David Darrow

VLV I S U A L L A N G U A G E

contemporary fine art

VLJuly 2013Volume 2 No. 7

Studio Visit Portrait Artist David Darrow

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Studio Visit Portrait Artist David Darrow

David DarrowVIrtually every artist gets compliments when he or she displays their work, whether at home, on Social Media, in a gallery or when given as a gift. “But some compliments are more meaningful than others to the artist,” says David R. Darrow, a portrait painter in San Jose, CA.

“For me, the greatest compliments are those positive ones from a select few painters I admire, and from whom I can also trust to give me solid criticism on my work when something’s not right about it. But when a client —often having no artistic skills, by their own admission — compliments me, the words that mean the most are ‘You really captured the personality, the essence of [the subject],” Darrow adds.

Darrow has been drawing and painting since he was a child. His family were churchgoers from before he was even born, so Sunday mornings spent in Sunday School and “Big Church” were a regular, weekly thing. He explains that Sunday School was a stimulating, fast-paced-enough block of time to keep his attention with activities, Bible stories, music and play time, but when it was time to transition to sitting still with the adults in the 90-minute services for adults (“Big Church”), his little A.D.D. mind found little stimulation while fidgeting on a hard, oak pew, barely able to see over the big blue hair in front of him, his young mind processing eternal subjects, scriptures on theological concepts in the background while absorbing all the visual stimulation he could find.

“In the churches we attended, there were racks attached to the backs of the pews in front of you, which held hymnals, a bible, and small envelopes for financial giving for church programs and missionary sup-port. Printed on one side would be a form for donor and donation info, but the back of the envelope was a blank ‘canvas’ awaiting my artistic observations.”

Julia by David Darrow Juliette by David Darrow

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Chauncy by David Darrow

Portrait of Anne Gillum by David Darrow

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Darrow had a captive model pool in the collection of personalities on stage, and would amuse his mother and father with drawings or caricatures of the pastor, choir members or soloists on stage. Always fascinat-ed with the difference in people’s features, even as a young boy of 6 or 7, he would try to draw what he saw that made one person look different from another. The shape of a face, the height of the eyebrows, the scowl of a serious speaker, the enormous double-chin of a warbling soloist belting out an impassioned “How Great Thou Art.” Some of his caricatures made his mom snicker a little too loudly, and usually got tucked away and saved in a mementos box at home. “My mom was always my greatest art fan, and my most gracious critic. She loved everything I drew as a kid.”

As he got older, and drawing seemed to be his gifting if not simply a strong interest, he was surrounded with books of artists, such as Norman Rockwell, Remington, JC Leyendecker and others, and his inter-est in being able to draw or paint accurate likenesses increased. By junior high, growing up in Playa del Rey, CA — a beach town next to the take-off pattern at LAX in Los Angeles — he was known as an artist among his friends, and by the end of high school, majoring in Art, he had plenty of milage in publications in yearbooks, drama and musical program covers, surfboard art and even a few commissions. His favorite art teacher in high school, Sam Uskovich, encouraged him to look into attending Art Center College of De-sign not far away in, at that time, Los Angeles, near Hollywood. By the time Darrow did attend Art Center, it had relocated to a new, modern facility in Pasadena, CA.

“Whenever I smell oil paints and turpentine, I am transported immediately to the wonderful first day of classes at Art Center, and the moment I walked in the double, black doors to the painting level, below the cafeteria, and the aroma is just as magical and inspiring today as that day in February of 1977.” Darrow, now 56, started his college years at age 19, and took his schooling seriously, wanting to absorb as much as he could from each instructor that had practical direction to offer. He considers it to be a life well-lived to have been able to make a living and support a family, however leanly at times, doing something he loves doing. “I would do it all again, knowing what I know about it all — as long as I could have my young-er body back: the one that could handle the many, many all-nighters.”

Charlotte by David Darrow, Detail right

He spent a little less than 20 years of his adult life as a freelance illustrator, half in San Diego, and half in Los Angeles until the carpet got pulled out from under his illustration career, as with many illustra-tors, with the advent of increasingly inexpensive computers and scanners making it into the hands and skill sets of the very people who used to hire him for “Final Art.” Art Directors were trimming their budgets by doing not only the conceptualizing of visual solutions, but creating the final art themselves, moving away from traditional illustration to type and photo solutions done right on their own desks.

“It was about 1995 when the drop in meaningful, well-paying work suddenly occurred,” Darrow recalls, “and when the well was almost dry I had to decide what to do next: beat’em or join’em, so I jumped into computers with a little bit of money I could set aside while supporting a family of 5. I began learn-ing MacIntosh systems and apps in the early ’90’s but had to upgrade to handle the heavier loads.”

Less illustration work was coming in by the mid-nineties, and consequently finances diminished. Fear, discouragement, low finances and being self-taught in Graphic Design on a Mac, Darrow says it all quite simply led to other fairly typical family and marriage problems which snowballed, eventually crushing his marriage. By the turn of 2000, he was living alone, and had not done an illustration, paint-ing or drawing in nearly 2 years.

