James Chonody Studio: Fallen Angels Project

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James Chonody was painting at Avalon Park Florida one day, and a woman stopped and introduced herself. She liked the paintings James had on display. They started talking, she said her son had suggested she stop and talk, yet her son was nowhere to be seen. Her son had been killed three months prior by a DUI driver. Mom wasn’t in the car, but the father and sister took months to recover from the crash. Her son was in the front seat passenger and he was killed.

She asked James how he started painting and he was afraid to tell her that he was a recovering alcoholic. When James started painting seven years ago, the drinking stopped. He didn’t know how she would react. She might lash out. He ended up telling her anyway. She gave him a big hug and said she was so proud of what he was accomplishing.

He asked if she would like him to paint a portrait of her son, and she agreed. The next morning, he had the painting finished in about two hours at 9am. He sent a picture of the painting and wrote “Good Morning Mother.” She called back crying and joyful. They have been good friends ever since. She introduced him to another mother who lost her son who was a high school football player killed by a DUI driver. The DUI driver was a cop’s daughter, and this was her second offense. James did a portrait for that family and was paid. He then did a portrait of a pregnant daughter who had been killed.

After that, James felt terrible charging money for these portraits, He felt like an ambulance chaser, although that was not his intent. The work came to him. He decided to start doing the portraits for free. It was good practice for his portrait work. He posted on Facebook that he would be doing these portraits for free. That is how the project started. The families in support groups started to spread the word.

A woman in Minnesota was in a Fentanyl support group and she spread the word.  She warned him that he might be flooded with requests. He said, “bring it on.” Seven people put in requests for portraits. Each portrait would take about two hours to complete, and he did this for about two years.

With each of these tragic deaths there was also suffering in the lawsuits that each family had to endure. Hearing about these lawsuits started to get to James. He did a few more portraits for families he was close with but needed to abandon the project.

James had to get brain surgery and these families reached out with their support and prayers. Several families visited him in the hospital. The portrait project had allowed James to find a support group that he didn’t know he would need. The whole project was a bit of an accident in the way it started, but he is glad he did it. He had painted 120 portraits for his Fallen Angel’s Project.

Since James knew that I wanted to sketch him working in his studio, he put out one more call on Facebook letting people know he would do a painting for free. A father in Arizona asked for a portrait of his son who had been killed in a horrible car accident. The boy had a fun surprised open-mouthed expression in the photo reference that was picked.

James works on a canvas covered in black gesso and blocks in the painting with thin layers of white paint. If he touches the canvas lightly with his brush he will paint the mid tones. Then when he loads the brush with thick white paint, he can get the highlights. His reference was on a digital picture frame above the easel. It took him about an hour to finish the first pass of the painting.

James has his studio set up in the garage and with the garage door open light floods into the space. On the back of the garage door was a large canvas painted with a blue sky with white clouds. A mystical sun and moon canvases adorned the ceiling. The walls were painted a light neutral grey. Black metal grid stands often used in street fair displays stood along every wall. His paintings were hung everywhere on these grid stands. The newest paintings hung on stands that faced the street. James tends to sell the work as fast as he creates it which I vastly admire.

3 Little Pigs First Pass

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The first pass at The 3 Little Pigs poster for the Orlando Shakes kept with my usual approach of depicting the characters with realism. I only put one pig in the courtroom at the time. So what happened to the two other pigs? Chances are that they had already been devoured. The one pig remaining would be the one with the brick house.I like little baby pig ears, they are large and look like they belong on bats.

The wolf looked like your average wolf in a green pinstriped suit. Notes I received helped immensely to push the poster in a fun direction. I was advised to look at The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and look a the Grinch’s sneer. He had an amazing sneer that would curl infinitely. Chuck Jones is the director of that film and he has an amazing knack to draw characters with appeal and tons of emotion. In the shorts he directed he would personally draw many of the key poses of the characters to get the animators started. He knew exactly what he wanted.

I would of course need two more pigs and they should also not be as realistic. They needed to be angry or scared depending on their character. In the Disney animated short each of the pigs had a definite personality. That film came before Snow white and the 7 Dwarfs and I believe the level of thought that went into giving each pig a personality late translated into the clear personalities given to each dwarf.

The type face I had picked for the title was also rather plain and not very playful. That would also require some major rethinking. There was a whole lot of type that needed to go on this poster with all the credits and the tag line, so the vertical image would be more like a square image after the type was in place. I figured I should embrace that and add bars of color to isolate the text from the courtroom scene.

