Here's the Scoop!

I am pleased to be working with Pioneer Theater Company again this year after a single season gap. I have done probably close to twenty posters for their various productions over the years reaching back to very early in my freelance career. It's always a pleasure to create new work for stage productions and I look forward to it whenever I get the chance.

This year's assignment happens to be for the musical version of Newsies. I admit I have never seen the film but I am looking forward to seeing the stage version later this year.  Here's some of the process.

Theater provided this photo as direction

The theater provided me with an historical photo of a newsboy that they thought had the feel they were going for and I in turn found a few more that I felt added a little more of the feel I wanted.

Since the intent was clear as far as the pose, I did something I don't normally do which is bypass the rough sketch and go straight to the photo shoot. Two willing neighbor boys, with the help of their mom, who held the lights for me were my models.

They did a great job and I ended up combining details from both of their shots to come up with my drawing.

After some consultation with the client, I was asked to make the boy look a few years older. I stretched out his face, gave him more of a jawline and beefed up his shoulders and arms a bit to age him to about fifteen rather than the younger age of my models.

The background was composed of actual newspaper articles from the 1899 newsies strike. I composited them  and changed a couple of the headlines to match the director's requests.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with the result. Physical drawing was scanned and painted in Photoshop and the entire background was composed digitally also with hand made aged paper textures. Total working time was about two and a half days.

If Picasso Painted a Snowman- Progress Update

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram (yes, I have finally joined the Insta crowd) you have already seen some of this work, but for everyone else, here's a little update. If Picasso Painted a Snowman was written by my wife Amy after a visit to the Picasso museum in Paris where she wondered what a snowman painting by Picasso might look like.

Picasso's Snowman- By Greg Newbold

That thought generated the idea for the book and expanded to ask the same question about more than a dozen other artists. What might all these snowmen look like? Well, this book answers all those tough questions! At least it will answer the question of how I might paint a whole bunch of snowmen, attempting to do so in the style of each of the artists mentioned in the book. It's been so much fun to work with Amy to make her vision of this book a reality.

Mondrian's Snowman- By Greg Newbold

If you don't like snowmen, we have thrown in a cute hamster to act as museum guide. This book has been a blast so far and also a lot of stress. The timeline for production has been compressed to just over two months painting time. I did all the sketches in early December and then had to bust out a big project that took the better part of a month. I'm scrambling to get all the paintings done and hopefully do them justice. You can't imagine how challenging (and fun) it is to change stylistic gears every painting unless you have attempted it. Switching gears each piece has required a lot of homework. I have studied up on the materials and techniques of each of the artists before painting each piece.

Pollock's Snowman- by Greg Newbold

Some concessions have been made for each piece for practicality or necessity. The time crunch is a factor here. For instance, Jackson Pollock used an oil based house enamel called Duco for his paintings. I opted for  a more affordable and faster drying latex house paint.

O'Keefe's Snowman- by Greg Newbold

Georgia O'Keefe created her works at a monumental scale. Covering so much real estate was not in the cards on this deadline, so I painted my version about fourteen inches high rather than four feet.

Lichtenstein's Snowman- by Greg Newbold

My version of a Roy Lichtenstein snowman was created digitally. I saw no other practical way to create the Ben Day dot patterns by hand and I think the digital version looks adequately passable. The cover and all the little hamster character spots are black Prismacolor drawings. I then scan them into Photoshop and color them using some awesome watercolor Photoshop brushes from Brandon Dorman.

I'm pleased how much these brushes and textures look like hand done watercolor. I continue to be impressed with the increasing pace of digital artists' ability to make pixels look and behave like natural media. Click in the photo to see the texture a little closer. and click Brandon's link above to get your own set. I am now over halfway done with the project but the next few weeks will be a real challenge, as I have a couple of other assignments in the hopper also. I'll post more as I get closer to finishing this.

The book will be released this fall through Tilbury House Publishers, just in time for Picasso's birthday and all your Christmas giving!

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Murder at the Male Revue

I just finished up the cover for the third book in the Bucket List series by Elizabeth Perona. The novels feature a sixty something group of friends who become involved in solving murder mysteries. The first two covers, Murder on the Bucket List and Murder Under the Covered Bridge can be seen here and here.

Murder at the Male Review- Cover by Greg Newbold-Digital

This particular story revolves around a murder that happens during a blackout at a society ladies' fund raiser which features Chippendale style male dancers. The editors wanted to highlight a particular slapstick moment that happens right before the blackout in which a cherry cobbler is spilled, tables are toppled and the slip and slide action literally leaves Francine left holding the beef.

