James O’Brien’s Illustration Blog

This is my work for the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Foot in the Door exhibit. My daughter and I got in just in time, about a half hour before they closed off the entry point. We stood in line for about two and a half hours, weaving our way through the new Target Wing up to the second floor where they were receiving the work.

The process for this was similar to my Mail Me Art piece. I designed the image in Illustrator, printed it out on plain thin paper, used matte medium to adhere it onto a 12″ square canvas, and then painted over the background white areas with acrylic. For the green areas, I “painted” on color tissue paper using wheat starch, same process used by Eric Carle for his children’s book illustrations.

Tags: acrylic, bird, cut paper, vector

For my Mail Me Art 2 submission, I’m sending an oversized card. I used a scrap piece of board and adhered with matte medium a print of an Illustrator image I’ve been working on off and again for a few weeks. I repainted the white areas of the print to give it a more painterly texture and to make the white areas more opaque. Around this I painted and rubbed in some white paint and attached a few additional black drop shapes. Then I added text with a Pentel brush pen, address and “no value” labels. I filled the back with repetitive text and ink blotches. This image is a view of the front of the card at the top and the back of the card at the bottom. Still a little work to do, need to add stamps and may add some additional bits here and there. Also need to address it.

Tags: brush pen, collage, lettering, Mail Me Art

Patti Smith circa mid 70’s, photo reference here.

Tags: brush pen, hair, music, Patti Smith

This is Kaki King, guitar virtuoso, from AMG,

appeared on albums from Tegan and Sara and the Foo Fighters and contributed to the soundtracks for Into the Wild and August Rush.

Drawn rightside up.

Tags: brush pen, face, hair, Kaki King, music, portrait

This is a sketch of Finian Greenall, records as Fink, from Brighton, has evolved from ambient techno to acoustic folk with a DJ slant, his music reminds me a bit of José González, messed up the ear so drew a better one, photo reference here.

Tags: beard, brush pen, ear, face, Fink, music, portrait

Lou Reed drawn upside down with brush pen, photo reference here.

Tags: brush pen, face, hair, Lou Reed, music, portrait

I’ve been using Danny Gregory’s method of drawing upside-down combined with Jack Unruh’s semi-blind contour drawing method with some mixed results, often ending up with some wild distortion. For this one, I drew rightside-up and, after blocking in the head a bit, started with the left eye worked my way through the face and hair and down to the shirt. Reference photo can be found here. Love that mustache!

Tags: brush pen, face, hair, music, mustache, Nick Cave, portrait

Neko Case’s music, according to All Music Guide, has “smoky, sophisticated vocals,” and, “dark, country-noir,” and, “sad cowgirl blues with all the rustic nuance of Patsy Cline.” Case possesses a “hauntingly beautiful alto, a siren call fashioned from country’s might and pop’s melody,”

Tags: brush pen, ear, face, hair, music, Neko Case, portrait

This is a ballpoint pen sketch with color of Daniel Ellsberg.

Tags: ballpoint, Daniel Ellsberg, ear, exchange, face, hair, politics, portrait, suit, tie

Dan Deacon ’s music is described by All Music Guide as, “influenced by diverse artists like Devo, Talking Heads, Scratch Orchestra, Raymond Scott, and Conlon Nancarrow,” and, “whimsical electronic music sensibilities” and, “filled with hyperactive and often challenging electronic detritus,” and, “an extravaganza of noise-pop that looks, not to the dance field, but to the slowly burgeoning indie rock fetish of voices, either in harmony or in chorus.”

Tags: beard, brush pen, Dan Deacon, face, glasses, hat, music, portrait