I incorporated a red jury box and red witness stand. They have subtly different wood treatments. I don’t know if any one seeing the poster would notice that. I would keep many elements like the pointing fingers, the green suit and jury box but everything else needed a facelift to make it more playful. The wolf had literally no expression other than hunger I suppose. He needed a dose of anthropomorphism.

I still didn’t want a flat 2d animation look. I needed a mix of playful expressiveness and realism. This pass had far to much of the latter. Back to the drawing board, or in this case, iPad.

Boulevard of Bold Dreams Final Poster

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The first pass at the poser for Boulevard of Bold Dreams had issues where the portrait of Actress Hattie McDaniel didn’t quite look like the actress. I have a tendency to paint bold and spontaneously but this assignment required a more photographic look. I tightened up to get the details right in the face and then let my self loosen up a bit with the background and light effects.

I did one version of the title treatment where the Oscar was in the space inside the O in Bold. I abandoned that concept preferring to keep with the light flare effects throughout.

The challenges faced with this poster have been faced for centuries as artists try to get the details of a face correct and also add some warmth and life to the painting. I decided to spare you the early versions of the painting since the details that are are off are so subtle that It might seem Like I was sharing the same image over and over.I had recently done a painting with gem like highlights on the skin and I went for that effect in this poster.

In the end the painting worked out with delicate yellows and violets throughout. I spent much of my time wrestling with the skin tones making sure the darks were dark enough and the lights light enough. The color of the skin doesn’t matter as much as the value of the skin,

Once again I didn’t have enough time to get to the show to sketch an actual production. I had read the script and therefor know it would have been a great show to sketch.

The Comedy of Errors Final Poster

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The final version of the Comedy of Errors poster for the Orlando Shakes mostly addressed subtle changes to the upper half of the poster. A catch phrase was added which I incorporated in a flowing scroll below the new title treatment.

The woman with the gossamer wings was moved down into the parade crowd. She replaced one of the twin brothers and I added a few more costumed revelers in the parade. In the night sky I added warm glowing embers that could be interpreted as stars of the flaming embers of an exploded firework falling to the ground.  Many of my poster images incorporate some glowing elements. Once some magical light effect is in the scene I start to feel satisfied.

Most of the parade remained unchanged, I just kept working on subtle details while keeping some spontaneity. There was some talk of adding the waterfront at the end of the street, but that would have pulled visual interest away from the parade. I kept the grey city buildings at the end of the street to cut off any further depth to the scene.

The new type treatment was very similar to the type I was seeing on many Mardi Gras posters and flyers. I like how William Shakespear’s name fit below errors with the E and S book ending his name. This was a fun poster to pull together. I didn’t have a chance to sketch the production of the show. I would have liked to see this marriage of Shakespeare’s play and Mardi Gras. It must have been a fun show that would have been magnificent to sketch.

This production was in 2023. It feels like I worked on the poster yesterday. I have been updating the portfolio on this website, so I am going through all the past work I have done to populate different categories on the website. I have been adding artwork to the Theater Posters category and discovered I never wrote about these posters at the time. When I find that I didn’t discuss the process at the time, I am going in and doing it today so I can add the art to the portfolio.

The Comedy of Errors Second Pass

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For my second pass at the Comedy of Errors poster I focused on a Mardi Gras parade. I wanted a brass band and a wash board. I had been to a wedding in New Orleans and my most vivid memory caught in a sketch was of a brass band playing on the street. I started researching opulent Mardi Gras masks and costumes. I also wanted it to feel like the parade was proceeding down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. I also started having fun with the title treatment. I drew this swirly title by hand and I rather like it. I don’t know why it was ultimately abandoned. If I were to use in in the final poster I would need to clean up the edges by erasing and redrawing edges of the letters to make everything slippery smooth.

For some reason I fell in love with a woman with light blue purple chiffon wings. I raised her up above the crowd as if she was the figurehead on a sailing ship or was raised on a float. I kept the tow male twins from my first pass at the poster and just hid them in the crowd. The guy holding the bright yellow umbrella also crossed over from the first pass of the poster. I added a golden Mardi Gras Mask just because it was so fun to paint. There was a desire to make the title bigger, so the mask had to go.