I always feel it is my duty to give at least one alternative solution, which I did with a more dramatic angle of one of the dancers holding the murder weapon behind his back. I admit I didn't have time to read the entire manuscript before the deadline, which I often like to do, so I don't know whodunit.

As often happens, the editors opted to continue with the original idea, which I was fine with. After taking a bunch of photos to get a better grip on lighting and anatomyI created a final drawing and moved ahead to the final color art.  As you can tell from my rough sketch, working out roughs without photos can lead to proportion and other issues, but I think I get better design and flow that way, so I always do initial roughs out of my head or with minimal reference. I just like to get my ideas down and establish the mood and overall design. The finished piece was painted in Photoshop over the full value graphite drawing.

Ed Eyestone For BYU Magazine

I finished these three pieces up a few weeks back for BYU Magazine to accompany an article by All American and Olympic runner Ed Eyestone.

First concept for opener

Eyestone shares several life lesson anecdotes in the article including the time when he gave his last ounce of energy during a race and collapsed short of the finish line.  His coach told him that he had "run like a horse" meaning that a horse will run until it collapses and never gives up simply because the task is too hard.

Final Drawing

A mule on the other hand, will simply stop and refuse to continue on when it tires, despite prodding. He had pushed himself until he dropped and that made his coach proud. This experience was the inspiration for the opening spread.

Another spot dealt with Eyestone's interaction with the team trainer when as a freshman, he wanted the same post workout massage as the senior runners. The Finnish trainer said "you don't waste the black powder on the small birds" but then relented and treated him the same as the rest of the team. This experience taught him that everyone is important.

The final spot dealt with how small things can help you reach your goals. Kyle perry had set the goal to run a sub four minute mile and then concentrated on all the small things that would help him reach his goal, including a strict training regimen and diet and focusing on a list of ten small things he would do every day as he trained. He dropped from a 4:05 to a 3:59.16. Concentrating on the small things had helped Perry reach his goal.

All pieces were drawn first in graphite and then scanned and painted in Photoshop. Handmade crackle texture was added at the end.

Barnes & Noble Tribeca Store Mural

Tribeca Barnes & Noble Facade Mural by Greg Newbold

Last spring, I was approached by Barnes and Noble about creating a full front facade window mural for their Tribeca, New York store. The store facade consists of floor to ceiling windows divided into six sections. The storefront look was a little tired and they wanted to upgrade by installing a site specific mural.

Existing Store front windows were pretty bland

The goal was to spice up the facade, make it more inviting and give a little flavor of what Barnes & Noble has to offer. Having never done a project that was specifically intended to be enlarged to building size, I was excited to tackle something this big.

Initial client provided direction sketch

We went through an initial round of sketches where the focus was to be primarily about what the store offered by way of services and ambiance on the inside. One of the main criteria was to feature the Cafe' cup, so I created a concept that included it prominently. The steam swirling above the cup would fall behind the store logo to add interest in an otherwise empty space.

First round idea sketch

Here is what the first concept sketch looked like with individuals browsing books and a group of kids enjoying a story time. They also wanted to give the impression that gifts other than books were a big part of the store vibe, so we went with some swirling Lego blocks and a gift card along with the books. I sent the sketch off and as sometimes happens, the concept was killed. After seeing what was requested, the client decided that they would scrap this approach and brainstorm something else and get back to me. Of course that's always disappointing, but I was paid a sketch fee and moved on to other projects.

Woolworth Building

Franklin Street Subway entrance with it's distinctive arched roof

A few months went by and then I got word that the Tribeca mural project was back on with a revised direction. This time, rather than focus on the inside of the store, they determined that the focus should be on the the Tribeca neighborhood and include a couple of landmarks that would be recognizable to everyone, namely the Woolworth Building and the Franklin Street subway entrance. The carryover from the first concept was the cafe' cup with it's swirling steam, which the client loved. I also needed to include a space that would be cut out to allow the events poster to be changed out every week as well as the hours of operation. I though it would be fun to have these areas as pages of a book.

Approved rough sketch

Final Drawing with adjusted Events and Hours sections

I set out to revise the sketch and try to capture a bit of the eclectic feel of the neighborhood and New York in general. I wanted something very NYC and after some discussion, we decided there was nothing that said New York more than a yellow taxi cab. Here's the rough sketch as it was approved and the final drawing that I used to create my Photoshop painting.

