Overspray

 

Yet another recent addition to the Studio library: Overspray: Riding High With the Kings of California Airbrush Art (Picturebox). The airbrush-as-illustration-tool enjoyed a brief heyday in the 1930s, thanks in part to Wrigley's artist Otis Shepard and pinup masters George Petty and Alberto Vargas. In the 1970s, a group of California artists, beginning with Dave Willardson and Charles White III, revived interest in the airbrush with their glorious pop-surrealist illustrations for magazines like West, Playboy, Rolling Stone and Oui (yes, Oui), movie posters and hundreds of album covers. The California airbrushers embraced pop culture iconography with a rare enthusiasm, and their work is saturated with so much chrome, neon, glossy lipstick and carnal sweat it leaves a not-altogether-unpleasant buzzing sensation in the skull. Norman Hathaway writes, "The carhop in Dave Willardson's poster for American Grafitti is so intensely American it's nearly painful."

Irish Classical Theatre Company

For the past ten years or so we've been creating posters for the Irish Classical Theatre Company. Here are a few selections from the 2011-2012 Season.

Blue Monk

Design mavens Greg Meadows and Pete Reiling created the identity for Blue Monk, a bustling gastropub on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. We created this little Cartoon Modern drawing based on one of Pete's sketches.

Hula Girl

Contrary to popular belief, winters in Buffalo aren't bad- but they are unreasonably long. The snowstorm outside my window on this April 18th afternoon inspired me to post this restorative pinup.

Cat's Meow

While skiing at Kissing Bridge, we noticed an old wooden sign hanging over an abandoned ski trail: "Cat's Meow." We were strangely charmed by this weatherbeaten relic- partly because of the jazzy name, and partly because the carefully hand-painted sign stood in sharp contrast to today's white vinyl slabs, with their randomly compressed and expanded Helvetica. We coveted that sign. But hiking into the woods at night and stealing it would've been wrong. And difficult. So we did the next best thing: we recreated it. It hangs in the studio now, a testament to our entry-level woodworking skills and our long-standing commitment to spending way too much time on non-paying projects.

Hellboy

If there's one thing we like, it's Mike Mignola's Hellboy, and if there's another thing we like, it's Douglas Fraser's neo-heroic illustration, and if there's a third thing we like, it's drawing a favorite character in the style of a favorite artist.

Time Travel...

While redesigning the Inkwell Studios website, we thought we'd have some fun with the "About Us" section- rather than talk about our work (which is awesome) or our clients (huge names- you'd be totally impressed) or the awards we've won (tons), we decided to create a fictional photographic autobiography, with our picture stripped in, Zelig-like, next to cultural luminaries from the past century. We thought the idea was hilarious, but it quickly took on a life of its own and became too unwieldy for the website; we decided to go with something a little more straightforward. However, given that we're ecologically-minded sorts who hate to let anything, even pixels, go to waste, we're reproducing the "Brush With Greatness" series here.

Newport Folk Festival, 1965. Foreground: Michael Gelen. Background, second from right: Bob Dylan.

Memphis, 1956. Left to right: Michael Gelen, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash.

Pamplona, 1925. Seated, left to right: Ernest Hemingway, Lady Duff Twysden, Hadley Hemingway, Harold Loeb. Standing: Michael Gelen

New York, 1959. Left to right: John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Miles Davis, Michael Gelen

Location Unknown, 1951. Left to right: Michael Gelen, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac

Stockbridge , Massachusettes, 1959. Left to right: Norman Rockwell, Michael Gelen

Montparnasse, 1916. Left to right, Amadeo Modigliani, Michael Gelen, Picasso, Andre Salmon

"Termite Terrace," Hollywood, California, 1935. Clockwise from front, center: Michael Gelen, Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett.

Amsterdam, 1969. Left to Right: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Michael Gelen

New York City, 1933. Left to right: Michael Gelen, Margaret Bourke-White

Long Island, 1955. Left to right: Michael Gelen, Jackson Pollack.