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ForTheKids
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 19-02-2012 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: NATE CREEKMORE, ELEMETARY, KIDS, FOR THE KIDS, ILLUSTRATION, WORKBOOK, SCHOOOL
So, it's time for my weekly posting. I was going to put up some new sketches I'd done during the past week but, in the course of packing up my belongings and moving into a new apartment, I came across a bunch of old illustrations I was commissioned to do for a project that never (as far as I know...) came to fruition. It was going to be a workbook encouraging kids to stay away from drugs, to study hard, to stay active/healthy... to basically be good citizens.
This one is probably my favorite. Listen up kids, if you make bad choices you'll end up in prison.
Here are a few highlights:
This one is probably my favorite. Listen up kids, if you make bad choices you'll end up in prison....and here, we have kids who treat each other badly by spreading rumors and general half-truths. Number four in the background is being slandered by a classmate.
Actually, I think this one is my favorite. The idea was that a child should be armed with knowledge. Heh, heh, get it? Armed?
Here's another tough, confident elementary student.
Getting good grades will allow you to fly over obstacles, represented here by a sturdy brick wall.
This kid has two choices in front of him: he can play chess, make good grades (for his adoring, photogenic parents) and fly a kite through a field of butterflies, or he can make bad grades, get into fights, and be arrested and thrown in jail. He's halfway in the bad grades window, but he also likes what he sees in door number 1...
Remember kick ball? I used to be GREAT at kick ball (and because I've kept in touch with none of the people I knew back in elementary school when I actually played kick ball, no one can say otherwise. One of the perks of growing up in a military family that moved around every couple of years. Is "perk" the right word..?).
This illustration was meant to show kids helping each other along.
A friendly game of one on one... then again, the only fights I ever got into when I was growing up were on basketball courts...
This one shows how a healthy kid ought to start his day. Look how happy he is!
And there you have it, some illustrations from what would've doubtless been the greatest child's workbook of all time (ever).
ArtShow(WithEricPowell!!)
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 12-02-2012 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: ERIC POWELL, LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY, JOHN C HUTCHESON GALLERY, THE STORY OF HUMPHREY, ROY LICHTENSTEIN, MITCH BREITWEISER, JIM JINKINS, PHILLIPE PERRENO, THE GOON
The John C. Hutcheson Gallery (on the campus of my alma mater, Lipscomb University) is holding an exhibition featuring the work of 6 artists working in the field of graphic arts/cartooning. Eric Powell (of "The Goon"), Mitch Breitweiser (most well known for his work on the Marvel Comics title "Captain America"), Jim Jinkins (a fellow alumni and creator of the Nickelodeon television show "Doug"), Phillipe Perreno (an artist whose work has been exhibited in the MoMA New York, The Guggenheim, and the Paris Museum of Modern Art), Roy Lichtenstein (!!), and yours truly will all have work on display.
My contribution will be one of the stories from my upcoming collection of graphic novellas. The Story of Humphrey is six pages long and each page will be hanging in the gallery. Here are two pages:
KA-POW! COMICS AND CARTOONS IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
at
The John C. Hutcheson Gallery on the campus of Lipscomb University
March 26, 2012 thru April 8, 2012
The John C. Hutcheson Gallery presents "KA-POW! Comics and Cartoons in Contemporary Culture," March 26-April 12, featuring the work of several graphic artists including Eric Powell, creator of "The Goon," Lipscomb alumni Nate Creekmore and Jim Jenkins, Mitch Breitweiser of Marvel Comics, a work by Roy Lichtenstein, and Phillpe Perreno.
The opening reception will be held on Sunday, March 26, at 6 p.m. with the gallery decorated in comic book style with bright carpet, bean bag chairs and a "comic book" catalog!
I'll be there for the opening reception. Be sure and stop in!