Final drawing with window template in place to check fit

I wanted a warm palette with nice contrasts of blue and lavender in the shadows and I think I achieved a nice color balance. I particularly like the angle of light coming from the late afternoon sun filtering through the clouds. Below is a later stage progression as I moved from underpainting to final details ( I forgot to save out earlier stages). The most evident areas of change were to the left side of the painting where you can see the purple undertones.

The scale was big for this project. It was determined that the art needed to be somewhere around 100 pixels per square inch on the full size reproduction, so I worked on a file that stretched the RAM capacity of my machine the final file was over 700 MB. I tried to merge layers as much as possible during the process in order to keep the file size down but even so, the finished file was the biggest I have ever dealt with. The upload alone to about three hours thanks to my less than lightning fast upload speeds.

Final are mocked into place on facade

Here is a digital mock up of the store facade with the painting in place. Barnes & Noble is currently working on installation of the full size vinyl reproduction and I will post an update when I get pictures of it. It's kind of fun to know that thousands of people will enjoy my art on the streets of New York in the coming months and years.

Also, see a previous Barnes & Noble Project here

New Murder Mystery Cover Sketches

Revised rough sketch as approved

I'm working on a new murder mystery book cover and thought I would give a sneak peek at the cover sketch process.

You may remember the cover art a year or so ago for "Murder on the Bucket List". This was the first book in what was hoped to be a series of mysteries involving a group of seasoned older ladies. Well, the book apparently did well enough to merit a sequel and so I get to do this cover as well.

Rough sketch options

This one called Murder Under the Covered Bridge. The opening scenes involve a period photo shoot and the protagonists discovering a body on the banks of a river spanned by a classic New England covered bridge. I came up with four possible solutions from which the client selected one. I did a revision of the idea to better accommodate the type treatment and it was approved. I'll be working up the final drawing and art next and will post the final art when it is finished up.

Fiddler on the Roof Poster

Fiddler on the Roof- Digital Over Graphite, by Greg Newbold

For several years I have done at least one poster for Pioneer Theater Company. They are the regional professional theater here in Salt Lake City and always do a knock up job on their productions. I like to support the arts here in town and they are kind enough to supplement the budget by throwing in a few show tickets. This year I was offered  the chance to create a new poster for this season's production of Fiddler on the Roof. I enjoy a good challenge and the task at hand here was to create a piece of art that would be both iconic and recognizable but fresh at the same time.

As I scrolled through the dozens of Fiddler poster versions I found online, I realized that almost all of them depicted the "fiddler" sawing away while perched precariously on the roof. I find nothing inherently wrong with going with the status quo, but I wanted to do something that might separate this production from the countless other versions out there. I came up with three idea sketches that I proposed to the theater.

The first one was to be a close up of the protagonist Tevye that would focus simply on his face in a tight crop. I really liked this idea and was hoping this would be the favorite. I didn't find any other versions of Fiddler that employed this idea.

My second sketch was the typical fiddler shot but a little closer in than the long shot which allowed me to give the guy a lot of expression and character. This one was my second favorite and I felt like this would be another decent approach if it was chosen.

My third idea was the classic typical approach with the fiddler perched on a rooftop holding his violin. I played with the shapes of the figure in this one with the intent of taking a more graphic approach than normal to give it a different look than the rest of the posters I saw during my research.

I hopefully launched all the ideas off to the client and fully expected one of them to fly. I was a bit behind schedule already, so I needed to jump on the final rendering quickly. Well, two and a half of the ideas were shot down cold. It was felt that idea one would be too easily confused with Santa Claus. I disagree as the beard color in the final rendering would not have been white, but OK. One down, I still had two options left. Idea three died a fiery death because the  graphic approach was deemed to feel too much like a children's theater production than a full fledged professional theater offering. Understood. Now it was down to number two. In my zeal to do something new, I had forgotten that Tevye never actually plays the fiddle in the production, so it didn't make sense to portray what appeared to be the protagonist (Tevye) as the player. We agreed to adjust the idea and deep six the violin. I submitted a new drawing which was approved.

Final Approved Idea

Because of the different crops needed for the various advertising applications, I needed to add significant acreage to the sides and a bit to the top and bottom to give several cropping options. I rendered out the black and white drawing in full value and then started adding the color.

The final color version took about three days working time to complete and I am pretty happy with the result. I think it's a very classic looking approach to  a well known musical but at the same time, I think it is quite different than most of the posters I have seen. I feel like I got the balance right.