Monday, September 13, 2010

Blast from the Past #324: Farmer, cover for Hampshire Life

I can't recall if I found a magazine photograph of someone in overalls to use as reference for this drawing, or took a photo of myself (I had overalls just like this at that time) or just drew it from my head -- I suspect it was one of the first two options. But this is one of my favorite cover drawings that I did for "Hampshire Life" back in the late 1970's/early 1980's.



Earlier this year I decided that I would finally start hanging some more of my artwork up on the walls of our house, and this was one of the pieces that I chose. There is something about the line work that I really like. And it is also unusual (at least for me) in the use of the black border tape as a design element -- that's something I rarely did. -- PL

6 comments:

Adam Riches said...

Your cross hatching is so clean and mistake free, it's quite inspiring actually. What I find most funny is the only white out marks I see are actually over in the left border area where there is no cross hatching, but you've got thousands of marks all over the page that have no touch ups (at least that I can see).

mikeandraph87 said...

I couldn't even see the place in reference on thge left border enhancing the image adn squinting.

I like the design of t Nice he fence curving around and is a great emphasis on the distance as well as the food smaller as it gets further and further away from where the farmer is. It brings the picture to life and almost like the farmer is being photographed, but its in penceil instead. Nice work!

Tyr Germanic said...

i agree with MikeandRaph about the fence and distance emphasis.its made cooler by the dirt in front of the border.and alot cooler by how all the plants are in rows like they would be.I live in the San Juaquin Valley in CA,and on road trips its cool to look at the little family farms(that havent sold to home developers yet)and see the crops like those whizz by.

haha it makes me want to get up off my lazy ass and plant way more more than i do.
(just cranberries and lemons,but lemons are easy so basically just cranberries)

what sucks,is if this was a cover,the magazine title probably messed it up a bit.

PL said...

"Tyr Germanic said...

what sucks,is if this was a cover,the magazine title probably messed it up a bit."

If you mean that the art looked better before adding a title block and/or other text, I might agree with you. However, this piece was done specifically for publication and designed by me to work with the standard "Hampshire Life" cover layout, and I believe the logo actually ran BEHIND the gardener's head. I think the final result looked fine. -- PL

Tyr Germanic said...

ya,thats what i meant,it seems like it would take away from how the picture reminds me of real gardens,farms and forests.

i see the space for the title now.i shouldve noticed before,dang.thats cool stuff- thinking ahead to save it by making the title part of the picture from the begining.hope it didnt mess up any other good ones.

From what ive seen,Hampshire Life was pretty cool for having comic style art on their covers.

Neil Vitale said...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/full/163529848.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0ZRYP5X5F6FSMBCCSE82&Expires=1284814436&Signature=hwngnjyehebkdUcL02NV8NecZn8%3D

Saw this on a twitter feed... since it's dino's, figured you might find it amusing