RimmerAndModel
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 05-02-2012 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: MODEL, NATE CREEKMORE, FROG, CHICKEN, WILLIAM RIMMER, HANDBAGS, OSTRICH
Most of the artists I admire, most of the fine artists I admire, work in what I would consider to be a baroque style. I appreciate the grand, dramatic gestures and the over-the-top-ness of it all. I've never been able to find much of William Rimmer's work, but I've always liked what I've seen. Supposedly, he didn't use any preparatory drawings for his sculptures; he just worked everything out during the process.
Here's a pencil drawing from my sketch book based on his sculpture "The Dying Centaur."
This sketch book page is also a recent creation. The girl in the foreground is modeled after a pose I came across in a magazine advertisement for shoes and handbags.
I added some ink and chalk and now I've got a finished drawing (there were no columns, frogs, chickens, Indians, ostriches, or American revolutionaries in the handbag advertisement). I don't usually know how most of the drawings in my sketchbook will end up when I start scribbling, but they usually end up being disparate and random.
models
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 29-01-2012 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: NATE CREEKMORE, PENCIL, SKETCH, MODELS, SKETCHBOOK
Opportunities for legitimate life drawing are few these days so I stay sharp by sketching people and models from magazines.
This interesting looking model has appeared several times in The New Yorker:
Everything I do tends towards caricature, even my "serious" drawings. I exaggerate features any time I draw or sketch.
This next woman came out of one of those magazines that are made up entirely of avant garde advertisements. I think it was probably Vogue. My youngest sister, who is also an artist (http://www.bluecanvas.com/stacree) is generous with her used reference material and shares her old magazines with me.
I don't like to do a lot of smearing when I draw so I adopt inking techniques (hatching, cross hatching) even when I use pencil.
The Story of Carlos
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 21-01-2012 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: THE STORY OF CARLOS, OMELETTE, GRAPHIC NOVEL, NATE CREEKMORE, COOK, CHEF, CARLOS, BATTLE, VS, SKILLET
Here you go, folks. Four (count 'em, 4) completed pages from my upcoming graphic novel, which is actually a collection of 8 graphic novellas about rising up and then falling back down (usually literally).
This one is called The Story of Carlos. It's about a street omelette maker...
Those are the first four pages. The whole thing (all 8 stories together) will be a little over 100 pages and I'm using different styles for each story. For The Story of Carlos, I've gone with a looser approach; quick watercolor/ink sketches.
Drawings
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 15-01-2012 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: NATE CREEKMORE, SKETCH, ART, DRAWING
And for this week, a few more drawings for my sketchbook.
This one, a pencil drawing featuring a stoic Chinese soldier, is from a photograph accompanying an old Rolling Stone article.
Here's a cowboy I did one day in pencil. I tend to draw oversize hands, mostly because I enjoy trying to capture and exaggerate all the expressions hands are capable of conveying.
I used pen and and ink wash for this sketch of a tired man.
I plan on putting up a number of selected pages from the book I've been working on next week. Stay tuned...
thoughts on caricature
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 08-01-2012 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: HAWAII, DANCERS, NATE CREEKMORE, SKETCH, MCGAHA, GRILLING
It's unusual for me to look someone in the face and not immediately begin to imagine how I'd exaggerate his/her features into a caricature. It's the odd faces, the unusual faces that are the most fun to distort in a way that makes them more recognizable (when done well) than a traditional portrait.
Other than the fact that he has a remarkably unusual face and once appeared in a newspaper holding a trumpet, I know nothing about McGaha. But he's a lot of fun to draw and I've done it several times. Here's a recent attempt:
For me, the more attractive a face is, the harder it is to caricature. The exaggeration in this sketch (done from a photograph in a magazine) is so slight that it barely qualifies as caricature:
(...the woman in the photograph wasn't actually boiling a reptilian fish in a cauldron. I added that part...)
The best examples of my approach to caricature can be seen on the PORTRAITS page where I've put together a gallery of famous (and semi-famous) people who I find interesting for some reason or another.
I'll end this post with a random sketch book image of some Hawaii-ish dancers entertaining a lumberjack in his long underwear.
