James A. Maritz drawing by John Foster Dyess

Drawing of James A. Maritz

James A. Maritz changed a family jewelry manufacturing company, with declining sales ,during the Great Depression, into a successful sales incentive company.
When I started working at Maritz Motivation Company in March of 1969, James A. Maritz was in a wheelchair ,after I think,having a stroke.

In 1978 I was asked to create a black and white portrait of James A. Maritz, which was printed on the cover of Team News, the Maritz newsletter.
The Process- I was given a black and white photograph of Maritz to work from, to create my drawing. I put white gesso on cold press illustration board,which was applied with a large brush,to create textured ridges which I drew on with a graphite pencil.I placed the photo in a overhead opaque projector and projected the photo on the gesso board.I drew directly on the board and completed the drawing in about an hour. This process is easy if you understand the structure of the human head and have been drawing for many years. It’s not what I put into the drawing ,but what I left out.

Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks portrait by John Foster Dyess

I’ve  shown this portrait on a previous blog post and am showing it again because today Rosa Parks statute was unveiled in the US Capital today.

 

 

Illustrations I have created about the history of African Americans page 3

Marian Wright Edelman by John Foster Dyess

The original use for this illustration was for L magazine with a article called The Reluctant Lawyer. This version was changed for use in my portfolio by eliminating a spot illustration of children and increasing the size of the civil rights struggle spot.

Illustrations I have created about the history of African Americans.

Cover for To be Free by John Fpster Dyess

February is Black History Month and I will be posting illustrations I have created for stories in text books about African American history.This is the cover for a book ,published by Steck-Vaughn, about a slave that escaped from a plantation. Below are some of the illustrations I created for this story.

illustration by John Foster Dyess

illustration by John Foster Dyess

illustration by John Foster Dyess

illustration by John Foster Dyess

 

 

 

What Bass see-page two

Moon and Bass

This illustration is part of the Bassmaster magazine article about what Bass see. Bass can see underwater using  light from the moon.

Bass from above

Another schematic showing the range of Bass vision.

fishing at sunset

Sunset can be a good time to catch Bass.

 

Pencil drawing of a young girl

four views of a girls head by John Dyess

This young girl was a model for an illustration assignment for  More magazine published by Baptist Sunday School Board. This drawing was done at least ten years ago using photos of the girl from different angles.This was not part of the assignment and was done as a pencil study and sample.

young girl 01

young girl 2

young girl 03

young girl 4

These drawings were done with a oo3 technical pencil using graphite lead on LetraMax 2200 illustration board. Color applied with an airbrush using Rotring liquid acrylic ink.Click on pencil drawings to view more of my pencil drawings on my blog

Squares – page four

A Drawing of a Shell from Five Sides by John Foster Dyess

This drawing was accepted in the Prints,Drawings & Pastels Exhibition at the St.Louis Artists’ Guild, in May of 1996. This was rendered in graphite pencil on cold press illustration board.  Again a square format. I gave this drawing to my son Mike and his wife Stacey.

detail of shell drawing

 

Squares – page one

portrait of Denny McDaniel by John Foster Dyess

I believe this was the first time I used squares in my illustrations and paintings. I will be posting other images that contain squares in future posts. This illustration was created for print advertisement for Firstbank in St.Louis in 1980. The art director gave me a lot of freedom in the design and technique of this illustration. This was a series of portraits, created by many St. Louis illustrators, of business owners that used Firstbank. I did three drawings in this series.This is a portrait of Denny McDaniel,President of Southwest Truck Body. His company built truck bodies, for the U.S. Army, that contained many compartments and that is why I choose to use the square design in this illustration. This layout was my concept. The art director gave me black and white photos of Denny in different poses and photos of the truck bodies built by Southwest Truck Body.  This is a graphite pencil drawing on cold press illustration board that had a coat of gesso painted on the surface. The size was about thirty inches wide by twenty inches high. Denny McDaniel was given the drawing.

Firstbank advertisement

These ads appeared in newspapers and trade magazines.

Step by step process creating Mattie’s Whisper continued

finished painting of Mattie’s Whisper by John Foster Dyess

This painting was created using dyes, liquid acrylic paint and gouache paint on cold press illustration board. The size is 15″wide by 22″ high. This illustration was created in 1992 and at this time illustrations were pealed off their backing board and placed on a large drum scanner. The surface of original image you see is distressed from being removed from the backing board. Today a scan would be made on a flat bed scanner with no damage to the original.

fine line marker drawing from photo of Anna.

The process I used in 1992 was to project my drawings with either an opaque projector or a slide projector on bond paper or tracing paper,using a fine line brown marker. The size of this drawing is 7.5″wide by 11″high. At this stage I was focusing on simple outlines and composition. I decided to have Mattie” looking up at the head of Whisper and not his injured leg. I then made a black and white copy on a copy machine and drew a tight pencil using tracing paper over the copy.

Mattie and Whisper drawing with pencil on illustration board.

This bad copy machine copy is the only image I have of the tight drawing. I have either misplaced or trashed my Mattie’s Whisper preliminary thumbnails and drawings.

Detail from Mattie’s Whisper illustration of Mattie.

detail of horse head from Mattie’s Whisper.

The process I use to create an illustration has changed since 1992, but I think some information can be learned from this post by my illustration students. My recent paintings,photos and digital images along with my “older” illustrations can be found on my blog.

 

 

Step by step process creating Mattie’s Whisper

cover illustration for Mattie’s Whisper by John Foster Dyess

I began teaching Illustration One and Two last Friday at Meramec Community Collage and will again be posting assignments and information on my Friday blog post. This week I am starting several days early because this will be a two post lesson. I will be showing a step by step process of the creation of an illustration for the cover of the fiction book “Mattie’s Whisper” by Alice DeLaCroix. This illustration was painted in 1992 and I think “my how quickly  time flies by”.
Step one – Client, Boyds Mills Press, contacts me with this assignment and sends two layout ideas for the cover. This assignment also includes 19 black and white drawings for each chapter of the book.

layout one from client

layout two from client

 

step two – I began this project by reading the authors manuscript and then did small idea drawings (thumbnails)  for each chapter illustration. I can’t find these thumbnail drawings I did for this project but future step by step posts will include thumbnails.

step three – I made arrangements to visit a horse farm to take photo reference and contacted a friend to ask if her fourteen year old daughter could be a model for Mattie. Her daughter Anna agreed and I began my reference photography for Mattie’s Whisper.

horse reference photos

Anna posing as Mattie

The photos of the horse was taken with a SLR film camera using slide film and the photos of Anna were taken with print film and developed at Walgreens in one hour. Today I use a digital camera (my third) which is a Canon EOS Rebel T3. Tomorrow I will post my preliminary drawings and finished painting,with a description of the technique used for the finished painting.