-08:00

Completing my Marx Brothers series (with apologies to Zeppo and Gummo) is this picture of Harpo.

I find the dichotomy of Harpo's stage character to be fascinating.

On one hand, he was a puckish tramp creating havoc at every turn. On the other, he was a captivatingly brilliant harpist whose playing spoke more of angels than of clowns.

In one of the movies (I forget which) Harpo sits down to play, and just before he begins he looks heavenward for a moment, his usually animated face peaceful and radiant. This always breaks me up inside. I don't know if this was meant as a tribute to God, parents or to music itself, but it seems to me a beautiful gesture of gratefulness.

A grateful clown. Not a bad role at all.

Chico

2009-12-05T17:38:00.001-08:00

Just in time for the Christmas season – the man who believed "there ain't no sanity-clause" – Chico Marx.

One of my favorite scenes in "A Night at the Opera" is where Chico plays the piano for an adoring crowd of children. His 'pistol-shot' style of playing (thus the pose) is a riot to watch.

Groucho

2009-11-28T09:47:00.000-08:00

When I was a boy, I was occasionally allowed to stay up late and watch old movies on TV. My favorites were the Marx Brothers' comedies.

I'm sure I couldn't have understood half of Groucho's rapid-fire insults or logic-twisting pontifications, but I knew in my own limited way that this was a comedic genius.

In the photo that I used for reference, Groucho is wearing a hat very much like his brother Chico's. I removed it for a more typical appearance.

The cherubic pose is hilarious.

Blue Jay Way

2009-11-16T18:45:00.000-08:00

Winter is about to stride into Upstate New York.

The last few nights when I've taken my walk around the circle I could feel it coming. It's been warm, but there is something unsettling in the skies - a certain tell-tale grayness like an old man's woolen suit coat.

The warmth is a ruse. It keeps me from seriously searching for my gloves and boots. But soon one morning I will awake to three feet of snow, shocked, dismayed and totally unprepared. The Old Man will have tricked me again.

My wife is a bird-lover, Blue Jays being one of her favorites, so I drew this bookplate for her to put into all those gardening and cookbooks.

Blue Jays seem to get along well with Old Man Winter. They flit about the snowy trees in a dazzling display of royal blue tones. Observing them is one of the many small things, that when added up, make winter tolerable for me.

Of course finding those boots would help the situation, too.

A Likeness(?) of Shakespeare

2009-11-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

Here's a portrait of William Shakespeare that was copied from another artist's portrait of Shakespeare which was itself a copy of an earlier artist's portrait which was itself a copy of a yet even earlier artist's depiction of... well, you get the point.

Oh, you don't? Okay, I guess I'm just kind of apologizing (in a round-about way) for continuing the perpetuation of what is probably a totally fabricated and unsubstantiated 'likeness' of the great bard.

But hey, if I drew him looking like Karl Malden you'd be outraged. Really you would. You'd be saying to yourself "Since when does Karl Malden wear frilly collars and an earring?"

Spooky Image No.4

2009-10-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

Edgar Allen Poe.

Writing, writing, endlessly writing – to overcome the pain, to overcome the sorrow.

Lenore, his tragic muse, sadly looks on as he works his poor fingers to the bone. The Raven also looks on, but not in pity. Should our hero begin to dose, the feathered fiend spurs him on with a shrill caw and a peck at his disheveled coiffure.

This sketch that was to be the basis for an ink drawing... then a scratchboard... then an oil painting. But it seems the bell has tolled for all of those projects. Will I ever finish more than this sketch?

I know what the Raven would quoth.

Spooky Image No.3

2009-10-28T17:28:00.001-07:00

All aboard!

Here's a fun little piece I produced for a train company promoting its Halloween 'Ghost Train' excursions.

In my drawing Jack O'Lantern has replaced Casey Jones at the throttle, and if the Grateful Dead sang the truth about old Casey, the passengers are safer with this pumpkin engineer anyway.

Spooky Image No.2

2009-10-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

I know what you're thinking–"this picture must be a retired schoolteacher because she has no pupils." No dear reader, (and that is the last time I will be posting your ridiculous thoughts) this is yet another scary character from the volumes of Shakespeare.

She's Hecate, queen of the witches from 'Macbeth' and she's looking for a date to the big Halloween dance.

You'd better be on time though, because if you've read 'Macbeth,' you'll know she doesn't like the party to start without her.

Spooky Image No.1

2009-10-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hey, just a couple of weeks until Halloween so why not bring out some 'creepies' from the dusty old portfolio? No, I don't mean the spiders and centipedes hanging out there, I'm talking illustrations.

This rather shell-shocked looking gentleman is none other than the Ghost of Hamlet's Father. He's dead, he's scary, he's bent on revenge... you know the type.

