Which One's Pink?

DAVID GILMOUR(s) hangs in the Vindy.com broadcast office of Louie Free, March 2013.

"The band is just fantastic,
that is really what I think.
Oh by the way, which one's Pink?" 

 -- PINK FLOYD "Have a Cigar"

David Gilmour, 65, is a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for services to music and philanthropy. In fact he is a Commander of the Order. He's also approaching 45 years as an amazing guitarist as well as "The Voice of Pink Floyd." He's  also an experienced pilot and aviation enthusiast.
Can you sing "Learning To Fly" ?

His main guitar, much modified over the years, is a 1969 Fender Stratocaster. He also owns the first to be given a serial number, Strat # 0001.

 

Click on illustration to enlarge, then click again.

I first met David Gilmour in 1973 in Dennis Brady's bedroom atop an apartment on the East Side of Warren, Ohio. Not Gilmour so much as Pink Floyd, though for a long time I thought he was a guy named Pink Floyd. Dennis' dad had the album "Dark Side of the Moon" and a very good stereo, and we played it very loud. Airplanes crashing, clocks ticking, hearts beating. Synthesisers! A cool prism pyramid on the label, pyramid stickers, a gatefold vinyl LP. How cool is that, even now?

 

I never really equated Roger Waters with the heart and soul of Pink Floyd, because it was Gilmour who sang the best songs, had the better voice, looked cooler (he once was a model) and played that guitar so well. Roger Waters just seemed like a crank who used big words and had strange dreams. David Gilmour by comparison seemed normal. From most accounts he is a gentleman and a scholar, too.

 

The idea with this drawing was to capture the David Gilmour I remember from seventh grade playing a duet with Gilmour 2011. Long hair long gone white, but still in good shape and even better now. Want proof? This is a beautiful song ("A Great Day For Freedom"), might make you cry -- and may be the best guitar solo ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HmC-RgTECE

So which one's pink? Both are, but the name's not Floyd. Got it now?

Lyric P.C. 1975 Pink Floyd Music Limited
"Which One's Pink?"
Pencil, 3' x 4' (approx.)
A Tom Wills Production, 2011.
To inquire about purchasing: willstom01@gmail.com

No. 40: Taste, Tone & Tenacity

                              Bill Nelson (Taste, Tone & Tenacity). Pencil, January 2011.

I want my drawings to look like watercolor paintings in black and white, somewhere between a photograph and a sketch. The actual lines are not as important, most times, as the degree of shading. Dark to light, thick to thin. That's usually how these things fill in. That's what eats up the time.

Click on photo, then click again to enlarge.

I really do work from dark to light, thick to thin lines, top to bottom. Once the black is in, there's no going back. But it provides a guide for where to put the other shades, gradually going lighter and lighter.

I have several boxes full of pencils of various sizes and degrees of hardness, many sharpened all the way down. Somewhere along the line I picked up one of those old-fashioned elementary school wall pencil sharpeners. I have a couple kneaded erasers (like Silly Putty) for the whitest whites, and a few rubbing sticks for blending the grays together. A lot of the shading is actually done with the side of the pencil tip. Yes, I break a lot of leads.

I do my own framing, too -- even to the point of painting the wood and the mats, if needed. Sometimes the house smells like a paint shop!

Most times I have two or three pictures in the works, in various stages. I like to draw on weekends, or days off, when I can devote a good five or six hours. I turn on the music in my so-called "Man Cave" and sketch away, in between loads of laundry and other mundane house tasks. After an hour or so I can generally tell if a picture will "work" -- or not. Some take a day, others take a week.  Winter seems to be a good time for drawing, and there's usually an uptick in requests for illustrations of friends' family members, including dogs and cats! Recently I completed a CD cover.

The drawings I keep for myself are generally of my daughters, or my two dogs and two cats. Mostly I draw musicians: Miles Davis, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Frank Zappa, Pete Townshend. All are on display on this site, and some are for sale.

The cool jazzy fella featured here is Bill Nelson -- not really a jazz player at all. In fact he was once a "glam rocker" fronting Be-Bop Deluxe in the 1970s. Extremely prolific, although you've probably never heard of him. A one-man band operating out of his home studio in England, he does it all. I think he's great.

This picture hangs in my office at my "real job," and I look at it to remind myself that there's still a creative flame inside of me.

 

Welcome to Tom Wills Productions and thank you for spending some time on my site! 

To inquire about ordering and pricing: willstom01@gmail.com