No. 416, Toby's Ocean Star

 

No. 416, Toby's Ocean Star by Tom Wills, July 2018.

I have a childhood friend who has always been an adventurer and traveler, who found love and family overseas. When we were kids we had lesser adventures but still a little edgy, on boats and canoes on rivers and lakes. While I chose a safe haven at home, he chose a Navy uniform, the oceans and deserts and sky.

Somewhere along the way, in Spain, he married and had a son, and grew close to his father-in-law, who is pictured here. Maybe it's because his own dad had a boat and liked adventures.

I don't know much about the captain here or the occasion for the photo, or why it's a favorite that my buddy of nearly five decades wanted drawn.  It's Toby's Ocean Star, drawn from a cell phone photo taken in a far, far away place.

The picture was a little grainy and a lot washed out, so it took some imagination to bring out the details of Toby's cap, khakis and the hardware on the Ocean Star.  I started with the face and emailed images to make sure it looked like him.

There was a lot of shading involved to capture the sunlight on those pockets and on the chrome. Some guess work was involved, too, to fill out his cap and the boat wheel.

For a black and white rendering, though, it does capture the sun, and maybe the waves and open air and, I hope, a sense of adventure.

This one was sent to Spain for Christmas.  It is my most-traveled piece.

No. 425: Steampunk Mary

Steampunk Mary by Tom Wills, October 2018, watercolor and ink.

"Mary" Christmas!

Do you remember the story of this vintage frame and its painstaking restoration? It's here:
http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-frame-as-art.html
It turns out that I had a plan for this amazing frame, all along.

This is Mary, and she likes steampunk-y things, and I think she will really dig this frame and portrait. Her husband commissioned the painting and I restored the frame specifically for this piece. Merry Christmas, Mary!

The idea here was to reproduce a favorite photograph and all of its steam-y attributes: The clothing, the pipes, the feather, the bricks, the accessories. Hubby insisted that it be full color, so a pencil sketch was out of the question -- although that's how this one started.

Ink and pencil

After the sketch was done, I added ink.  I figured I would do the darkest, most intricate parts first in ink, and then paint over them.  The permanence of the ink assured that the paints would not smudge the black lines.

Darker details of clothing, bricks and pipes penciled in.

Slowly, day by day, I added layers upon layers of color and detail. Hubby had me refine certain elements of her face and attire, and we shipped a lot of photos back and forth. He was very specific and I grew more determined to make this happen.

Painted to fit this specific, still-unrestored, vintage frame.

 

You can see the details emerging on the clothing.

Once the clothes were together, I went back and refined the arms and hands, face and pipes, jewelry and gun.

Capturing the light.

You can see how the face evolved from the first pencil and ink rendering at the very top of this blog. The painting captures the light's reflection on hirt cheeks and chin, and in her eyes.  A drawing, I must agree, would have looked too flat in this instance.

Another difficult piece for a fairly demanding client that, this time, I was able to turn into two works of art: The painting and its frame, complementing each other to produce a vintage-looking image in a frame that's 120 to 140 years old.
This is a Christmas gift that will last another century.

Nos. 417 & 418: Seeing Double

Can you tell the difference?

These two gave me double vision!

Subtly different frames.

In a very sweet gesture, a stepmom hired me to draw her husband’s two daughters with their mom, who is deceased. She wanted the girls to know that she accepts and understands their mother will always be “mom.” For her part, she wanted the girls to get equal treatment for Christmas: Two identical drawings, done at the same time, in similar frames.

Double vision!

I thought about doing one, and then the other.  But I decided it would be more efficient, and more accurate, to do them both simultaneously. So I set up the papers and pencils on separate drawing boards and got started, doing the eyes and hairlines first — as usual.

Labeled, like identical twins.

Photos would be sent back and forth to the customer, with Post-It notes attached so that we could tell the drawings apart.

No. 418

No. 417

Soon I was shading in cheekbones and eyebrows, and other facial details. I’d move from desk to desk, cheek to cheek, nose to nose.

Photo I was given to work from.

