Thursday, September 23, 2010

You MIght Not NEED a Ferrari, But . . .

An illustration I did in the 1980s for the "Shopping Bag," a weekly feature that ran in the group of newspapers I art directed back then. In hindsight, I probably should have included Maranello in the names of Italian towns in the background. This is a pen and ink sketch, with applied Benday screens and tapes, all tricks of the circa eighties paste-up world of graphics before desktop publishing began. We had a mainframe and Compugraphic typesetters for the stories and headlines, but the layouts were all done manually with hot wax and paper. I ran a small art department of about 6-8 paste-up people working on 28 weekly newspapers and classified sections. I'm pretty proud that several of the people I trained, and they were all young and entry-level, went on to bigger and greater jobs in the art production world.

8 comments:

  1. I think you are a good teacher, Casey, so it doesn't surprise me that your trainees would go on to greater things. Your supportive style is worth its weight in gold.

    I mess up at times because I don't use the proper brush or paint "flowidity". I am working on one right now where I wanted my buttons to look like your tablecloth. My sketch on paper I made turned out fine, but when I painted it on the canvass my brush was way too big and it doesn't even resemble checks. Hmmm, maybe I will turn them into flower buttons if I can't figure out another way to start them over.

    On my way to pick up something at the mall the other day I whooshed by an art gallery. I my way out I took a closer look through the window. I loved the colors and style, a bit abstract, fashionable ladies. The price on one of the large pieces was $7800. Oh yes, I said to myself, YOU can paint this. LOL.............maybe eventually, but so far have only about $5 invested. So I $7795 left to go.

    ReplyDelete
  2. it has been my experience that creating art is really more of an 'unveiling' process. By that I mean I really believe that the art is already made in some dimension and all we artists do is allow it to be seen in this dimension. Your brush was too big for a reason, the 'checks' in your mind are blobbing on the page for a reason. Instead of forcing it be something that is in your head, find a way to allow it to exist peacefully in your head AND on the paper.

    That being said, back in my newspaper days, it was MY way or the highway on the pages. If one of my entry-level people didn't miter the corners of the tape the way I taught them, or if they didn't crop a photo correctly, I made them do it over and over until it was right. If we were on deadline, and they were fumbling, I did it myself and then at the next meeting we went over why I did that. I didn't exactly go with the flow in that way, but with 'real' art it's another matter altogether.

    ReplyDelete
  3. oh, and the prices of art always amaze me. there's a school of thought that says the more expensive a piece is the more respect the artist will get, lol, no matter what the art looks like. I don't think that way. my art is cheap so people can hang it on their walls and still go out to eat or pay the rent!

    ReplyDelete
  4. When you design your next car here is some help in testing the audio system -
    http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/09/audio-engineers-10-songs-to-test-any-car-sound-system/1?se=yahoorefer

    PS. thanks for the help, I did get my checkerboard buttons to work out. Problem was PRE-planning my squares. lol

    ReplyDelete
  5. ANNIE, YOUR TOO FUNNY. GLAD YOU FIGURED IT ALL OUT. I DID A LITTLE PEN AND INK WHEN I WAS YOUGER BUT FORGOT ALL THE STEPS. SOMEDAY/////////

    CASEY, I KNOW YOU'D BE A GOOD TEACHER. YOUR WAY TO COOL NOT TO BE.

    GRANNY

    ReplyDelete
  6. Compugraphic and hot wax pasteup! That's how I spent the 80s also!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Love the Magnum PI Ferrari 308, such an amazing car for its day and perhaps the 458 comes close in perspective.

    Nice job once again of making legendary work

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ish— when I started at WWD in NYC in late '87, instead of running into a typsetter sitting at a Compugraphic system, they handed me PRESSTYPE! Yes, a big daily newspaper used Letraset Presstype for it's art heads, like we did in high school. I was shocked. I hadn't really ever used it. The first hot deadline I was up against, I barely finished pressing the letters out and burnishing them when I realized half of the headline was on my left wrist. I had leaned against the boards. It was only a few short weeks before I proposed the 'newfangled' macintosh system, and within a year I was setting up acs in every art department in the building-12 magazines and the a couple daily papers.

    Woody—I forgot it was Magnum's car, too. Good memories, lol!

    ReplyDelete