Assignment: A poster done in ink line and color

Around 1997 my old friend Tom Clarke ended up in Las Vegas where he was working for Ron Bell Associates as the art director. Among other things, the agency was doing the advertising and promotion for the Glory Hole Casino in Denver, Colorado. I got a call from Tom one day, he needed a poster done for the casino, it turned out to a great assignment. Below is the rough sketch that he faxed me, we didn't have computers at the time.



Above is the first rough sketch I did to see if I was on the right track. After faxing it to Tom we had a couple of discussions on the phone and the direction became a bit clearer. I did a new quick rough sketch and he agreed that it was now working pretty good.



Below is the tighter pencil sketch which was faxed to him very early in the morning. If I remember correctly, we were on a tight deadline schedule and I had to get started on the art before he saw the new revised sketch. Tom would be calling me when he got in the office at 9 AM Las Vegas time to give me his final OK on the new sketch.



The finished pencil sketch for the poster.



Some detailed drawing I did of the various figures.





The finished art was done using a crowquill pen and brush with India ink on illustration board. This actually was the last ink line art assignment I did. I specialized in this type of art for about 40 years.



A film positive was made of the art and the color was painted underneath on illustration board, the same process that we used to use when illustrating Chevrolet ads years before. Incidentally, I did a great deal of work for Tom when he was art director on the Chevy account at Campbell Ewald in Detroit.



The final printed poster.



Recently I adapted part of the original ink drawing to create this comic book cover parody. This was done on the computer as are my other parodies in this series of limited edition prints.