In 2010 created a series of poster images based on Jimi Hendrix and the concept of "What is Cool?." Of course, there is nothing cooler than Jimi, so he became the first subject in this proposed series. The color poster design was based on the large scale marker painting shown below that I produced in black and white. I used a broad tip marker and white guoache watercolor paint. The marker rendering was a personal work for me designed to explore the expressive capabilities of using loose marker brush strokes to produce a painterly effect.
The color poster designs were created in Photoshop using a scan of my original inking and were used as a demonstration project for my course in Concept Illustration.
This inking is 21 inches tall and rendered on Strathmore smooth surface paper. I tried to capture the intricate pattern of light and shadow on his chest and face. His expression shows the complete confidence of an artist at the top of his game.
Detail of face
Another experiment using the original inking as a base. I created several separate acrylic spatter paintings and combined them in Photoshop using layer settings to crop out Hendrix's face. The effect was to make it look as though I had created the art from scratch as a loose watercolor painting.
I also created a photo montage in Photoshop from the same image of Hendrix used for the inking and the posters. This composition was actually created first as a test for my idea of producing a poster style image in ink and paint. The images inside the lettering and background depict the actual self immolation by a Buddist monk that bgan the tragic breaking apart of South Vietnam in the 1960s. The piles of helmets were photographed by a photo journalist in Vietnam and were the actual posetions of American soldiers recently killed in the war.
The poster and inking in progress. The variations below show just a few of the changes I went through in developing the final illustration.
