Frank Stockton Art

A few weeks ago I got a call from Debbie Kim of Los Angeles Magazine asking if I was interested in doing something for their book review section.

Being originally from Southern California, I thought it would be particularly cool to do something for them, if because maybe there's a chance that one of my old friends still living in L.A. will be more likely to stumble upon it.

The book review I was illustrating was for a recently published memoir of Norman Ollestad, who as a 12 year-old child survived a plane crash in the mountains that killed his father, the pilot, and his father's girlfriend. The book recounts his thoughts and reflections on life with his beach-bum father as he makes the treacherous journey through the icy wilderness back towards civilization. Heavy stuff to say the least.



Being Los Angeles Magazine, I knew it couldn't be very dark, but of course has to stick to the subject at hand. I did a few sketches based on the idea of the journey and the psychology of what the boy must have gone through. To me, the key to the concept seemed to be over-all the presence of his father looming over him as he made the journey. And to a lesser extent, the plane crash.

Debbie liked the first sketch best, and we talked about making Norman larger, but after talking it through she agreed with me that the thing that made the first concept work was the scale of the father to the son. Truth be told, I felt that sketch B would have been more fun to draw, but I knew that A was best and that it would be more challenging.



Lately I've been working with adding texture to my pieces, as well as experimenting with adding graphic light sources. I wanted to combine both experiments in this piece by making the father's image be the shadow side of the clouds, but in the end I had to go for a simpler (and much better) graphic solution. By the way, I kept thinking of this illustration by N.C. Wyeth while I was doing this, which is probably the reason I tried so hard to make the softer charcoal version work. Maybe next time though...



When I was finally satisfied and out of time to keep toying with it, I sent the illustration away and shortly thereafter got some feedback from Debbie. She asked me to move some elements around and make the plane crash more apparent, which she was totally right about.

Sending me the illustration in the layout was helpful to me because I could see what she meant about moving certain elements around rather than her vaguely describing what she wanted me to do. I always get excited when I'm asked to collaborate on the design end; it shows that the designer really cares what the final product will look like, and in turn makes me want to do a better job.



Here is the final illustration in the layout. The issue should be out soon if not already. You can click on the image to enlarge it.


Thanks for reading,

Frank

Labels: crash course, Debbie Kim, los angeles, Norman Ollestad, process

Way back in October 2008 I was contacted about doing a cover by Irene Gallo of Tor books for a new novel called The Long Man written by long-time comic writer Steve Englehart.

After doing some initial loose sketches for feedback, the job was placed on the backburner for a while and I eventually forgot about it.

However, late in January the job started back up again and we were able to flesh out the concept for the book a little better. I would describe the concept of the story if I was able to do so accurately--hopefully you get a sense for it from my cover, though.


I ended up doing two versions of the cover, but the brighter colored version is what's going to be published. I think it will stand out more that way. The less saturated version, however, is my favorite of the two.


If you haven't noticed, the process piece I posted a few weeks ago was actually used in this illustration.

The Long Man is scheduled to be released on August 4, 2009.


best,

Frank

Labels: book, covers, engelhart, gallo, long man, process