50th Anniversary of the Assassination of MLK

I got call from an old friend and fabulous art director BA Albert asking if I would do a quick turn around poster for the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s murder. A local underground newspaper wanted to do a special promotional issue. They were going to print a letter our Senator John Lewis had recently written to MLK about what it had meant to him as a 16-year-old meeting with him, and how it had changed his life and path to the future. The wanted me to do a 24 x 36 poster that would be folded into the paper.

It was Monday, and posters due Friday. Seemed tight, because I was in the middle of a large publishing project and that would have to be set aside to make room.

It felt like something that needed to be done with the right tone and feeling. I had a short conference call with BA and Blake Tannery, the art director at ICON. pulled together some reference on JL, and MLK and started on thumbnails. There was a police photo from John Lewis's past that just struck me as such a strong photo.

I always love the beginning of a job, conceptually somewhat open and direction not tied down. It’s just a visual stream of ideas that sometimes play off one another. Sometimes when I do a poster I add color to my thumbnails. It’s important perceptions that sometimes help things read. There were some great ideas. We hashed them out in a conference call and they suggested the possibility of doing a two-sided poster. I decided to do three of the posters. They loved the idea of the police photo but we all agreed it needed some conceptual element to make it work.

Things didn’t really go that smoothly. I have a hard time with portraits and I must have started over four or five times, finally stayed late and got one that seemed to have the right feeling. The mug shot of John Lewis was painted in Gouache, the type at the bottom a combination of blown up digital print and bad Xerox copy. But I loved the weird way it distorted the type.

My initial idea for the JL poster was to have flowers on his eyes like a nod back to those peace posters from the 60’s. I thought it was an ironic contrast with the stark police photo but Blake got some push back from CL saying “I’m getting everything from white appropriation with flower power to Day of the Dead. Geesh. ” Lee had already expressed some feeling that it was not the right approach so I quickly came up with a simpler solution making the reflections in the eyes into doves. Forest thought it made his eyes sparkle. A much better poster.

In my initial thumbnails I had tried a cople of variations with hand written type that seemed problematic with my spelling and the time for editing nonexistant.

The three posters were designed to have the letter included on the front in a column. The yellow poster to have the Letter on the back. I thought the yellow poster was by far the strongest direction.

Much thanks to Creative loafing, the folks at ICON, my old friend BA and Blake Tannery. Much fun working with you guys.
Read the letter here, https://creativeloafing.com/content-405378-Letter-to-Dr.-King

Radio Flyer's 100th Anniversary Kid's Travel Agency

Radio Flyer's 100th Anniversary "Kid's Travel Agency" Posters.

Radio Flyer is hosting the first ever kids travel agency to celebrate 100 years of inspiring imaginative play and unforgettable adventures. At Radio Flyer Adventure Travel, children are introduced to impossibly wonderful destinations they can visit only with their imagination and a Radio Flyer. https://www.radioflyer.com/travel-agency/

View fullsize

"See Octopus Shiny Treasure Bay" © Bill Mayer 2017

 A new poster for Radio Flyer. FCB had a great idea to inspire kids to use thier imaginations through a series of travel posters to fantastic places that only could exist in dreams. the instructions and specs for the poster came in with a huge packet of materials and spec. More than I ever remember getting in the past on any project... But once I had gotten through going over all of that. It just started off in the normal way all jobs do, with a little research looking at old travel posters to get a feel for the atmosphere and feelling of a vintage poster to a fantasy destination. I am always drawn to bold, simple images so I explored in the thumbnails various compositions tackling the manditory elements. I wanted the octopus to be huge, larger than life. Looming and imposing, but not scary. I decided to make the wagon into a ship.

I tried two directions: one, the octopus as the island towering in the distance; the ship and kids in the forground. The other using the wagon as a bathysphere, exploring an underwater world in search of treasure. I'm not sure they really got the underwater thing from my thumbnails, but Kevin picked a couple very similar directions and i started refining the sketch.

thumbnail for Octopus Shiny Treasure Bay. They picked #1 and #8 both very similar directions.

Slightly tighter thumbnails working out prportions on size of the boat and octopus.

In process art for the octopus almost finished....
I know, airbrush, it's just so much faster for me... Some textures and highlights I will add in Photoshop later....

