My Poster Illustration for Bucks County Gilbert & Sullivan’s ‘The Mikado’

It’s the time of year when singers and musicians from all over Bucks County and the surrounding areas converge to rehearse and perform the unique musical confections that are Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. These musicals are unique in that their utter silliness combines so incomprehensibly well with some of the most lyrical arias and orchestra arrangements anywhere to be found. This season the Bucks County Gilbert & Sullivan Society has chosen to produce what is roundly considered to be their namesakes’ masterpiece, The Mikado. Set in an imaginary imperial Japan, it’s a whimsical, satirical, romantic and thoroughly British story – not to be taken for a tale of Japanese culture, because William Gilbert wrote it to perfectly skewer Victorian society, not the Japanese. And his plot is as improbable as it is enchanting.

I’m happy to have created the poster illustration for this beautiful show. I have always admired Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, which have influenced Western art for centuries, and I based some of my palette and effects on that school of art, combined with colorful costumes that Bucks G&S already owns for the show.

Gilbert & Sullivan operettas are largely ensemble pieces; there are certainly main characters but part of the joy of the music comes from the chorus singing and reacting to the action in the plot. So I wanted to show many of the play’s characters in my Mikado art. I knew our stage set would include a small red arched bridge, so I researched ukiyo-e prints such as this one below of Shinkyo Bridge by Tsuchiya Koitsu, done in 1937. I thought a parade of people crossing such a bridge would be a fun way to show a lot of character types and costumes. I picked up some coloring and pattern from the traditional prints, also below, but still used my own cartoon style of drawing to project the comedy in the show.

My first pencil sketch was just shapes and gestures, but it roughed out the design. It occurred to me to put the young lovers in the story in a skiff under the bridge, even though this scene does not actually happen in the plot. But they do often hide their romance on the run, and depicting it this way makes a nice little wink against the chase scene of people on the bridge above.

I made rough sketches of many characters –

. . . and somewhere along the line I had the thought of putting our orchestra conductor in the chase scene too. Our orchestra is truly an fundamental part of the full G&S experience because the orchestrations accompanying the songs are incredibly beautiful. We attract about 40 excellent local instrumentalists for our shows, and they are so appreciated by our cast and audiences. So with our conductor in the chase scene I decided to put in a few instrumentalists as well! I think it accentuates the playfulness that’s a hallmark of G&S, and let’s everyone know our goal is to take nothing seriously in this play.

I tightened up the drawing of chosen characters, inked them by hand and scanned them to add digital color to the line drawing, like this

While I vaguely matched costume colors to existing costumes, I simplified my palette as did the ukiyo-e artists and applied colors flat, with no shading. I did the same with the background, working in pieces and then setting them up like my stage:

. . . and finally I put it all together into the finished poster.

Tickets have just gone on sale for Mikado and it should be a beautiful and funny production of this classic, which has been called “the most performed operetta in history.” See here for tickets and here for info on the show and Bucks Gilbert & Sullivan. I highly recommend this Mikado and our cast and orchestra of wonderfully talented characters!

175th Anniversary for a Lovely Church and Congregation

St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Doylestown is holding many festivities this Saturday, April 22, on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of its first service in the church in 1848. The community is invited starting at 1:00 pm to visit this beautiful Gothic Revival church and enjoy the conviviality that I know, firsthand, is the hallmark of St. Paul’s joyful and generous members.

St. Paul’s owes its existence to Mrs. Elizabeth Pawling Ross, who would ride her horse 26 miles from Doylestown into Philadelphia faithfully every month to attend Holy Communion at the Episcopal Church there. She eventually petitioned the diocese to create an Episcopal parish in her hometown of Doylestown, which in the 1840s was little more than a village crossroad between Philadelphia and Easton. I was happy to draw Mrs. Ross for a coloring book that St. Paul’s will have available Saturday for children to color, while their parents are having refreshments or touring the graceful interior of the building.