Burbon street looked fine but it was rather dark in this rendition of the poster. I wanted more of an excuse to play with point lighting and neon glows. The upper hapf of the poster was dark to allow the title to be read but there must be a way to add more drama to that night sky.

In general everyone liked the parade but the woman didn’t need to be the center of attention. There was a desire for the title to feel even more like what is seen on Mardi Gras posters and promotional material. I started researching type that had that Mardi Gras flair. In general the lower 1/3 of the poster was working just fine. I needed to play more with the upper 2/3 of the poster image.

My favorite touch was the trumpet leading the eye into the deep space. That I would have to save.

Comedy of Errors First Pass

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In designing the 2023 Orlando Shakes poster for Comedy of Errors, I started with a kaleidoscopic idea that featured two sets of twins. In the Shakespeare comedy identities get mixes as two sets of twins fall in love. It is a comedy that stresses how ephemeral love is and how blind. I was looking a tons of reference from Mardi Gras since the Shakespeare play was to be staged in New Orleans. My idea involved perfect symmetry which is something digital painting is quite good at. In the background I placed abstractions from intricate Mardi Gras parade floats. The only thing that broke the symmetry were the two men in the background both holding yellow umbrellas. The title treatment was kept bold with offset lettering to imply comedy.

This was just one of the ideas pitched for the poster. Ultimately everyone leaned towards a street parade scene since it had more action and a large cast of characters. Purple and yellow became the complimentary colors that dominated all of my initial concept sketches. I was doing concept sketches at full size. I honestly feel it is just as easy to paint a concept rather than to do a pencil sketch which  can be harder to interpret. I like throwing line and color at the page right from the start. I know everything can change and likely will so the stakes are not high.

I just gave a quick presentation for the Orlando board that showed the process behind 10 of the theater posters. I realize now that should be a sub category in my portfolio. Some people probably think that one image is created and accepted but the process if far more collaborative allowing an idea to evolve and grow just as any stage production evolves with many rehearsals. My first pass at a poster is seldom the one that will get accepted. My first pass is just a sloppy attempt to catch the fish. Once the fist is caught, then the more interesting and intricate ideas can work their way into the process.

COVID Dystopia is now live on YouTube

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COVID Dystopia has finished it’s film festival circuit and is now live on YouTube. This animated short has screened at dozens of film festivals around the world and has won multiple awards including…

Winner of Best Micro Short… Berlin Short Film Festival

Winner of Best Animated Short… Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival

Winner of Best Animated Short… Orlando Film Festival

Winner of Best Animated Short… Wild Rivers Film Festival

It has been an adventure traveling the world going to the festivals which were brave enough to screen the film. Though masked for the whole flight back to Orlando Florida, I managed to catch COVID-19 returning from the Pittsburgh Film Festival. It is ironic that COVID caught up with me as I was promoting COVID Dystopia.

We might be done with COVID but COVID is not done with us.

The film is now free to view online. Take a look at this link… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rN3JGMfMi8

Orlando Shakes Board Meeting

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Jim Helsinger, the Artistic Director at the Orlando Shakes (812 E. Rollins St., Orlando, FL), invited me to give a brief 10-minute presentation at the Orlando Shakes Board meeting that showed some of the creative process involved in each season’s posters. It was exciting to share a bit of the creative chaos that transpires every season.

I prepared 10 slides (JPGs) that showed all of the versions of each poster that were used as the concept for each poster evolved. Some slides had just 4 versions of the poster while others had up to 10 different concepts.

The meeting was tightly packed with budgeting and marketing presentations, so I didn’t want to run overtime. With the 10 slides I had just 1 minutes to discuss each poster evolution. This is something I do here on Analog Artist Digital World each season anyway. I show all the ideas that didn’t work, before showing the final poster concept.

With Stuart Little I pointed out that the first pass at the poster was just something to get the conversation started. I did another version with Stuart in the port hole of a boat and then one with the cat dominating the scene. When the cat was pushed further into the background the concept allowed Stuart to take center stage.

With Hound of the Baskervilles the challenge was to make it clear that the show was a comedy. I first pass was quite dark with a huge demonic dog hidden in the trees while a silhouette of Sherlock was looking through his magnifying glass. A second pass had Watson and Sherlock seated in the same forest. I realized that Watson has a bigger role in the mystery than Sherlock. I put another dog in a golden frame. That dog was once again too dark and menacing. When I replaced him with a smiling rottweiler and had Watson looking through the magnifying glass with a huge magnifying glass and Sherlock looking quite perplexed. The comedic aspect seemed clear to me.

