Juxtaposed

I live in a rural area where road kill is a gruesome common sight. Oddly enough a number of these animals don’t look dead at first glance with the trauma from the accident being hidden from a distance. Rather they seem to be in a state of rest. Such was the case with a deer I spotted last week at the side of the road. I think it must have been hit on the far side of a curve, made it off the road, and  fallen dead in front of an abandoned farm house. The tree it was lying under sported an odd sort of decorative item. It wasn’t exactly a sculpture or a mobile but an item made from what seemed to be found items that resembled a cross between both. The juxtaposition of the dead deer “reclining” at the base of the tree, underneath the metal construction, struck me as something noteworthy and storied. So much so that I ended up recreating the scene in a drawing (I know it’s a bit creepy). I’m not sure of a clearer way to describe it other than to say that I perceived a visual weight created through the pose, the tree,  and the swinging metal above. Sometimes it’s hard not to read a mythos into the countryside and the shadows that line the lane ways.

 

Logo Process

A friend of mine recently opened a theatre company. He was looking for someone to put together a logo for him. An upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 8 has resulted in all my old image editing software no longer being available for me to use  as most of it is no longer compatible with the updated OS. I was still able to create something for him using Microsoft Word ( I can’t even find the words to express how much I miss my old computer!!). His requirements were fairly simple in that he didn’t like shading, it wasn’t to be overly ornamental, and he wanted something that illustrated the company name. I did a couple of really quick sketches and then built a rough mock up. Using that basic build  I put together around 20 to 30 variations and sent them off to him for approval.

This was the original build. You can see it’s made by simply overlapping shapes.From that starting point I was able to create a number of compositions- such as these 3 below.

 

 

 

Here’s the one he chose to use for the banner of his company’s premier production.

It’s pretty simple but it met his immediate need. This might not be his final decision but for a MS Word build it doesn’t look too bad.

 

I still had those rough sketches that I started with and rather than toss them in the trash I fleshed them out into a finished pigment drawing…