View fullsize

I wanted to add some cloudy atmosphere to separate the background, make it lighter against the silhouetted kids and boat. I decided to do the kids and boat separate from the octopus to give me the option of adjusting the size and placement. I added distant mountains, birds, and treasure to reinforce the size of the octopus without reducing the size of the kids and wagon. Ultimately I decided to have the ship coming out of the shadow slightly to allow some details to show.

When I first pulled everything into the poster I loved how the wagon and kids looked just floating in the sky.... After I had put the final poster together I roughly pulled together a variation to show the Art director. Ultimately they decided to stay with the original design.

View fullsize

I was really happy with where this poster ended up. I was great fun working with Kevin Grady and the creative team at FCB. They gave me a ton of freedom and that always pays off in the final result. Cant wait to see the final 24x36 printed posters... So much fun. I need a few more of these to work on.

A Time For Reflection - PLANSPONSOR's Year In Review

It's been sometime since I had done an illustration for SooJin. When I got this email about this project I couldn't wait to get started. It seems lately kind of a competition in itself. With all of the fabulous talent in each publication. You really feel you need to do your best. But when it comes to start it's just going to be such a joy.... Where do you start I did the normal thirty plus thumbnails and she picked two directions she felt would fit. I thought the one that worked best was number 26. I thought I would play around with the feeling and design of the image in two separate directions. One in a more classical style, probably painted in gouache to get the feeling of it coming from the past. The second one digital, and using a very different pallette. Cool colors and warm lights. They each had a very different feeling about them, but the warm colors seemed to work the best.

 I loved the concept of looking into the past to find direction toward the future. It seemed to mirror some of the work I had been doing the last few years... this idea of using clocks seemed obvious, but most of my concepts are... I felt the color was an important part of the concept so I took the time to work up a little color study to give SooJin and myself a better idea of what i was thinking.

I painted this little painting in gouache and certainly did a bit of tweaking to try to push that warm glow I was going for.  The conversion to CMYK seemed to kill the color a bit. We tried many many variations trying to get that luminosity back, finally got the best we could.  

 I was very pleased with the way this came together. In some ways a perfect way to use a more classic style. The design and layout done by Cherese and Alanna at PlanSponsor were so elegant and tastefully put together... These Ladies are so good. Much thanks to all of the folks at PlanSponsor and to SooJin. Always such a joy to work on one of these!

View fullsize

Some Beautiful Type Design and spread from Cherese and Alanna and the design team at PlanSponsor/Strategic Insight...

View fullsize

Return of the Great American Jaguar

Something New I did recently for Smithsonian Magazine. It's a cover story about the possible return of the great American Jaguar. "El Jefe" is almost certainly born in Sierra Madre of northwest Mexico. He now lives in and roams the Santa Rita mountains south of Tuscon.

This cat's one seriously bad ass feline. There is evidence found that he actually crushed a black bears skull. El Jefe is the fourth documented male jaguar to make the border crossing in the last 20 years.

Such a blast working with art director Maria Keehan. Pretty much knew where she wanted the illustration to go. Sent me a comp she put together using one of my illustrations. A little back and forth on appropriate attire for a jaguar. Some searching to make the background feel close to the Santa Rita Mountains, south of Tucson, and this one seemed to flow out ahead of schedule.

Mucho thanks to El Jefe and hopes for a certain future in southern Arizona.
 Read about it Here at SmithsonianMag.com

A Most Unforgettable Penguin

 A new little gouache painting for Marti Golon at Readers Digest. I was so thrilled when Marti called me with this wonderful story. her initial idea was to do a portrait of this little penguin as a portrait in an old style, retro bathing suit. staring out at the sea. I did work through some thumbnails in this direction, but was such a magical story that i wanted to add some element that would make it a bit more. I remembered the surreal poster for one of my favorite movies "Being There" 1979.
In the poster, "Chance" (Peter Sellers) the gardener floats in the air above the pool. It was a take off on the surreal floating men Rene' Magritte had painted. 

 The rough penguin in the thumbnail was a little odd so I spread his wings apart to make the whole thing read better and gave him a nice bit of attitude.
I was a little confused a to call his wings arms but Forest assures me "wings" were proper. Although according to him "flippers" was perfectly alright as well.
Marti was very specific about the type of penguin.... The Story is about a Magellanic penguin living in a Boarding School in Argentina.