With Fat Ham I just had to switch from the nightclub dance mode I adopted in the first tow passes at the poster and instead focus on the picnic in the backyard. With Shakespeare’s As You like It I tried about 10 different concepts before settling in on female lips and a mustache. I had seen an image of a lipstick kissed onto a sheep of paper and to me that pattern looked like trees in a forest. It is an abstract though that came after many far more literal passed at the poster design.

With Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors there were tons of passes at the poster because I had worked on it for two seasons. Concepts started with a full cast and over time the challenge became figuring out how to depict a vampire smiling. Any time a vampire smiles it doesn’t come off as comedic, it comes off as menacing. Clattering toy teeth were an obvious work around to let people know this was a comedy.

Come From Away also had many passes before setting on a final poster image. It is about planes being diverted to land in Nova Scotia after the 9-11 attacks in NYC. Many of the early designs had multiple airplanes lined up on the runway. But that isn’t what the show is about. It is about how people come together for one another in an emergency. The challenge was how to depict a welcoming community. Orlando came together to embrace love and strength after the Pulse Nightclub massacre.  The concept that worked showed multiple hands creating a heart shape with a bright sunrise glowing in that heart shape. I had seen this symbol of the heart so often after Pulse, and I finally embraced it for the poster concept.

Richard III was a rare case where I did four concept and one hit the mark perfectly. In that poster, Richard’s hand rises from inside a crown and it scratches three bloody trails onto a white wall.

With A Christmas Carol I got to point out how I had created a poster design for the show 4 different times. This time I resisted showing a large cast and instead just focused on Scrooge walking down a dark London street while it snowed. That simple image allows the viewer to decide who Scrooge might be on that dark evening walk.

With the Children’s show Corduroy, I sketched a Teddy bear sitting on a shelf. He seemed sad, which he was since he had been abandoned there for so long. The show, however, is very finny and comical. The poster needed a verb. I did two passes with a girl hugging the bear, one was realistic and the other cartoony. In the end the concept that got accepted showed Corduroy reaching for a button which had popped off of his green overalls. That button was his quest for the entirety of the show. He wanted to look good to the little girl would return and bring him home.

Last I got to share a sketch of the recent production of Henry VI: The Rise of Richard which I had done on location in the theater. I have been doing a location sketch like this every day since January 1, 2009. Of course I sketched the board meeting itself. I only had an hour while subtracting my presentation time. I had to work fast. The sketch is rushed and not as complete as other sketches I have done, but it isn’t the worst thing I have ever done, so I accept what it is and move on to the next.

Million Dollar Quartet, Final Theater Poster

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For this poster I did extensive research on what record album c overs looked like in 1956. The Million Dollar Quartet jam session took place on December 4, 1956, at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. It was an impromptu gathering featuring rock ‘n’ roll icons Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins.  The session was a chance meeting where the four musicians played together, captured by Sun Records owner Sam Phillips. A local newspaper, the Memphis Press-Scimitar, published an article the following day featuring a photograph of the four men, leading to the “Million Dollar Quartet” nickname.

On my first pass at the poster, Elvis didn’t quite look like himself, so I had to tie him down some more.  I also did not have the red radiating beams which is an effect I saw on another album of the day. The beams reference Sun Studios where the performance happened. Those radiating beams gave the poster the pop that I was looking for.

Million Dollar Quartet is a Tony Award-nominated musical by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux. The show brings this historic night to life with a score of their hit songs, telling a story of music, fame, and personal drama. The score includes over 20 chart-topping hits like “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Walk the Line,” “Hound Dog,” and “Folsom Prison Blues”.

I unfortunately didn’t have the time to go to the show to sketch. There really should have been a sketch artist in the room when these 4 performed together. The show was   in honor of Harvey L. Massey. I once sat next to Harvey and his wife Carol in the Shakespeare Theater. They were seated in the seats above the entry doors. I decided that those seats were the perfect angle from which I should sketch the show. I asked if it was alright if I could sit next to them to sketch. Harvey was a huge supporter of the Orlando Shakes productions. Had I realized who he was at the time I might have been to intimidated to sit down next to him and sketch the show.