Starting at 1 pm Saturday, in front of the church if the weather is fine, a brief ceremony including a greeting by our town mayor and a reenactment of the opening of a time capsule from the church’s inception will take place; from there visitors may stroll from docent to docent inside, hearing interesting facts about the history and architecture of St. Paul’s, chatting with uniformed members of the Bucks County Civil War Round Table, enjoying refreshments and a colorful timeline display in the parish hall, seeing the Mercer tiles in the chapel below and even viewing the lovely enclosed columbarium garden. At 5 pm the same day, St. Paul’s excellent choir will sing a choral evensong service, and on Sunday morning at 10 am the rector, Fr. Daniel Moore, will celebrate a traditional Mass using prayers and hymns of the mid-1800s. Everyone is welcome at these events.

I was pleased to design the logo above for St. Paul’s occasion, which is being used on banners and t-shirts and the like for this year of celebration. I did this illustration below a few years back, depicting the church’s Easter Vigil procession.

St. Paul’s is a very charitable church within our community – for decades it has run Christmas in Doylestown, which benefits local shelters, and they now have a small ‘community food pantry’ in front of its steps for anyone in need. At this weekend’s events there will be a spot for donations to help the underserved in the community and the parish will also host a meal for those in need on Sunday, apart from the festivities – a regular occurrence for this generous church, which does not forget its mission even in the midst of its celebrations.

For all events at St. Paul’s, see their website here.

House Portrait of a Family Home

A while back I was asked to paint a home, to be given as a remembrance gift to the owners who were downsizing to another residence. The client sent me many good photos of the neat-as-a-pin cottage-style home, so I started with two pencil sketches from slightly different angles.

They picked the second sketch, which I then scanned and roughed in the color with acrylic paint and prisma pencils.

I had originally cropped the picture on these sketches to keep the image suited for an 11″ x 14″ frame, which I usually do to make it easy to frame. The client was not concerned about getting a custom frame made so she asked I zoom in a bit more to focus on the house and gardens.

I painted the finished piece in acrylic washes on illustration board, shown below.

My Scout Greeting Cards

Once a year I remind my readers that I have drawn some popular greeting cards for Scouts, in case you know someone who is earning a special honor through the organization. My son is an Eagle Scout and he had such a great experience with the Boy Scouts, learning great practical skills and making good friends, while reinforcing responsibility and good morals, and I am happy to share in celebrating current Scouts’ achievements.

All of my Scout cards are available in my Etsy shop. I drew the whimsical Eagle Salute Congratulations card below first, when a friend achieved the Eagle rank a year before my son. When my son made Eagle and had his Court of Honor alongside his best friend, I painted the Eagle Scout on a hilltop scene.

The journey to Eagle is guided by Scoutmasters, parents, friends and others who inspire and encourage the Scout to accomplish the challenges needed to achieve Eagle rank. Several customers asked me to produce smaller thank-you notecards for Eagles to send to their mentors, and they too are on my Etsy shop at this link. If the buyer wishes a special message printed inside these notecards, I can customize the card message after we chat through email.

I’ve also drawn Congratulations on Crossing Over cards for young children making the ceremony from Webelo to Scout rank, since my two grandsons have become Scouts. That ceremony is often in February, so the time is coming up!

And I drew these ‘Trustworthy’ boxed notecards with the Scout Law on them, which are very popular as gifts for Scout leaders and Eagles.

I have many 5-star reviews and nice comments about my cards and service, which are listed in the review section of my shop. All of my cards are printed on sturdy card stock – the congratulations cards are greeting-card-size, and the thank-you notecards are smaller, invitation-size. Envelopes are included with each order, and all the cards take standard first-class postage. The cardstock is made from partially recycled paper and my cards are printed in the USA – in fact, they are printed in my hometown! By the way, let me give a shoutout to all the wonderful people at Cortineo Creative LLC – who print all my cards with outstanding efficiency and keep the colors stunning!

I’ll mention, if you are in my area of central Bucks County, PA, you can email me before you order on Etsy, if you’d like to pick up your cards in person to save some postage. And for special orders of quantity, size or message just send your questions by clicking HERE to go to my Contact page to drop me a line. And I have some other cards on my Etsy shop for musicians and special occasions, you can see them all HERE.

