Scott McKowen

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Scott McKowen is an American illustrator, art director, and graphic designer. He was born and raised in Michigan, and his studio is in Stratford, Ontario. [1] He designs posters for theaters and other performing arts companies across North America, and he creates illustration for books and magazines. He is known for his drawings on scratchboard, a process in which he uses a knife blade to carve white lines onto a black board. [2] [3] It is somewhat similar to engraving or woodcutting, in the sense that images are formed by carving white lines. In the last stages, color is often added to the illustrations. [4] [3]

Scratchboard art medium and technique

Sometimes referred to as scraperboard, but usually called scratchboard in North America and Australia, is a form of direct engraving where the artist scratches off dark ink to reveal a white or colored layer beneath. Scratchboard refers to both a fine-art medium, and an illustrative technique using sharp knives and tools for engraving into a thin layer of white China clay that is coated with dark, often black India ink. There is also foil paper covered with black ink that, when scratched, exposes the shiny surface beneath. Scratchboard can be used to yield highly detailed, precise and evenly textured artwork. Works can be left black and white, or colored.

Contents

Posters

He has designed theatre posters for the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, New York’s Roundabout Theatre, Pearl Theatre (New York City), Great Lakes Theater, Denver Center Theatre Company, The Acting Company, Arena Stage, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, and regional theaters in major cities in the United States and Canada. He has done extensive work for The National Ballet of Canada, National Arts Centre, The Canadian Stage Company, and Theatre Calgary. [5]

Shaw Festival

The Shaw Festival is a major not-for-profit theatre festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. It is the second largest repertory theatre company in North America. Founded in 1962, its original mandate was to stimulate interest in George Bernard Shaw and his period, and to advance the development of theatre arts in Canada.

Pearl Theatre (New York City)

The Pearl Theatre Company, commonly referred to as the Pearl Theatre, was a theatre in New York City. It was established in Chelsea by Shepard Sobel in 1984, with David Hyde Pierce part of the company's first season. The company focused on producing classic works performed by their resident acting company. After moving to St Mark's Place and then to City Center, the company moved in 2012 into their first permanent home, a 160-seat theatre at 555 West 42nd Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan.

Great Lakes Theater American nonprofit organization

Great Lakes Theater, originally known as Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, is a professional classic theater company in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Founded in 1962, Great Lakes is the second-largest regional theater in Northeast Ohio. It specializes in large-cast classic plays with a strong foundation in the works of Shakespeare and features an educational outreach program. The company performs its main stage productions in rotating repertory at its state-of-the-art new home at the Hanna Theatre, Playhouse Square, which reopened on September 20, 2008. The organization shares a resident company of artists with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. On its main stage and through its education programs, GLT connects approximately 85,000 adults and students to the classics each season.

Describing his technique for creating theatre posters he has said, “I think of the play as a road map for any graphic design assignment. The first page of a script usually indicates the time and place in which the story occurs. I read the text to get the story in my head, but at the same time I’m watching for clues from the playwright about the world of the play.” [6]

Book illustration

He has created illustrations for a variety of projects including book covers. He has illustrated the covers of over thirty books, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland, Oliver Twist, Peter Pan, Around the World in Eighty Days, Anne of Avonlea, as well as Neil Gaiman’s comic book series Marvel 1602 . [7] [8] [9] A recent project is to illustrate a series of children’s classics for Sterling Publishing. [2]

Neil Gaiman English fantasy writer

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.

<i>Marvel 1602</i>

Marvel 1602 is a limited series eight-issue comic book published in 2003 by Marvel Comics. The limited series was written by Neil Gaiman, penciled by Andy Kubert, and digitally painted by Richard Isanove; Scott McKowen illustrated the distinctive scratchboard covers. The eight-part series takes place in a timeline where Marvel superheroes exist in the Elizabethan era; faced with the destruction of their world by a mysterious force, the heroes must fight to save their universe. Many of the early Marvel superheroes — Nick Fury, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man — as well as villains such as Doctor Doom and Magneto appear in various roles.