Harvey L. Massey, was the retired Chairman and CEO of Massey Services. Massey Services is the pest service that almost every Central Floridian uses to keep pests from their homes. The company grew to more than $200 million in revenues with more than 1,700 employees. He passed away peacefully on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at the age of 81.

James Chonody Street Artist Little Econ Trail

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I have been biking the Little Econ Greenway Trail each morning since I have been in an Airbnb in Azalea Park. I set up this short-term rental for two weeks. Stella Arbeláez pointed out that the place was very close to the Little Econ trail. I am glad I made it a limited stay in Azalea Park, because the house is directly under the flight path of planes landing at the Executive Airport. I thought only little Cessna’s landed at that airport, but I was wrong. The planes also fly over the Little Econ Trail but the noise isn’t as bad since the planes have more elevation when flying over the trail.

I tend to bike the trail as soon as I wake up in the morning. I know that the heat builds and I would rather not be sweating when the Florida heat reaches it’s peak in the afternoon. Riding my bike each morning gives me time to think, and it allows my body to heal faster after my hernia repair operation. The time spent biking also allows me to reflect on what I want to accomplish for the day.

One morning I noticed an artist set up in one of the picnic canopies working on a painting. I had wanted to bring along my art bag so I could do a sketch on the trail, but I managed to forget it back at the Airbnb. I cursed my thoughtlessness and rode by, hoping I might catch him the next day. Thankfully he was indeed there the next day. I rode past again because I wanted to be sure to do a full circuit of the trail. On the ride back, I stopped to introduce myself.

James Chonody was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt that looked like Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. My awkward introduction was warmly received by James, and he started to tell me all about his career as a location artist. James gave up drinking about 7 years ago and at the same time he took up painting. He thought he might reward himself with a drink after finishing his first painting, but he became completely obsessed with that first painting and forgot all about drink. Painting had kept him sober for 7 years. I feel the need to get lost in the creative process once every day to keep my life on point, and I suspect James feels that same need. He said that children who like to spin obsessively are prone to want to drink later in life. They like the feeling of being a bit off balance. Art does the opposite.  It offers a chance to be completely balanced and very much aware of the surroundings.

As James related his life story I felt like our paths were very much alike. He worked for Disney helping engineer the parade floats, and I put in 10 years at Disney Feature Animation. He feels more satisfaction now that he is producing art that satisfies his tastes. We had some fun bashing Disney executives.

James blocks in his paintings quickly and can do several paintings a day. He doesn’t like to over polish a painting, he likes the look of definite bold brushwork. I was a little worried because he felt the mason jar painting he was working on looked complete. I just hoped he would work on it long enough for me to finish my sketch from across the bike path. He did continue painting by adding lights to the background of the piece. He started packing up at about noon. I think like me he likes to get back to the studio before the worst of the Florida heat hits.

His painting often starts with a black ground. He explained that this allowed the darkest darks to already be in place, he just needed to add lights. We joked about watercolor artists who refuse to use black. They spend so much time mixing black with burnt Umber and ultramarine, blue. Like James I am happy to just use black if it suits the needs of the sketch.

He is a member of the Sanford Seminole Art Association and he encourages artists to paint on location. I hope to stop out and join them at some point. I am always excited to learn about a new arts organization.

The story James related of resilience and using art to rebuild oneself really resonated with me. James is 74 years old and he has his art for sale as he works on a painting. As we were speaking someone walked up to his artist’s area and they were in the market to buy the painting James had of a golden retriever dog swimming. The person didn’t have enough cash, and he offered James a down payment. James suggested he look for an ATM cash machine nearby. He joked with me that the park should really set up an ATM near the picnic canopy where he sells his art since the art sells so well. As I was finishing my sketch, the guy returned with the rest of the cash to buy the painting.

James explained that it was a good day since he had sold several paintings and he had replenished his artistic stock by completing a painting of the mason jar full of lemonade. He also had a painting of a mason jar full of fruit loops cereal. He said people love nostalgia and nostalgia sells. That Fruit Loops painting would end up in someone’s breakfast nook, of that he was certain.

Other paintings on display were of Italianate architecture.  James said that some people could spot his engineering background in his artwork. I sometimes get similar comments about my location sketches. James paints live at events, so we certainly have much in common. It was such a pleasure to meet a fellow artist on a beautiful Sunday morning. Showcasing his work outside allows him to meet people and sell art.  He wondered why more artists don’t do it. I want to live more like James when I grow up.