Jesse Eisenberg

Drawing portraits with shapes. It's like drawing while hanging upside down.

Weekend sketches

The closest theme park to where I live is 45 minutes away in Branson. Silver Dollar City has some really unique festivals, and currently they have a "Bluegrass & Barbeque" theme going on. Some great pure bluegrass bands from all around the States (or at least the South) come for about 3 weeks of hootin' & hollerin'. I was able to go last weekend and decided to bring my sketchbook along to try my hand at capturing the essence of some of the musicians. I got Rhonda Vincent's whole band to sign her's, and I am still cleaning up a drawing of a new young band from Florida called Flatt Lonesome which I will post soon. I am sincerely impressed with anyone who can play more than one instrument (well), and that tends to be a common occurrence in bluegrass musicians. The tight family voice harmonies are really the hook that I appreciate - gives me chills when it is just right. I am not a fan of modern country music at all, but any kind of roots music can light my barn on fire. I just made up that phrase. Above is the caricature I did of Rhonda Vincent, seven-time International Bluegrass Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year. She is from Northeast Missouri where my parents were raised and she even wrote a song about my dad's cousin Leona. Her band seemed to enjoy the drawing.

The man with no name makes a name for himself

NEW WORK!
I just finished this portrait of Clint Eastwood this week. Acrylic on board.


In my quest to be a better portrait illustrator, I drew a sketch of Clint Eastwood from memory - thinking that he had a pretty memorable face. This was a tiny sketch in the corner of my sketchbook.


Later I came back to the idea of simplifying Mr. Eastwood's face and drew a line drawing in Illustrator, but I could not properly get his iconic squint to look right and it occurred to me that his brow sort of made an "X" across his face so I ran with it. I thought it made perfect sense, also because his character in one of my favorite movies, "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" is known as "The Man with no Name."


For the painting, I decided a brooding sunset would make a good background because he is older and nearing the end of his career. Also, the movies he's made in the last 15 years or so have been pretty heavy dramas. I scanned in the background I had painted first and layered the vector sketch on top to play with placement and colors. I decided he should be in the lower third of the frame to make the space in the sky more heavy and weighty. I also needed to see what I should do with his shirt. Blue was used in his hair and features to stand out from the orange in the sky immediately next to his face. I liked the blue dot graphic elements on his shirt, but I couldn't justify why I had put them there. There should be a meaning if I chose to be so bold in a pattern. It was just pure decoration. That might not be bad, and you may be able to figure out a meaning for it, but it was a little distracting for me.


I then redrew the face on the background and started filling it in with acrylics. I build it up gradually with a lot of water mixed in to let a little of the background color show through. I decided to make his shirt really dark like he wore in "Gran Torino." It is a lot less distracting from the focus of his "X"-brow and it brings the balance of the painting back right-side up. Keeps it grounded. I wanted to give the edge an olde-fashioned faded look, but the black I used seemed too much.


It made the whole painting too heavy and dramatic- which was sort of what I was going for, but I wondered if I could make it more pleasing to look at. I scanned this in and worked with it in Photoshop - putting layers of duotone red and desaturated color layered behind the portrait. The background now gives proper attention to the face without being too distracting. This will be used for self-promotion and can be seen on my website markamontgomery.com

Building some muscle

My latest painting: "Car"

11x14, acrylic, black Sharpie, gold glitter on canvas

This is the last in a series of fine paintings recalling my son's first words: "Bus, Truck, Car." They are hanging in his room.


For "Car" I decided to paint my dad's 1974 Plymouth Barracuda. It was his first new car that he got the year he and mom were married. (Today is their anniversary- Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad!) I believe it was also the last year Plymouth made them. I always called it brown, but Dad insisted it was gold and its gold flecks would sparkle in the sunlight. White patent leather interior. I drove this car for about a year from when I got my license to when I got my first car. It starts up with a low roar when you turn the ignition.

The ol' 'Cuda has seen better days. It now sits in the garage with a blue tarp over it. It only takes leaded gasoline so it is a pain to mix some lead (I guess) into each tank of gas. A little rusty and the white seats are pretty scuffed up from kids kicking the back of them while riding in the back. (without carseats!)

I thought this would be both inspirational and a nice tribute to muscle cars and family.

I enjoyed working on this. I hope you like it!

Getting Frosty

Another annual favorite that my 4-year-old watches constantly is the 1969 "Frosty the Snowman" by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. who did a bunch of my favorite classic holiday animations. From Wikipedia: "This special marked the first use of traditional cel animation (as opposed to stop-motion animation) for Rankin/Bass in a Christmas special. Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass wanted to give the show and its characters the look of a Christmas card, so Paul Coker, Jr., a greeting card and Mad magazine artist, was hired to do the character and background drawings. The animation was produced by Mushi Production in Japan, with then-Mushi staffer Osamu Dezaki among the animation staff." Read more about the artist Paul Coker, Jr. here and here. Now that I have seen other images by Mr. Coker, Jr. I am sure the title font is his hand-drawn creation. Definitely a '60s style and the ink blobs and sketchy line work belong to his other work for sure. It just looks like it was outlined on the back of a napkin. I love it! Merry Christmas!

I typically hate animated gifs on web sites, but I couldn't resist. (below)

Frosty the Snowman Graphics provided by MySpaceGraphicsandAnimations.net

Christmas fonts

Every year, one of my Christmas traditions is to watch old TV specials. I now have several on DVD so I don't have to rely exclusively on TV programming. One of the things I love about the classics is that the ones who produced them were real artists. I recently took a closer look at the opening title sequences of some of my favorites and was amazed at the precision, beauty and artistry of the hand-lettered fonts. Below are samples from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Notice it aired in 1964... or did it? Anything else important happen that year for historical context? The Beatles were getting huge, I know that. Look closer at the Roman Numerals. "1164" Did anything cool happen that year? haha! I'll post more screen grabs from other favorites. I hope you enjoy this little nugget of nostalgia!

Studies in Expression

My wife has been trying to get me to do "pretty" paintings for decorating. I also promised a painting for the newly remodeled room where our Bible study group meets at church. In researching decorative art that my wife thought was nice, I came across a painting style at Springfield's First Friday Artwalk in November that reminded me of some I'd seen in art history classes.

The "Abstract Expressionist" style was what I would look at and Mark Rothko is the painter who I found most fascinating with his color studies and heavy shapes. It looks easy- like "my kindergartner could do that" kind of thing, so I decided to try to reproduce one of his works.

Once I got into it, I realized there is a lot going on and I found myself frustrated that I could not get the colors or shapes just right. First of all, I was using acrylic paints which is good for all the other stuff I do, but for the kind of soft blends and indistinct edges oils would have been better.

I was trying to reinterpret his painting using his shapes and basic color scheme, but shift the emphasis. There are many ways to do this in color theory and I ended up trying all I could think of. A sharp edge, white, hue, complementary colors, shape, etc. I was amazed at how much I had to mix colors and how much I had to care to make it work. You can't use just any green on just any orangey-red background. There were even reasons for certain outlines and highlights. Amazing. It was like having a Color Theory test all in one painting. Enlightening!

One reason I was drawn to his painter was his philosophy that Rothko saw art as a tool of emotional and religious expression. Since I was going to hang this in a church, I thought it fitting. Plus, it is not too distracting. Hopefully somebody finds it inspirational.
Thanks Mark Rothko for your inspiration to me!