I’m Running My Inkpen

Following are all the pieces I did last semester that made it onto the cover of a campus publication. 

THE INDICATOR

For my Indicator illustrations, I typically did ink drawings on paper first, scanned them, and then colored them in Photoshop using a graphics tablet. Coloring digitally is a lot more time-consuming than just filling in the original drawing with colored pencil, but I think it gives cleaner results. Also, Photoshop lets me try different things and then just undo them if I don’t like them without harming the original drawing, so it’s a lot more flexible. 

Stir-Fry (published 2/14/08).  The candidates are supposed to be cooking at the stir-fry station in Val and vying to add their own special ingredients to a suspiciously America-shaped piece of meat. I think Obama turned out the best of the four (I drew him first), and I’m particularly pleased with the gesture of his fingers on the squeeze bottle. I expected that McCain would be the easiest to caricature because of his puffy cheeks, but I ended up erasing and redrawing his face about five times and he still doesn’t look quite right. And Mitt Romney dropped out of the race just as I was about to finish the drawing. Shit.

Be Heard (published 2/29/08). This is drawn from the perspective of an anonymous speaker about to address a rather diverse crowd during the “Be Heard” meeting early in the semester. I envisioned the blank sheets of paper to have a blurb printed on them (”So-and-so writes about the ‘Be Heard’ meeting, pg. whatever”) but the editors didn’t take me up on it, so the empty space looks conspicuous. It was fun drawing all the different figures. Some of them definitely came out more recognizable than others; for instance, that’s MLK between Gandhi and Susan B. Anthony, though he looks more like Jesse Jackson. If nothing else, a good Rasputin-Jesus (front and center) will make any illustration better. None of the students in the third row are intended to resemble specific people.

Cyclops Lifeguard (published 3/14/08). This one confused a lot people. The Indicator issue in question came out right before spring break, and the editors wanted a beach theme. When I did my “Where’s Tony?” drawing the previous semester, I made a little mascot for the Indicator who was a cyclops with the Indicator logo for his eye, and the editors wanted him to be the one in the lifeguard chair. That’s all there is to it.

Quidditch (published 4/4/08). Yes, that’s Tony Marx racing the Indicator Cyclops for the golden snitch (this was right after the much-hyped Middlebury-Amherst quidditch game). I like this one the best of all the covers I’ve done–aside from Tony not being very recognizable (although it’s not like people couldn’t figure out who he was), I’m pleased with pretty much everything about the picture, especially the evocative lighting. The distorted perspective is mostly supposed to emphasize the players’ speed, but it worked pretty well at squeezing all the elements of the image into the space as well.

Animals (published 4/18/08). The editors wanted a picture of tons of animals taking over Keefe. I used a strange perspective again to fit in the whole span of the atrium (a field trip was necessary when I realized I couldn’t remember what the lobby looked like well enough to make it recognizable). It’s not too clear, but the monkey standing in the hallway behind the tiger is photocopying the other monkey’s ass. The text on the sign hanging from the second floor window was changed to “Jungle Boogie Friday 10 PM Stone” in the finished magazine–I guess the editors didn’t want the then-fledgling Multicultural Center to take the original text the wrong way. If you look carefully at the lower left corner, right above the panda, there’s a drawing on the bulletin board (it’s more visible in the print edition). This was an illustration done by another Indicator artist for an article that was cut, and the art editor wanted to put it in the cover someplace so that it could finally be published. 

CIRCUS

(Published May 2008) I used an aquatint that I did for my printmaking class for this cover, so the only additional work was making a logo or title that would fit with the image (the back cover is the same image run through a filter in Photoshop). I made two logos that I kind of liked, and after agonizing over which one to choose, ended up putting one on the front and one on the back. The one on the back is supposed to be a strongman hoisting a barbell, but when I look at it again, I don’t know if it’s so obvious. Probably since it’s not clear what purpose the sideways ‘S’ at the bottom (which had to be included to make the word “circus” legible) would serve to the strongman, and as a result the whole thing becomes unintelligible. Oh well.

THOUGHTS OF AMHERST

(Published May 2008) A painting I did of some jars of fruit and pickles for my Painting I class in the Fall.

[In chronological order] 

My new bike. Pencil.  6/8/08.   

The lawn in front of Marsh house, and Marsh house. Pencil. 7/16/08.  

A pencil. Pencil. 7/20/08. Inspired by this artist. 

The Amherst town fountain. Pen & ink. 7/29/08.  

Appleton dorm. Pen & ink. 8/7/08.  

[All drawings originally 11" x 14"] 

In small doses, I enjoy Wesley Willis’ unflinchingly atavistic rock songs, but I think I like his visual art more than his music. Before and during his more well-known career as a performer, Willis supported himself by selling drawings, mostly cityscapes of his native Chicago rendered in magic marker. The following drawing, of the Dan Ryan Expressway, is a good example of his work. I like the unusual, fish-eye lens perspective, the contrast between the precise outlines and the half-assed shading, and the vertiginous Sears Tower up in the corner, which has somehow managed to stay upright without getting seasick from the horizon line. And, somehow, all the cars in the foreground bear a striking resemblance to the Popemobile.     

Willis’ drawings, like his songs, tend to follow set patterns. The piece above, for instance, is one of many executed using the “Dan Ryan Expressway” formula, which specifies a curved highway connecting two vanishing points and even the position of some of the larger vehicles on the road, yet allows variation in the background buildings and the color palette of the drawing. 

In his song, “I’m Running My Inkpen,” Willis boasts of his artistic talent (”I draw so good/I draw so well/I draw so great/Right on!”) and claims to have drawn two thousand pieces of art a year. I’d like to aspire to the latter goal, although I doubt that will happen unless I surrender all other trappings of worldly life, become schizophrenic, or both. Nonetheless, Wesley Willis’ prodigious creative output remains an inspiration to me.

This blog is dedicated to him.  

More of Wesley Willis’ drawings can be found on the excellent archive of The Art of Wesley Willis Gallery.