 

from wikipedia....
The Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) is a South American penguin, breeding in coastal Argentina, Chile and the Falkland Islands, with some migrating to Brazil where they are occasionally seen as far north as Rio de Janeiro. It is the most numerous of the Spheniscus penguins. Its nearest relatives are the African, the Humboldt penguin and the Galápagos penguins. The Magellanic penguin was named after Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who spotted the birds in 1520.

The original painting, I had followed some reference on old bathing suits. Marti felt the holes on the sides looked a bit odd...

One new little trick I learned on this waspainting the clouds with a paper towel to get the softness and it worked great. I will use that again...

 I pulled together reference on the Magellanic penguins and vintage bathing suits...I decided to put the penquin in a straw Boater hat... Sort of added a little something more from that era... I did a few tighter thumbnail sketches from the original scribbles. The editors pick was the floating penquin. When I was finished with the paining it seemed like it needed something. So i thought about adding a beach ball or a toy boat to make it a bit more playful. 

When I sent over to Marti she didn't really have an opinion about the boat but was more in love with the stripes on the suit in the sketch. I had decided to pull back on the color and make the bathing suit fall back into the illustration and thought the clouds and the beach would carry the color in the painting. I must have struggled for hours trying to make this change in photoshop befor just going back and painting over the grey in the original painting. sometimes the more obvious solutions are better. Decided to nix the boat too. 

 The one suggestion I wished I had pushed was one that came late into the painting. Lee suggested that it would be better if he was floating above a roof top pool...

This looking back at would have been a great way to add a bit more surreal feeling to the painting but I was finished with it, everthing was approved, and that was a totally new painting.
So the final painting stayed pretty much intact with the small addition of a striped bathing suit.
Much thanks to the Art Director, the incredible Marti Golon, and the rest of the folks at Readers Digest for a fun project. You guys are the best.

Fear of Failing...

I Have been playing with the gouache paintings for some time now. They have been a joy to explore. Sometimes they fail miserably but I always learn something from each of these little failures. It seems like the subject matter may sometimes seem a bit dark and creepy. I am thinking it's a natural perception because of the surreal nature of the subject matter. No matter how hard I try, they never seem to be as good as I want them to be. Maybe time to rethink the subject matter and make it more accessible. I read something Sam Webber once said in and early interview. I was always thinking about this as a direction for my illustration. A way to expand to a different type of assignment work…I read something recently that Sam Weber said in an interview. “Of the first couple of dry years, Sam said that it was only when he shifted his subject matter to be more accessible that he became popular. He likened it to two slightly overlapping circles. In one is the work you like to do. The other contains what people want.”This got me thinking about the subjects I have been painting. Expanding toward a more usable subject. We’ll see where that goes.

I also recently ran across a lecture Milton Glaser gave on the " Fear of Failure." Failing is how we grow as artists. The path to success as an illustrator may be to do one thing/style/brand, and promote just that one style. The problem with this is that clients keep coming back to you to have you illustrate in proximity of something you have done before. This Success model may be in contradiction to what makes you successful as an artist. Don’t be afraid to try new things and fail at what you’re doing. You learn from your failures. This has me thinking a lot about the where these little paintings are going...Where I am going as an illustrator. Sometimes people trap us to our identity as artists and it's hard to escape. I do love the exploration and growth you get in personal work. But I love working with art directors and designers in a creative team.It's so rewarding. I can't imagine giving that up.

I get bored pretty quickly and I am surprised at how long I have spent doing these little gouache paintings. Might be time to break out the art school oils and try to get a little richer color and depth in the work.

 This character has been surfacing in sketches for a while . Now I am thinking of flushing out a dark little story to go along with it. Might help to expand the settings and delve into other characters in a similar direction. certainly there's something there to explore.

"The Future of Farming" The Nuts and Bolts of How We Will Feed the World.

I got an email from My Rep Tricia about a new job for Newsweek. She said the art director had emailed me but had not heard from me. I had been traveling to Kansas to do a symposium at Kansas University, and out of pocket. I found the email in my junk mail file so responded right away, just picked up the phone and called Grace directly.