Hat Shop in Turn-of-the-Century Doylestown

My illustration can be seen at the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce Bucks Fever Art Exhibition which opens Thursday, November 10 from 5 to 7 pm at the Mercantile in Doylestown, PA.

There’s a building in the middle of Doylestown, at the corner of Main St. and Shewell Ave., that’s been scaffolded for months – it’s being renovated into lavish condos, with a craft brewery on the bottom floor. But if you’d walked down Main Street in 1900 you’d have noted the latest women’s fashions in the elegant semi-circular second floor window of that same building, because that floor was home to Mrs.Ivins’ millinery shop.

The Doylestown Historical Society asked me to envision a typical day in Mrs. Ivins’ shop, with hats, customers and that lovely Victorian arched window. I had a wonderful time researching and creating this scene and I’m pleased to say that my original illustration will be in the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce Bucks Fever Art Exhibit, which opens to the public tomorrow, Thursday, November 10 with a reception from 5 to 7 pm at the Mercantile in the Doylestown Shopping Center.

Kurt Spence of the DHS sent me excellent photo references, courtesy of the Doylestown Historical Society, to begin sketching for the scene. Some were photos of the outside of the building from the turn of the century, some of ladies’ dress and hat fashions, and some from the interiors of Victorian hat shops.

I boiled down my process of creating this historical scene to three steps: research, distillation, and reintroducing selected detail. The research came in studying these photos, pictures from costume books I have, and information on the internet. I started sketching by creating the empty shop room with little detail, just to get the space correct. I sketched some figures separately, to drop into the scene. This was par0r of the ‘distillation’ – simplifying the elements to get a clear composition

Here is the room with the figures dropped in –

At this point I showed the sketch to Kurt, who, as a retired contractor, knows a lot about architecture and buildings, and he gave me suggestions which I was happy to revise. I next did a tonal sketch next to help with simplifying the light and dark areas. This would be a fairly complex drawing when finished, so thinking tonally helped organize shapes so the viewer could ‘read’ the picture more easily.

The DHS asked for this picture to be in color, but of course all the photo reference I had from the urn of the century was black/white, so I had to look at painters of the era to get a feel for the colors. I found this lovely piece of an interior by William Merritt Chase, painted in 1895. I liked the teal, rose and muted yellows and creams, and saw those colors repeated in other paintings of the era, and felt I’d found a good palette.

I did a rough color sketch, using colored pencils over a scan of my line sketch –

At this point I could start adding ‘selective detail’ – detail that would give the flavor of the era but not confuse the viewer’s eye too much. I could add pattern – the Victorians loved patterns of course – to the the carpet and the wallpaper, as long as it was low contrast. I added the bold wallpaper border near the ceiling because there was not much going on in the top third of the scene, and used my chosen teal, rose and yellow in that border.

I wanted to make this scene tied specifically to my hometown, so out the window one can see the Civil War Monument and the Intelligencer building, two landmarks that can be seen from this corner in Doylestown.

After this stage I transferred the drawing to illustration board, outlined using prisma pencil, and painted it in using acrylic paint washes. The finished piece –

The public is welcome to attend the Central Bucks Chamber show to see my piece and many other works of art. The opening reception is Thursday Nov. 10 from 5 to 7 pm at the Mercantile in Doylestown, with light refreshments and music on tap. The exhibit continues until November 20.

Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ – Porcine Version

I have once again dreamed up a humorous setting for the Lenape Chamber Ensemble‘s Children’s Concert, which is coming up Saturday, November 12 at Delaware Valley University. The Lenape Chamber Ensemble is a group of world-class musicians who twice a year host a delightful hour of playful information and performance for kids and their parents, on the weekend when they also perform magnificent concerts for adults at other times and venues. Their talent is sublime, but for their children’s concert I am permitted to draw a light-hearted fantasy of a scene for a poster, just for entertainment’s sake. For this one, I chose pigs as my musicians.

The concert November 12th features the most popular of Vivaldi’s works, The Four Seasons, as well as works by J. S. Bach and Jean-Marie Leclair. I felt a dance ensemble might be fun to accompany my little pigs’ musical performance, so I drew an audience of piglets admiring the dancers representing the seasons, while their accompanists play behind them.

