Monkey lives in the jungle.

The Hockey Hall of Fame, part II

Like I said, in my last post, this was such a great job to have. It was gauranteed money, it was a high profile job to be doing and it was something that was going to be permanent.

I only did them from 1990 -1993. I got the job because they were unhappy with the arrangement of the artist who had done them for, what seemed, eternity. She reserved the right to have a "moral ownership" in her work and in such she could say how and where she would allow her work to be used. The Hall wanted full ownership of the work. And, with me being an illustrator, selling all rights to a piece was nothing new to me.

I was more then happy to take the job on.

So in early July I would get a call from the Hall and we would set a time for me to go down there and look through their archives and select the pictures to use as reference for the drawings. (A lot of people used to ask me if I ever got to meet the players and I never got to meet any of them.)

I remember thinking that, someday, I could bring my kids down here, assuming that they would be hockey fans like the old man, and I could take them and show them my work. And someday they could do the same thing with their kids.

To make a long story short, the person who used to do the drawings didn't like that I was doing them and somehow got back on board. I was unceremoniously dumped, they never called me directly to tell me, and they got this woman to re-do all of the drawings that I had done.

So when that moment came that I took my son, who is a hockey fan like his old man, to the Hall I could show which ones I had done, not that they were mine anymore. It was kind of sad.

This is Marcel Dionne.

Hockey Hall of Fame, Part1

One of the best jobs that I ever had was doing the formal portraits for the Hockey Hall of Fame.

There were a couple of reasons why it was so great. The first was that it came in the summer , when things tended to be a little slow, so there was always some work that I could count on. The players being inducted were announced at the end of June and the ceremony was in November.

The second thing that made it so great was that I am a huge hockey fan and getting to draw these "heroes" was kind of like being a kid again when all I did was draw hockey players.

And the last reason was because of it's permanence. This was work that was going to be there for as long as there was going to be a Hall of Fame. Being an illustrator is great but it is terribly transitory work, people look at it and then it is gone.

This is the portrait of Lanny MacDonald.

Illustration Friday post, part II....For the theme of "Portrait" here is a self portrait.