Rocky Jordan Is Finished!

Part 3: I'm set to wrap this project up. Now that I have the background and foreground colors in place, I start finishing the painting.

The dark's are placed first; Rocky's hair, her 1940's hairstyle, folds in their clothes, shadows, the green fern on the left, and work on the details in the buildings. I finish up with adding first the warm highlights and then finally the cool highlights first in the figures and followed by the background.

I step back and decided to darken up the figures in the foreground first and add more blue over the flesh tones. Then I decided to fine tune the background adding cool Greens, Blues, Purple, and Payne's Gray. Approximate time for the overall painting was 25 hours.

I immediately set to scan Rocky Jordan and make a few notes to myself on what I should touch up. I will do a few fine tuning and clean up in Photoshop before I save and send the file. Images of black and white spot illustrations start developing in my my mind. I'm still so immersed into the project, I'm thinking of what else I can do.... but it's onto the next one!

Sketching Rocky Jordan

I had another wonderful pulp opportunity of illustrating the cover collection for the old time radio show “Rocky Jordan” available from Radio Archives this year. A  quick introduction for anyone who isn’t familiar with the show can be found on RA’s website; "Rocky Jordan" is very reminiscent of the classic movie "Casablanca." You'll remember that, at the end of the 1942 movie, nightclub owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Police Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) walk off into the night, leaving Casablanca to join the Free French garrison across the desert. The settings of both stories are nearly identical: the desert sands, the fez, the turbans, the robes, the underworld lowlifes who visit the cafe. In "Casablanca," 'everyone comes to Rick's'. Not so in "Rocky Jordan;" the Cafe Tambourine is a lower-class establishment (in Cairo). It's more a waterfront dive, filled with forgotten men. And, unlike "Casablanca," the war is over -- but not the mystery or the intrigue. I really like the characters and stories - and enjoy working while listening to the shows.
The project presented some interesting ideas, but I felt I had a rough start pin pointing something special for the client. So I started diving into my sketchbook.
I originally was creating thumbnail sketches that were inspired by paperback covers by David Grove and/or Kazu Sano. I was interested in more of a montage of characters and setting with mood lighting and colors. I thought it would fit the right emotion that I got out of listening to the programs.

But, after looking at the quick thumbnails, I realized it just wasn’t going to work for the OTR audience and packaging. At least I crossed off one option and time to keep moving forward. So, I decided on a doing a scene reminiscent of noir film, or vintage pulp imagery with a femme fatale confronting Rocky. In the background I’d want the policeman Sam Sabaaya to be seen coming out of, perhaps, the Cafe Tambourine, just in time to help the situation and solve the case. That’s what I was thinking here and it was enough to get me going.

I sketched out a tense scene in the Cafe Tambourine and liked what was going on with the action and composition. Good story illustration but I felt it wasn't working yet. It would be a nice sequential panel but with Rocky's back to us wasn't good for a cover. The best solution was to turn him around and get the viewer involved, and I did a quick rough sketch to see what I thought. 

The more I left this idea alone, the more it kept growing on me. I decided to move forward with this for the moment and see what I can do with it. Once I shot my model for Rocky Jordan and collected my other references, I pulled together a tight drawing - and I ended up really being pleased with the results. I pulled back on the composition to see more of the figures, especially Rocky in front. Tom Brown at Radio Archives agreed and approved the drawing right away and I was thrilled to begin painting this one.

Watch out! Zombie!

Here's a recent cover painting for a very enjoyable read from American Fantasy Press. It's the first collection of short stories featuring detective John Justin Mallory, the hero by Mike Resnick. The brand new hard cover publication will be available in time for Mike Resnick's Guest of Honor appearance at the 2012 World Science Fiction Convention. There's eight stories featuring a hard boiled detective from our world unhappily stranded in a Manhattan filled with trolls, pink elephants, blue nosed reindeer, powerful demons, and Mallory's office cat / sidekick Felina. You can read more about the book at the website: www.americanfantasypress.com Thanks to Robert Garcia for another incredible project and subject matter for me to work with. Bob and I sat down at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention and roughed out a cover concept. From there I developed the drawing for approval and moved forward on the finish painting. The cover is directly inspired from a scene in the story, "Stalking The Zombie" which appears in this collection for the first time. I also did two black and white spot illustrations for the interior.

Sketchbook Entry 11: Happy Noir Year

This next drawing from my Sketchbook is from the cover of "Episodes From The Zero Hour" Volume 1 from Blinding Force Productions featuring Tommy "Knuckles" McNichols. This piece (and specifically the finished painting) is a very important project to me: one, because I'm mighty happy with the way all the noir, pulp and private eye influences all fit together for me, two: because the project moved along nicely with the writer, art director and designer and, three: because it forged a great professional and personal friendship with the designer Anthony Schiavino. Aside from Anthony having an impeccable eye for good design, he's a great writer / creator himself with some really fine ideas. Anthony and I talk a lot via email all week long, talking about everything important: comics, films, art, work and family (not in that order). We've become great friends this year and it all began with a Tough Guy, named "Knuckles" created by his cohort Jay Butkowski. It's a great pulp story (available at: www.lulu.com/zerohour) so give it a try.



When Anthony first inquired about my schedule and interest in the project, he had the cover designed with color palette options and a rough sketch. The original layout had "Knuckles" sitting behind the desk with his feet up, but after discussing the character with Jay and Anthony I came up with a rough thumbnail that had more body gesture and attitude of a tough guy for hire. More of a "Bobby the Mitch" swag to his personality. I also put more emphasis of noir by adding the blinds and played with light and shadows. Adding the framed boxing photograph behind him in the shadows introduced a bit more of the characters past.



Have a great 2009! Thanks for visiting the blog over the year. It's been quite a busy year for me, which explains the lack of posts but I'll get to them and I will try and update with new posts on a more regular basis in the coming year. I still have some exciting things to showcase as they take shape as well as continuing with the Sketchbook entries. See you next year.

Sketchbook: Entry 10

A couple of years ago I had received a call asking for my credentials as a mystery/pulp/noir illustrator. The call came from a Chicago design firm, requesting to see my portfolio to present to their client. The project was a series of detective illustrations for an ad campaign for a commercial real estate group. At the time I had just been interviewed for The Mystery Channel about film noir, pulp art and the popularity of crime comics from DC and Moonstone. So, the mention of the interview along with my images, I was awarded the campaign of 5 illustrations.
It's good to have "street cred".
The designer was part of the concept process all the way through. We leafed through books on film noir posters and detective pulp and paperback covers. I then presented about 3 to 5 thumbnails per subject, possible type fonts and color palette choices.
Here's two out of the bunch along with the presentation drawing.