Grace Lee at Priest+Grace, Just love the stuff they have been doing in 8x8. So smart... great design work... I really wanted to do this, and cover for Newsweek. I had not done a Newsweek cover since the early nineties. Anyway she said she really loved my gouache drawings but that I could do whatever style I wanted. I thought it would be a little different, painting it rather than airbrush/digital like the "Beasties." The timing was great, they had a couple of weeks to get it done. Grace had a great idea to do a take off on American Gothic by Grant Wood. I have always loved his paintings. Such rich color. His landscapes are full of movement and detail...

 I think getting started was not so easy. I got back to the studio to some normal distractions. I left with a tree crew cutting up a huge tree that I watched fall from the window next to my drawing board. Fortunately it didn't destroy anything . and unfortunately, since it didn't destroy anything, the insurance would not cover removal of all the debris.  I had to fly out and leave the guys chopping up the trees and debris and head for the airport. When I got back into the studio there was still a lot of storm stuff that needed to be addressed but I decided first things first. COFFEE... coffee brewing. i heard a drip in the hallway. Leaky roof... ugh... went to grab a bucket out of the bath and noticed there was water all over the floor... Leaky roof, leaking sink... Okay shut off the water... bucket under the dripping hall ceiling... Now on to thumbnails....

tighter thumbnail sketches trying to work out the robots...

I don't know why, but when i started I felt like I had forgotten how to draw completely. The best way to get over this is usually to just jump in both feet, and start doing thumbnails. I did a page full of about thirty or so. the next morning another handful. I didn't really come up with anything better than Grace's idea. so we took off in that direction.

Revised sketch of the cover robots... Now that I am revisiting this I think I like that down turned mouth on the lady-bot... At the time I thought the expression was too negative.

Somehow I did put down a few ideas that seemed to fit... I thought Grace's idea was my favorite also, so i did a tighter sketch... This sketch was a little awkward...I think the revised robots worked much better... Too much time is sometimes a bad thing. I tend to procrastinate... do color studies... FIx the drippy sink... take a long walk..

color studies... trying to work out colors before starting on the finished painting... (Really just procrastinating)

I tied shifting the color from the orange to green to try to make it work well for the type and design. But Grace decided the over saturated version worked best for her.

Back to the original thumbnails for a quick idea for the spread....

I had two week to do the cover... I took a week and a half to get it done. Sometimes work expands to fit the time available. We delivered the cover art on Wednesday....Wednesday afternoon, Grace wrote back and said they were planning to do a farming issue and wondered if I would like to do a spread.... Forest called me while I was driving out to take a hike. This art had to be done by Monday morning... Tighter deadline... I did the sketches, sent them off when I got back to the studio.
Added a few more the next morning. Grace had me fill out the page more. She said they really didn't need so much room for type. She chose the "Heroic" robot C. I filled the frame more. When I painted it I thought it would be appropriate to keep that same "Grant Wood" style in the landscape... I pushed the colors warmer and more fall like... Fall has not gotten down here yet... but cool weather has and the chill in the air means it will be here soon.

The cover illustration took a week and a half; this one took two and a half days including sketches...
I kept the background saturated with warm evening light and the robot in a pure shadow, to make him stand out. I really had intended to keep it darker, but opted for kind of a medium shadow acoss his body and face. This would allow his eyes to glow...

Cover for "The Future of Farming" Nuts and Bolts of How We Will Feed the World. © Bill Mayer 2015

Final layout of the inside spread.... © Bill Mayer 2015

 I thought the paintings worked out really well. Big thanks to Grace Lee and Priest+Grace for thinking of me for this project... It was certainly a blast getting to work with them... And the cover and spread looked great put together...
Grace wrote back and said they loved the art, and they had another magazine called 8x8 and would love for me to do something for them on that down the road. Wouldn't that be a BLAST?

New Little Experiments...

I have been experimenting with some new digital directions. Always searching for new directions and techniques to play with. These three pieces turned out pretty well.

I was trying some limited color pieces to add to the somber tone. The text on the bomb hanging in the top piece is Persian for "Peace." another piece I did for Earth Day... also a little dark and foreboding.
All of these pieces had a similar feel and theme.
 

