Cobblestone Magazine 2: Frederick law Olmsted

Yesterday I finally finished my second batch of illustrations for Cobblestone Magazine and they were approved!

This being a history magazine, each image comes with it's own hidden challenges and research not always evident on the surface. With this first image you might expect it was simple matter of  going out to my back yard and taking  a couple pictures of the trees and woods since I live in Vermont. While this image didn't require a ton of research for historical aspects it did take some time in the thumbnail sketch and developement stage. For one thing the boy needed to at least resemble his older self in the next couple of images. The hardest part for this was trying to design an image which shows the boy out  in the woods while still leaving an area of smooth color for the text. I considered various options and finally envisioned this solution. I did do quit a bit of research for the following two images though and during that process I discovered that Olmsted helped design The back bay fens in Boston. I then remembered one of my favorite trees from that park when I lived in Boston. I still have pictures of it and did a finished drawing and painting of it for class assignments at Mass Art. So since this series is about Fredrick Law Olmsted I figured it would be the perfect Chance to paint this tree once again. I'm sure you can guess which tree it is.

This next image was probably the toughest of the three simply because the topic didn't seem to have a whole lot of reference material readily available. My task was to portray Olmsted as an accountant/ Office aapprentice around 1840. I looked into the sort of clothing he would be wearing, I searched through a gazillion old office photos, I looked into the sorts of writing utensils in use, I even did some searching on what sorts of lighting and other office equipment might be visible in the piece. Again I had difficulty in designing this scene in which there was such a large chunk of text.

This final image required perhaps the most research while I suppose has less of that evident in the final image. My task was to illustrate Olmsted on his farm where he began to learn the art of landscape design. I researched the house and the land and had a look at various species of trees, clothing from the period etc. In the end I used artistic licence a great deal in the layout of the land as there was soo little to go on without actually visiting this property in NY. I would say the key element I did research for is the barn which the art director had me take out of the piece. I had a couple of books on hand about American barns and went to work reading about various styles and purposes. I read about how some barns in New England had roofs sloped at a good angle to allow the snow to stay on the roof and hence insulate the barn in the winter. I learned that painted barns start to appear in America in the late 1700's. Also that painted barns started in Virginia with gray toned paint while the more northerly barns moved in the direction of red. There are various theories for this. I find it interesting with Historical illustration how much behind the scenes research happens without ever being evident in the final pieces. There is a great deal of difference between illustrating the sentence, "The farmer worked on his farm" and  the sentence " Frederick Law Olmsted worked on his farm in his early twenties". Overall I enjoyed my second round with the art director at Cobblestone and hope to eventually have time to work on another with them should they invite me back for a third course in history!

Cobblestone Magazine Illustrations: The Blizzard of 1888

This past month I was contacted by the art director for Cobblestone Magazine to do three illustrations for their March issue! This was a HUGE deal for me since in over four years of my full time professional illustration career this is the first time I was contacted by a brick and mortar publisher. I've had a ton of great projects with excellent clients over the years. However it has always been a goal of mine to eventually work for brick and mortar publishers as that is really the only possible way for me to stay in business long term. The art directors with Cobblestone were a pleasure to work with and they Loved the final illustrations. They didn't ask for any changes to the sketches or the final artwork!! So looking forward to working with them again if I ever have the chance. Get a copy of the march issue when it's available!

This first two page spread illustration depicts the School children's blizzard in 1888.

    I originally expected all of these illustrations to be simple as most of the image would be snow. I soon realized the complexities involved with any historical illustration. I had to research the style of clothing, what the haystacks looked like at that time period, and then one of the hardest aspects ended up being in how to depict a blinding snow and yet not have it overtake the image entirely, as we do still want to see the action. I ended up painting the entire image normally and then lost a lot of that detail once I started adding the snow with a fan brush.  I had to resist the urge to paint mountains into the image since this story takes place out on the prairie. Placing eight people into a tight composition with lots of text and a gutter was a whole nother challenge.

 The image above tells the story of one group of children and their teacher who survived the storm due to the quick thinking of one father. Many kids tried to walk home that day in the storm and died. But in this case a father fought his way to the school and told the teacher to keep the kids there for the night. They all survived as a result. For this image I researched one room school houses, stoves of the period, clothing, and I kept trying to figure out what sorts of colors might be used in the clothing back then. All the pictures are of course black and white and generally very poor quality so a large part of this project I had to use my imagination along with informed decisions.

This last illustration depicts another blizzard that took place a little later that same year only this time it effected eastern cities. I found out that this storm is one of the main reason eastern cities decided to push to have all water, electric and even trolley transportation moved underground when they realized how a storm like this could easily put these things out of commission for a while. I researched building styles, street lamps, trolleys, carriages, and even the telegraph poles. The storm dumped up to fifty inches of snow in some areas and Snow drifts reached up to the second stories of buildings.