I drew this as part of a Shakespeare board game that I had created and had dreams of marketing. But that project was more ill-fated than Romeo and Juliet. I dilly-dallied with the design for years until one day I walked into a game store and saw "Shakespeare: The Bard Game" sitting there on a shelf. Naturally, someone had beaten me to the punch.

I guess it serves me right for wandering around in the swamps of indecisiveness!

Reepicheep

2009-10-11T17:00:00.001-07:00

Here's my take on Reepicheep, the most valiant of all mice according to C.S. Lewis' Chronicle of Narnia series.

The verse, taken from the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, was sung to the mouse as a baby by a dryad.

Purists and other generally persnickety persons will note that the sail of the ship 'The Dawn Treader' is described as being purple while my version is decidedly more crimson. Seeing that this piece was done only for me, I didn't sweat the artistic license. I did try the purple first of course, but it seemed a bit much at the time.

Had this been a paying piece, I would have made sure that purple was worked in cohesively to the overall design and given it a more, shall we say - valiant effort!

I want to note that this drawing owes much to the wonderful work of Donn P. Crane, a fantastic illustrator from the 1920's. His drawings for the six volumes of the series 'The Book House' were treasured by me as a boy.

Indian Motif Chair

2009-10-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

This is the second (and most likely last) chair that I will post. Like the previous chair this was also painted for a charity auction. Unlike the other chair however, I still have this one in my possession (highest bidder!)

Whereas painting the other chair went fairly quickly, this one took a number of weeks working in the evening. There was a lot of fine detail done with a small brush. The main image of the couple on elephant-back was fun to paint, but the repeated stylized peacock-feather shapes on the chair's legs and back were maddeningly tedious!

If I had to do it all over again, I would consider changing the base color of the chair from smokey purple to a complex red, say like an Indian red.

I always get tripped up by the obvious.

Celestial Chair

2009-10-03T18:27:00.001-07:00

This is a chair that I painted for a charity auction with celestial 'star-chart' imagery. I loved this chair and bid on it myself until it went over my limit! It was bought by a very nice family though, and I can always paint another one... someday.

I found the chair itself at a garage sale and was pleased that it had a good amount of possible design surface and nice lines.

After a general cleaning and stripping, I believe I painted a base coat of black (although it could've been midnight blue.) I worked up a design based on an old star-chart. I can't take credit for the images themselves, that belongs to some ancient artist whose wondrous imagination is still evident in the beautiful line-work, but I did arrange the constellations into a cohesive circular design for the seat and chose others for the back support areas and legs.

After transferring the designs to the chair via graphite paper, I used a silver ink pen to draw the images. I then sprayed the entire chair surface with Testors transparent blue model paint. I hadn't used this stuff since building Estes rocket kits as an early teen. It was a fun trip down memory lane! After two or three coats, I went back and again hit the stars with the silver pen giving me three tones altogether - the black 'sky', the transparent blue constellations and finally the silver stars.

Please note: apparently Taurus used to be spelled with an 'h' ('Thaurus' appears on the seat.)

So although I am quite capable of idiotic typos, this isn't one of them.

The egg came first...

2009-10-01T14:23:00.001-07:00

Meet Humpty-Elvis.

I first created this mix of Humpty-Dumpty and Elvis Presley in chalk years ago for a street painting contest. It looked great there on the sidewalk until a passing rain washed it away some days later.

Since then I've tried to capture the image in various permanent medium, oils, acrylics, watercolor - but was not really happy with any of my efforts. Finally, I used a tech-pen for the line work, scanned it, and then did my coloring in Photoshop.

Am I happy with the final? Well, let's just say it's close enough after all these years, although there are other illustrators that would knock Humpty Elvis out of the park!

Oh wait - he's an egg, not a baseball.

Introduction

2009-09-30T18:38:00.000-07:00

As the title infers, this blog is a place where I intend to collect my artwork for viewing… but not a blog about portals to other worlds populated by talking animals (perhaps also wrongly inferred by the title.)

I hope that the main difference between my non-virtual portfolio (the actual one dwelling at -- you guessed it -- the back of my closet) and this new snazzy virtual portfolio is that others may actually (or is it virtually?) see my art. I’m not exactly one to drag out my portfolio at dinner parties to show my guests. Heck, I’m not one to even throw dinner parties. So I’ll give this blog-thing a try instead… and I do apologize that you’re not invited to dinner. My wife’s a great cook.

Of course, like just about every other visual-artist-blogger-person, I guess I’m somehow hoping that a blog will inspire me to create more often. Ha, ha. I’m laughing at my delusional self here, and not at all of the other artists who I’m sure that this motivational device is working for.

Untimately, though, I hope somebody enjoys a piece or two of my work as much as I’ve enjoyed the fantastic artwork I’ve viewed on so many blogs. What a beautiful gift creativity is.