Don’t Mind People Grinning in Your Face (Portrait of Jack White)

I started working on this piece for an assignment for my second Tutormill class, Realistic Portraits with Tim O’Brien and Nathan Fox. The illustration had to fit Rolling Stone’s format as a possible cover. The heart and soul of a lot of White's music comes out of the Mississippi Delta Blues tradition so I decided to show Jack as a Blues musician from the ‘30s.
The finished piece is gouache, graphite, ink and acrylic. I’m considering adding textures, grease spots and cracks digitally to create the illusion of an old photograph, but I’m still on the fence. Any feedback on this (or any aspect of the illustration) would be awesome.
In case you’re wondering, the title comes from the name of Jack White’s favorite song, a blues anthem written by Son House in the ‘30s. I think it suits the starkness of the portrait and Jack White’s independent attitude toward life.

Seattle Sketching

This first piece was actually created in Youngstown, OH and in downtown Chicago. I like the illusion of a person tutoring a cityscape in math. :)

The flight from Detroit to Seattle is about five hours which leaves lots of time for playing in a sketchbook. This piece took a little let than an hour and allowed me to experiment with line quality and perspective. I really like the worm's-eye view in this piece and the usage of color to communicate distance.

The musical duo on this page are part of the Tallboys, a country and bluegrass group. The girl would occasionally stand and step dance to enunciate the beat of the songs. Really cool stuff and nice people.

This is a collage of people I saw while I wandered around the city and hung out at various coffee shops. I wanted to created a seamless collection of people that carried an ambiguous narrative. I've been thinking of creating paintings out of compositions directly from my sketchbook or inspired by the people and places in my sketchbook. We'll see what happens.

Awww, sleepy Chris.