Biography

McKowen was born in 1957 in Lansing, Michigan. He attended Elmhurst Elementary School in Lansing, then Dwight Rich Junior High School and then Sexton High School. His father taught at Sexton, and directed musicals. McKowen says, “I think that’s where I got the theater bug”. McKowen's first graphics assignment for which he was paid was the creation of a theatre poster for a high school production of the musical comedy Once upon a Mattress. His mother was a professional sign painter, and he credits her for giving him an appreciation for typography and how it can be used. [10]

As a freshman in college, he and another art student, Sam Viviano, turned out silk screened posters for the theater department. Viviano went on to work as the art director at Mad Magazine in New York City. McKowen graduated from the University of Michigan School of Art in Ann Arbor, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, magna cum laude. [2] [5] After college, and while living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he would travel 200 miles north to see theatre in Stratford, Ontario. One year he brought his portfolio along and was offered a job designing theatre posters. This was his break into the world of professional graphic illustration. [11]

Sam Viviano American art director

Sam Viviano is an American caricature artist and art director. Viviano’s caricatures are known for their wide jaws, which Viviano has explained is a result of his incorporation of side views as well as front views into his distortions of the human face. He has also developed a reputation for his ability to do crowd scenes. Explaining his twice-yearly covers for Institutional Investor magazine, Viviano has said that his upper limit is sixty caricatures in nine days.

University of Michigan Public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

The University of Michigan, often simply referred to as Michigan, is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The university is Michigan's oldest; it was founded in 1817 in Detroit, as the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, 20 years before the territory became a state. The school was moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 onto 40 acres (16 ha) of what is now known as Central Campus. Since its establishment in Ann Arbor, the university campus has expanded to include more than 584 major buildings with a combined area of more than 34 million gross square feet spread out over a Central Campus and North Campus, two regional campuses in Flint and Dearborn, and a Center in Detroit. The university is a founding member of the Association of American Universities.

McKowen is known to create images that “capture the essence” of plays by authors that include Shakespeare, Shaw, Chekhov, and Molière. He has described that while working with pen and ink in the 1980s, he began to feel frustrated that his lines were too delicate for the graphic strength that he wanted, and so he took up scratchboard. [12] Noted illustrator, Milton Glaser, has said that “Scott McKowen is one of the great illustrators of our time” [7]

In 2002, McKowen curated Worth a Thousand Words, an exhibition of international theatre posters at Gallery Stratford, the Design Exchange in downtown Toronto, and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He was commissioned by the Royal Canadian Mint to design Canada’s 2001 silver dollar, commemorating The National Ballet of Canada’s fiftieth Anniversary. [13]

McKowen's wife, Christina Poddubiuk, is a theatre set and costume designer and has an honors English degree. Together they have a design studio, Punch & Judy. [2] [7] [14] A selection of McKowen's works is featured in A Fine Line: Scratchboard Illustrations.. [9]

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References

  1. ↑ "Scratching below the surface". Beacon Herald. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-10-05. Retrieved 2014-02-27.
  3. 1 2 "A Fine Line: Scratchboard Illustrations by Scott McKowen". Quillandquire.com. 17 December 2009. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  4. ↑ "Scott McKowen - RBC Visual Art Project at The Walrus". Walrusmagazine.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  5. 1 2 "Tour the Collection - ArtsAlive.ca – Persuading Presence". Artsalive.ca. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  6. ↑ "Tour the Collection - ArtsAlive.ca – Persuading Presence". Artsalive.ca. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  7. 1 2 3 "Artist Scott McKowen owns the Lansing City Pulse!". Schulerbooks.wordpress.com. 23 September 2009. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  8. ↑ "TheReadingWarehouse.com: A Fine Line: Scratchboard Illustrations by Scott Mckowen: Scott McKowen". Thereadingwarehouse.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  9. 1 2 McKowen, Scott. A Fine Line: Scratchboard Illustrations. Firefly Books. September 2009. ISBN   978-1-55407-451-8
  10. ↑ "From scratch". Lansingcitypulse.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  11. ↑ Maciek Danilewicz. "Scott McKowen/ Marlena Agency". Marlenaagency.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  12. ↑ Foundation, The Walrus. "Scott McKowen - RBC Visual Art Project at The Walrus". Walrusmagazine.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  13. ↑ "Punch & Judy (Scott McKowen & Christina Poddubiuk) – Lines and Colors". linesandcolors.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  14. ↑ "Punch and Judy". Punchandjudy.ca. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
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