"The Waiting Game" © Bill Mayer 2015

"Peace" © Bill Mayer 2015

Alternate idea for a time magazine article...but really this was sitting around in my head unfinished for a while... just good to get it out... © Bill Mayer 2015

I love the drama this simple image created... it has a kind of retro feel like some thing from the Sixties... © Bill Mayer 2015

Also continuing to play with some expansion in the gouache paintings... A few more interesting palettes that seem to work...
In between deadlines it has been a good way to keep the hands busy... Some revisited themes that always seem to surface...

This painting stated off as a portrait of "The Donald" (Trump) and just sort of went off all rooster.... © Bill Mayer 2015

The "Buffalo Hunter" I loved the texture of Buffalo hair... I could paint that one again and again... ©Bill Mayer 2015

Another from the dark side... The Dark Angel... just playing around with a cooler palette.. © Bill Mayer 2015

Another surreal image with crows and boats...This one reminds me of a scene from Time Bandits... But I loved the color... © Bill Mayer 2015

I was trying to paint something that was not creepy... somehow just made it creepier.... The Flower Lady.. Gouache on paper. © Bill Mayer 2015

A rather simple but melancholy image of a fish out of water...Sometimes clichés can be poignant. Everyone loves to draw gold fish...(so why not...) Gouache on paper © Bill Mayer 2015

 

Butterfly Girl. I think might have worked better if I covered her face with butterflies...or at least maybe more of her face... (I did that) © Bill Mayer 2015

Bird Lady... Started off kind of like a blue fairy and just grew into a freak... I was not happy with it until I added tentacles and horns... © Bill Mayer 2015

Old Crow... Bible touting steamship for God and Country.... © Bill Mayer 2015

Today is the Day!

 Just before the break this summer I started on a poster for a short movie called "Seth."

It's a gem of a little short about trying to gain your fathers approval. Insanely funny... Horse dicks and all.... A little corny in spots...
The Writer/Director Zach Lasry does a marvelous job, and when you take the time a watch you'll agree. Just so ...uh...endearing? We had about a million ideas but this was the one that stuck.... Here is a link to the trailer...  Watch for this film, coming soon.

There was so much great material in the movie to pull from. The ideas were really easy.  The hard part was figuring out the right tone for the poster. It felt right to almost go as absurd as the "horse Dick" joke but just pull back a little.

And the four we picked to send Zach as candidates for a great poster....

The winner, of course.
A kind of classic portrait of Christopher, the insanely menacing mute of a stuffed animal.

New Technologies in "Tomorrowland"

Interesting project I recently did for American Gas Magazine. Always starts with some thumbnailing...

lots of great ideas. there were a few I thought worked best so I tightened those up and sent them off.
have been playing around with some digital directions. This seemed a perfect fit.
The articles were about some interesting technologies in industry and agriculture,
They really liked the "giant tomato".and the "tomorrow land" ..... We decided to keep the cover more directed at the future technologies side, a bit more of a broad direction for the cover.

I really liked a few of these ideas and I am sure a few of them may show back up down the road. For now the winner is "Tomorrow Land."

I loved those old pulps-ish covers from the Thirties and forties...  My initial thought was to have old industry represented by gears with a bridge tied to the new tech of fuel cells. They didn't get this connection and wanted the gears replaced with more of the tanks and cells. Kind of a scifi look to it.
I made all the buildings made of fuel cells connected with walkways and piping.... Once i got deep into the finish it seemed just too hard so i pulled some trees and birds into the environment to soften it up a bit....They also help add some weight to the bottom.

I wanted to add spires in the back and decided that clock hands worked well conceptually and visually. There was some thought that they looked a bit to much like the Islamic towers... But no one mentioned it at the magazine.

 Blue is the color for gas so the obvious choice for a color scheme.... I tried a quick hue slide and saturation to the green side but Tina liked the blue and that's where it stayed.

Big thanks to art director Tina Enck at The YGS Group for thinking about me on this project ... great fun....LInk to Magazine

What Doesn't Kill You...

A new piece for Scientific American... This article is about the health benefits of not only the antioxidants in vegetables but also the toxins produced naturally by them, that stimulate our nerve cells and bolster our immune systems.
A lot of ideas and variations. Love where this one went... Kind of saturated painting with an alien like blood red beet looming above.... Much thanks to Jason Mishka... Great gobs of fun.....Thank you.