I am really excited about my newest book, Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band by Kwame Alexander (published by Sleeping Bear Press). It's a project that allowed me to combine my art, a music theme and humor... it doesn't get any better than that!
Kwame put together a great little story with some very funny characters, including: Duck Ellington, Bee Holiday, Thelonious Monkey, Ella Finchgerald and Mules Davis. He also included a glossary at the end of the book that describes the actual Jazz musicians that inspired the book characters and other jazz vocabulary.
As I researched each Jazz character, I found that all of them had something I could use in my art that would tie the book character to the actual Jazz great. Thelonious Monk wore some pretty cool hats and I added one of them to my monkey character. Some photos showed Duke Ellington wearing a top hat and playing a light colored piano, so I used that information when designing "Duck". Miles Davis wore sunglasses in a lot of photos that I found, so "Mules" sported some jazzy sunglasses. Each one wore something that I could include in my artwork to reflect the actual Jazz character.
The paintings were created with oil paints on Bristol board. I started with a pencil drawing, then a burnt umber acrylic underpainting, followed by a complete coating of acrylic gloss medium to seal the paper from the oils. After that, several layers of oil paint were added to complete the image. Lastly, a final clear coat of Liquin was applied to create a more uniform paint surface.
The Rooster hits the bookshelves this month so check him out!
Here are two really great videos from Kwame... very funny stuff!!
Amazing:)
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