Maureen & Lee

Here’s a caricature assignment I did recently for my friends Maureen & Lee—

Twelfth Night

Once again I had the honor of creating an image for Pittsburgh Public Theater‘s season brochure. For Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, designer Paul Schifino asked me to focus first on the title lettering rather than images from the play.

I generated a bunch of rough sketches, first fooling around with different lettering styles. We added elements of the story to the type, like a pair of yellow stockings and roses. One character sends another a forged love-note and I used that motif in one of the treatments. The client picked out two favorites and I drew two tight sketches based on those. I created separate components for the winning image: lettering was done in ink on a light box and the notepaper and roses were painted as another piece.

You can find the entire 2016/2017 season brochure here. Twelfth Night is on pages 8/9.

Uncial.

Getting some movement of of the letters

Kind of a whimsical medieval

One character wears outlandish yellow stockings to proclaim his love.

Client likes it but too hard to read.

I dig gothic lettering.

In the play, a forged love-note is sent. I thought that would be a great motif for the title type.

I liked this treatment the best

Some roses added.

It came down to this sketch…

…and this one.

Just the paper and roses.

Ezekiel

Here it is, the fourth in my series (actually Ezekiel comes 3rd in the Bible) of Major Prophets of the Old Testament. Boiling down Ezekiel to a one-page cartoon took longer than I’d expected. As with all the prophets, he uses lots of visual imagery to make his messages memorable. There was tons of material that I left out, as when God charges Ezekiel to prophesy by commanding him to eat a scroll.

Would you like fries with that?

The Book of Ezekiel can be divided into three sections: God’s judgment of Israel, God’s judgment of Israel’s neighbor nations, and prophecies of better days ahead for Israel. The Chosen People have surely tried God’s patience—but before we gloat, let’s take a look at our own behavior! The words of Ezekiel and his pals aren’t merely for those long-ago times.

(Side note on vocabulary: PROPHECY/PROPHESY. “Prophecy,” the noun, (pronounced “PROF-a-see”) is a prediction. The verb “to prophesy” (pronounced “PROF-a-sigh”) means to predict something. When a prophet prophesies he or she utters prophecies.)

Of course, the big show-stopping image is Ezekiel’s vision of the wheel. This was the most fun to draw and I hope I stuck pretty closely to the biblical description. It is definitely the weirdest image in the Bible. I was tempted at first to make it a UFO but decided that would be too cheap a gag. I gave the human form enthroned atop the whole contraption a touch of John Steuart Curry’s John Brown.

A passage worth mentioning is Chapter 17, where the eagle plants a seed. It deals with God’s anger that a king of Israel broke his word to a Babylonian king—an enemy of Israel. How about that? Even though this Babylonian king is an enemy of God’s people, he must be dealt with honestly. The Jewish king’s covenant is an extension of God’s covenant. Each of us has a responsibility to behave with integrity no matter whom we deal with.

The last image I drew promises that David will be set up as the shepherd over God’s sheep. It’s possibly another foretelling from the prophets of Jesus’ coming. The evangelist Matthew begins his gospel with Jesus’ family tree showing that He descended from King David.

What did I forget? Oh, yeah—The Valley of Dry Bones! It’s the other big visual that Ezekiel is most remembered for. An entire valley of dried-up old bones brought back to life. How about some music? Here are the Delta Rhythm Boys singing Dem Bones. You want some more? Here are The Charioteers singing Ezekiel Saw The Wheel. Satan wears number 11 shoes. Yessir, I do love that old-time gospel music.

Now you know everything you need to about the Major Prophets. With your fund of Major Prophet info, you certainly will be the life of every party.

UPDATE—I’ve mentioned old-time gospel groups elsewhere on this blog. I should point out I first heard them and jazz groups from the same era on Rich Conaty’s radio show The Big Broadcast. Swing over and listen—and if you have a couple of extra samolians, drop something in the tip jar. Thanks!

Daniel

Continuing our everything-you-need-to-know-about-the Major-Prophets series, here’s Daniel.

Daniel lived to see the end of the Babylonian empire and the rise of the Persian empire—directly serving Emperors Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Darius. From Daniel we get expressions like ‘feet of clay’ and ‘the handwriting on the wall’ (do people still say that?) As a girl my mom learned to remember Daniel’s pals Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego by memorizing ‘Shake a bed, make a bed, and to bed we go’, so I pass it along. The Larks have a pretty snappy take on the story. Here’s Satchmo’s version. ‘Seven times hotter, hotter than it oughta be!’