After a couple of weeks they were finished — not identical, but as close to that as possible.  No two drawings are ever alike!

Fitting the frame.

The drawings are numbered and labeled separately, and the frames though similar are also slightly different to help tell them apart.

Details emerging.

These had been under wraps since August but were finally unwrapped at Christmas.

All three ladies look very nice.  And this was such a nice gesture, a wonderful idea. I was glad to make it happen.

No. 429, Hot 'n' Cool

Dig, if you will, kiddos. It's 1959 or '60. You are in a dark, smoke-choked and crowded room. The drinks are watered down. But you're watching titans blow each other, and those around you, away. John Coltrane and Miles Davis. 

Hot 'n' Cool by Tom Wills, watercolor, December 2018.

Originally No. 429 was going to be called “Birth of the Cool.” I liked the sound of it and, I thought, the history behind it.

Miles

But it turns out that this painting does not actually document the “Birth of the Cool.”  That was Miles Davis’ thing, much earlier in 1949-50, and the title of a famous compilation album of those post-bebop “cool jazz” performances released in 1957.

'Trane

“I first met Miles Davis about 1947 and played a few jobs with him and Sonny Rollins at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. During this period, he was coming into his own, and I could see him extending the boundaries of jazz even further.” — John Coltrane

Making the sax look brassy.

A better title is really “Hot 'n' Cool,” Because that’s what Miles Davis and John Coltrane were in their nearly five years together, off and on (1955-1960). Their final tour was documented in a set of albums just this year,  Miles' melodies and Coltrane’s frenzied workouts. And from the studio over those years emerged the great albums “‘Round About Midnight,” “Milestones,” “Jazz at the Plaza,” “Someday My Prince Will Come,” “Kind of Blue” and more.

Still, theirs was not an easy relationship.

After a few basic washes of watercolor

“Sheets of sound. Well, that was when I got tired of certain modulations. Like when you want to get back to C, and you've got to go to D and then G and then C. I was fooling around with the piano, and I figured out some other way to do it.” — Coltrane

Some definition begins.

"Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth." - Davis, questioning the increasing length of Coltrane’s solos.

Some shadowing.

The photo from which this painting is based was apparently taken on that final tour, or at least it was used by various publications in conjunction with reviewing or promoting those albums. You can see and sense Coltrane in shades drifting off into his own world, with an exasperated Davis trying to keep things grounded. Coltrane looms as a giant over Davis, just by their body positioning.

Cheekbones and hands begin.

The basics of this painting came fast over seven hours on a Sunday, Dec. 9. I woke up early and sketched it out, made some color notes and started splashing watercolors. I used only shades of browns, golds, yellows, orange and black, adding water and white as I went.  The idea was to create a more free image, less intent on details and precision and more interested in the feel of it.  It took me four days.

Adding some yellow to the sax.

First came the black of the shades, hair and horns. The faces and the sax got a wash of orange, then browns and tan, and yellow. I roughed in those brown suits but really the light made Coltrane’s look more purple-black. So I added purple to the slurry of shades I’d created.

"slurry"

I listened to their music together, and then apart, as the paints dried and more layers came:  stage curtain, shadows, clothing creases, the suggestion of blurred hands moving rapidly over the valves and keys. I would paint, blot, dab, wipe, and paint again to create depth.

Highlighting their expressions.

Adding white and extra black to the faces brought out their expressions. More white brought out the shine of the horns, the crispness of the men’s collars and sleeves.

Though I wanted that sax to “pop” from the image, that white was just too bright. So I used a really vivid shade of yellow to wash over the horns, then dabbed most of it off to create the look of brass.

Horns before final detailing in black and brown.

Lastly I did clean up some extra-rough edges and better define the folds of the stage curtain. But I resisted the urge to really tighten the lines and make them clean. I really wanted to try something new here, an improvisation if you will.

Curtains...

These jazz masters were all about pushing boundaries and making new things happen. I’m hoping to really get to that in 2019.
Happy New Year, all.

Preparing to frame.

This framed, sealed and signed original watercolor is for sale. The price is $230. You may inquire about it at willstom01@gmail.com