No. 333: Stevie

"Stevie" by Tom Wills, May 2016, graphite

 

In 1977, everybody wanted -- or wanted to be -- Stevie Nicks.
That's when the Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" record came out, and Stevie was the center image.
Oh my. That silky hair, her Jello-y voice, her flowing robes, misty lyrics.
Tenth grade. Flaming adolescence. Good times.

All flow-y and Jello-y in 1977

I had wanted to finish this portrait by her 68th birthday, May 26, but I missed the deadline by four days. Unusual for a newspaperman, but she distracted me.
Sixty-freaking-EIGHT. Damn. And still going at it, still flowin' and Jell-in' and people still want, or want to be, Stevie Nicks.

Sigh.

She would have been 29 or so when "Rumours" hit. I was 15. And now I'm 54.
But this is how my mind conjures up Stevie, eternally locked in her youth. I'm sure many of her fans are the same way. That's when the spell was cast upon us.
I don't ever wanna grow up.

Taking particular care with the details.

During this drawing I kept a tight grip on my ... 9B Prismacolor Turquoise art pencil. And that's what makes this drawing somewhat different from my other pencil works. These are premier crayons d'artiste, and there are 12 grades of leads, from hardest and lightest to softest and darkest. The 9B got a serious workout with Stevie and ended up sharpened down to a nub.
So it is a graphite drawing rather than strictly pencil.

My poor nub.

Not unique to this drawing, but an approach I have used only one other time, is that this was drawn almost completely on the edge of the pencil leads, rather than the tip. This gives the image a rough, foggy quality up close but from a distance appears photo-sharp. It's an illusion that fools the eye.

Drawn using the side of the pencil lead.

So there we have it. Eternally young Stevie drawn by a guy whose mind is sometimes still in 10th grade.
Would we want to go back there, just once?

Start!

Other images of the work are below. This picture is SOLD.

No. 331: Prince

No. 331: "Prince" by Tom Wills, May 2016

I bought my first Prince album, "1999," in 1982, during my heady college days.  I was more into new wave music at the time, but the double album with the phallic symbol looked intriguing, and Warner Brothers had it specially priced at $9, so what the heck. Brought it back to the apartment and spun those four sides with the "Prince Eye" photo on the label -- repeatedly.

Didn't really know what to make of it.  It wasn't black music, nor white. It was kind of new wave, but not really.  There were soul elements, and jazz too.  And the guitars were heavy metal.  It was loud, but you could dance to it.
It was what we now know as "Prince music."
And the brother played everything himself, although other musicians popped in here and there for flavoring.

I bought a lot more Prince vinyl, and then CDs.  I stuck with him even when he gave up his name for a while, adopting The Symbol and becoming "The Artist Formerly Known As."  I endured his rapping phase, his "buncha songs about God" phase, his sex maniac stuff, and his side band stuff (The Time was the best of the bunch).
The brother was prolific.

And now, in 2016, he is dead. A surprising death. No one in the general public saw it coming.
Perhaps his inner circle knew of demons and troubles, but Prince guarded his privacy well behind the walls of his Paisley Park estate. And yet days before his death, he opened the gates for a party and urged those in attendance not to waste their prayers just yet.

Perhaps some sordid detail of his death will come forward, perhaps not.
We may be disappointed, or even surprised again. And he wouldn't be the first of many great artists to go out under bad circumstances.
James Brown comes to mind, and like Prince, his music will remain timeless.

Sad as I was, I made a point of playing back my Prince music as a I drew him.
It turns out that not everything The Purple One did was genius, but much of it is.  And if it's not genius, it's downright catchy, provocative and even funny.
It had been a while since I'd visited, I'll admit. But I always knew he was there.
Still is.

This illustration is SOLD. If you are interested in any other art on this site, contact me at willstom01@gmail.com or hankbonesman@embarqmail.com -- Thank you!