(gasp!) Never Before Seen Maintaining Strips
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 31-12-2011 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: MAINTAINING, NATE CREEKMORE, COMIC STRIP, REJECTED, SYNDICATED, STRIPS, MARCUS, ANTON, TAVIAN, STEVE
Not infrequently, a devout fan of my now defunct comic strip Maintaining will approach me and ask, "Mr. Creekmore, was your multiple award winning nationally syndicated comic strip often censored and heavily edited because of its outrageously groundbreaking take on the absurdities of life?" and, in truth, for a comic strip that focused almost entirely on race, religion, and the (mystery of) ladies (with a smattering of political content thrown in from time to time for good measure), Maintaining was rarely ever censored. I can think of only a handful of strips that were rejected during the years I spent toiling away as a comic stripper. Here are a few examples:
When I look back on the strip, I wish I'd done more to round out Steve's character. I shed some light on his more positive traits when I made him a youth basketball coach, but he was usually more of a symbol than a person. In this one, I was attempting to point out that Steve is not actually an idiot. He's just a bit more sincere than he ought to be, especially since he's conversing with Anton the most cynical character in the cast.
When I look back on the strip, I wish I'd done more to round out Steve's character. I shed some light on his more positive traits when I made him a youth basketball coach, but he was usually more of a symbol than a person. In this one, I was attempting to point out that Steve is not actually an idiot. He's just a bit more sincere than he ought to be, especially since he's conversing with Anton the most cynical character in the cast.I don't actually remember why this one was rejected. Maybe it was too wordy (I can be a bit of a rambler when I put pen to paper).
If the above strip had not been rejected, it would've been published around May or June of 2007 when the strip was just getting started. The reference to the word f*ck was deemed inappropriate. At any rate, it's a bad pun. I had it up on my website for a while, so you might have seen it before.
No one has ever asked me, "Mr. Creekmore, Marcus was always chasing or gawking at some female or other, but did Anton, his best friend, ever have a girlfriend?" But if someone did ask, I'd say "Yes. If you'll recall, Anton briefly dated Frieda when they were both small children. Aside from that, I once wrote a strip where Anton (briefly) had a girlfriend and it was never published. Here it is..." and then I'd show the person this strip:
When I submitted the following strip, my editor was concerned that readers would have a hard time finding the humor in a situation where a male is beating a female...
He was probably right.
Here's a color illustration of Marcus, Tavian, and Lepidus (the Halfrican-American imposter; he's the one on the right getting his wig pulled off) that will be in the Maintaining compilation (one of these days)...
Also, Happy New Year.
Happy Christmas
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 23-12-2011 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: SNOW DRIFT, NATE CREEKMORE, CHILD, MOM, MOTHER, SNOW, SKETCH
It's been my habit to post new work every Sunday, but, since I likely won't be anywhere near a computer with internet access this coming Sunday, I thought I'd go ahead and post an image today.
When I was much smaller than I am now, my mother and I were out walking one wintry day and I got stuck in a snow drift. I started panicking and screaming, "Mom, help me!" She had to pull me out because I was too little to do anything but cry. I think the main thing my mother appreciates about this story (and she often brings it up with a smile) is that it reminds her of that brief period of time when she was actually bigger than me, the humor of which is apparent when one notices how petite she is and how tall I ended up becoming.
Merry Christmas.
OctopusCrosswalk
Author: Nate Creekmore | Date: 18-12-2011 | Category: Artwork | Comments: 0Tags: CROSSWALK, ATLANTA, NATE CREEKMORE, OCTOPUS, PIRATE, MERMAID, GROCERIES, FISH WITH LEGS
It's often the case that after you've been sitting for a while in an(other) ATL traffic jam, the congestion suddenly (and inexplicably) begins to clear up without any sign at all of what caused the delay...
I'm not saying that something like this causes those random traffic jams, but I'm not saying something like this doesn't cause those random traffic jams either....
Here's one of the preparatory sketches for the piece:
The finished piece is roughly 20x30 inches and was done using pencil, ink, watercolor, and gouache.