I first sketched pigs in different music & dance positions –

• and then placed them within the space I have on the flyer, hand-lettering the info above and below them. The final poster is below – I also looked up the names the the seasonal movements of the Vivaldi. I’m hoping some enterprising children might learn a little French in the bargain! I highly recommend this concert for kids & parents alike, it’s really a delightful hour of music and fun!

Drawing for a Save-the-Date Card

A Mother of the Bride asked me to draw the lovely exterior of her daughter’s wedding venue for the Save-the-Date card. The venue will be The VanLandingham Estate in Charlotte, NC, and it’s a stunning building. The client showed me several other samples of cards with venues drawn in simple line and I loved the classic, elegant look of them.

She sent me a perfect head-on photo of the building and I drew it first in pencil.

A graceful and dignified mansion, is it not? After the ok from the client I inked it in cleanly with black ink and sent it off.

Just a few days ago the Mother of the Bride sent me the finished card, beautifully printed on heavy rag paper. The letterpress printing was done by Scott McClelland, with assistance from Bo, at Paper Meets Press in Glenside, PA. Letterpress is a traditional printing technique that creates a relief of the type and image in the paper – you can feel the depression if you run your fingers across the text. Some of the impression is visible in the closeup below.

I think the finished card is a very stylish and appropriate look for what I’m sure will be an elegant wedding.

My Illustration for a Business Birthday E-Card

I drew this car parade birthday illustration for Furia Rubel Communications last year. They originated the idea and needed me to make it into an image for them to send out with their best wishes to their clients. I think it’s a great way to make a touchpoint with each client – a beneficial marketing strategy – and remind their clients of the whole team of people working for their interests. I have often drawn the FRC team for projects in the past.

I started with a pencil sketch of the whole train of cars and caricatures of each FRC member.

When that was ok’d I printed out a copy and did a rough color sketch with markers and colored pencils. The great thing about sending out ecards is, there is no more expense in doing full color over black and white. On computer screens, color is free!

I decided to colorize this illustration using digital color, so the colors would match those in the FRC logo and other hues on their website. I drew each carload in black line, then filled it in with digital color.

After drawing and colorizing each piece of the picture this way I assembled them onto one page and added the banner, balloons and honking horns.

Another advantage of assembling this piece digitally is that if employees change from year to year, I can adjust the picture accordingly. And in fact, this year I was asked to add new team members and remove some who have moved on; so with some tweaks Furia Rubel will have an updated ecard showing their full team for 2022.

Portrait of a Charming Little Home in Vermont

A friend commissioned me to paint her daughter’s adorable first home, as a gift and celebration of this milestone. I waited for a while so they could send me some photos of full trees and flowers blooming around the house – Vermont’s spring comes quite a bit later than it does here!

I started with a pencil sketch. My client also sent photos of her daughter’s cat, so I pencilled him in on the front porch.

After some more recent photos were sent I was able to add newly-planted flowers to the color sketch.

And after approval from my client I transferred the drawing to illustration board and painted it using a combination of prisma pencils and acrylic paint washes.

Illustration for Liebovar, a Children’s Opera

I have worked with composer and librettist Misha Dutka before, illustrating the poster for his children’s opera The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. Recently Boheme Opera NJ performed a beautiful concert version of Misha’s full length opera Liebovar, or The Little Blind Girl, at the 1867 Sanctuary in New Jersey. Liebovar‘s plot has an opera-within-an-opera, and now Delaware Valley Opera Company plans to mount the short children’s opera that is within the larger story of Liebovar, in the fall. Misha asked me to do an illustration to advertise this performance.

Misha explained that the children’s opera involves the same young girl I depicted in the art for the full length work, a blind girl in a WWII concentration camp –

– but in this fairy-tale-type opera she is a poor peasant girl wandering through the woods, and befriended by various animals – a squirrel, a turtle, a fawn and a duckling. As soon as he described this I sketched a rough idea quickly, which he then approved:

I tightened up the pencil drawing –

and did a colored pencil color sketch first –

and then the final painting, in acrylic washes over prisma pencil, on illustration board. Below is the poster with text added for the event.