Another tight deadline

When the deadline is impossible, often I will do very small, fast sketches to send to the art director. Then we discuss the frames and I make notations on the changes or additions necessary. After doing tighter sketches, I render the frames in color in the 3 x 4" size, scan the finished frames and send them off, meeting another very tough deadline and usually making everyone at the ad agency very happy and relieved.

What to do when you have an impossible deadline

This happens fairly frequently and what I do is suggest to the art director that I do small, tight black and white line sketches that they can blow up larger if necessary. Here is an example of what I usually propose, and it works. It really would have been fun to render these frames larger and in color.

Markers on tracing paper

For most of my comp and storyboard renderings I used markers on high quality layout paper. However, very interesting effects can be achieved by using markers on tracing paper or on glossy surfaced paper. These are two rendering done on tracing paper, they were used in my book ART & ILLUSTRATION TECHNIQUES.




This rendering was used on the cover of the book.

Portrait of Sukri

When I was living and working in Paris one of my best clients was the Lintas advertising agency. They sent me to Jakarta and Singapore to teach their art staffs how to render ad comps and storyboards. It was an exciting venture as they also sent my wife and I to Bali as a bonus. We spent a week there and it was a great place to visit. I was working on a book for Watson Guptill Publishing titled DRAWING IN PENCIL and did these drawings for examples of colored pencil drawing and charcoal drawing.


I began the study by first doing a line drawing on Strathmore four ply regular surface bristol, using a medium warm gray 962 prismacolor pencil, then I washed Designer's Colors Ivory black over the hair section of the drawing. I added a wash of raw umber over the face.


I then began to draw in the facial details using a black pencil. I added a linear texture to the hair. I added various tones to the face and softened the lines using Bestine and a paper stump.


I kept working on the face, carefully blending the strokes as I drew. I gradually built up the tones until the drawing was finished.


Another drawing of Sukri, she was selling shells on the beach and always had one on her head. The drawing was done on Arches textured paper using a charcoal pencil.

An occasional magazine illustration

While working in Detroit on automotive related illustrations I also was represented in New York by Neely Mulvey Associates and used to do some illustrations for various magazines, the example shown was for the August 1963 issue of Saga Magazine. I really didn't do a lot of magazine illustration as I was very busy in Detroit, but it was a nice refreshing break from the hard boiled automotive work.

More MONSTERMAN art

Here are some more sketches from my MONSTERMAN book that I sold through ads in comic books in 1974. The book was specifically done for kids that liked to draw and had a lot of examples and hints for aspiring young artists.








I had a lot of fun doing this book and it eventually led to writing many "How to..." books for Watson Guptill Publications.

More Storyboard frames

Another group of 5 x 7" storyboard frames. Not sure of the product, client or ad agency. It's kind of a strange concept as sometimes the scripts can be. There may have been a few additional frames which might have given the sequence more sense. Again, these frames were all rendered using markers.


My pencil roughs that are used as underlays when doing the final renderings.






In frame 5 the guy kicks a hole in the door, but in frame 6 it's gone. I can't remember why the hole disappeared, it must have been in the script that way.