Though he did not do any art in that period of time, the art never left him. He tells of how he went to bed each night looking through Richard Schmid’s Figure and Landscape books, studied Howard Turp-ning, James Bama and Tom Lovell books, and revisited his Norman Rockwell book collection.

“Richard Schmid, though, was particularly wonderful to me, because his work is so crystal clear, focused in content, realistic but so painterly. I could see his process in his work, and he is a wonder-fully gifted teacher, even in his books. To an artist who had labored through many all-nighters cutting friskets (masks) for highly-polished airbrush illustrations, or painted laborious romance book covers, or short-deadline movie promotion illustrations, Schmid’s work simply spoke to my wondering heart. I thought I might like to so that, instead.”

Darrow decided to re-invent himself as an oil painter. A portrait artist. Having never believed oil paint-ings could be done sickly enough for freelance illustration work, he had avoided learning the medium for 20 years. His good friend Morgan Weistling, however, proved that creating oil paintings in a short time-frame was quite possible if approached correctly.

“Morgan was doing everything in oil and was one of the most successful illustrators in Hollywood in the early ’90s, and by 2000, though also affected by the bottom dropping out of Illustration, was finding great success in Fine Art, so my dream of being able to support myself with oil paintings wasn’t really a crazy one after all — or maybe Morgan was crazy too.” Darrow adds that “I know Morgan finds me to be quirky and amusing enough that he doesn’t mind having me in his otherwise quiet studio from time to time, so I freely admit I having benefited from this rare blessing of having a friendship with a painter I consider one of the very best and most admirable in the world.”

Now Darrow enjoys a simpler, slower pace and a much quieter life painting commissioned portraits of people from all over the USA, in addition to his small works he sells from his site and on eBay from time to time. He also paints many still-lifes, land– and seascapes, nudes and costumed figurative subjects.

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His 3 children are adults now, one son, Drew, is married and has a son, the second son, Greyson is marrying in August, and his daughter Lauren left on May 15th — 2 days after her 21st birthday — for South Africa for 3 months with a missionary organization to help teach school subjects underprivileged children in schools in the poorest outskirts of Johannesburg. David lives alone in his San Jose home/studio, and gets a little social interaction on Facebook, through his Page [http://www.facebook.com/davethepaintingguy] and in a one-way, online video broadcast (or PaintCast™ as he dubbed it in 2008) called “Dave the Painting Guy.”

Father Phoon by David Darrow

Dave the Painting Guy [www.DavethePaintingGuy.com] started somewhat accidentally when Darrow hooked up a Mini-DV camera to his computer to see if it could be used as a WebCam for Skype to converse with his widowed mom some 450 miles north of his studio, at that time in Oceanside, CA, near San Diego. To test it out, he created an account with ustream.tv, a new online video broadcast-ing-for-everyone site. To his delight, when he clicked the link to “Broadcast Now” his camera was broadcasting to the world.

So, he pointed the camera at his canvas, zoomed in, and began a quick 11 x 14 painting from a refer-ence he had. “After a 10 minutes or so painting and wondering if anyone was actually watching — not really knowing how to determine that — a “guest” appeared in the text-chat-room and started asking questions.” Darrow was able to speak and the camera’s mic would pick it up and he could continue painting and answering questions which he would glance over and read off the monitor. Soon others joined, and the chat-room populated quickly to a dozen or so viewers. When Darrow was done with the painting, one of the viewers asked if he would broadcast again, and since he had a commissioned, dual portrait he had set aside for that time, he answered that yes, he would be on the next day.

Over the next few days he started seeing some of the same screen-names showing up, asking art-re-lated questions… names like BrendaOfOhio, BigPopFun, ChrisPunk and TorontoPainter. It became a meeting place for artists, and, as Darrow admits,”Painting in front of not only strangers, but ‘artist strangers’ kept me mostly at the top of my game. Somehow, that kind of pressure improved my work.”

After a couple of weeks or more, Darrow started referring to himself, tongue-in-cheek, as “Dave the Painting Guy” and soon, with the help of one of his enthusiastic viewers, a supporting website was born by the same name. From that beginning, Darrow has gone on to host hours and hours of paint-ings ‘performed’ online with a camera looking over his shoulder and a separate ‘palette cam’ for any-one in the world to watch, usually recording an hour’s worth at a time for later public viewing.

Darrow has hosted and recorded several specific online courses totaling over 21 hours and are avail-able from the Dave the Painting Guy website. Subjects include Charcoal Drawing for Oil Painters, Shadow University: Everything I know about Light and Shadow, Color Theory for Painters, and In the Flesh: Mixing and Painting Flesh tones.

A special discount off the regular price for access to these online videos for all 4 courses is available for a limited time to Visual Language readers by using this link: http://davethepaintingguy.com/work-shops/vlpromo.html These videos are not available on DVD or any other format.

Darrow has also started a fun and informative audio podcast with stories and interviews of old-school illustrators, painters and other creative people on his new podcast “Drawing on Experience” available free though the iTunes store, here, https://itunes.apple.com/ua/podcast/drawing-on-experience-audio/id616323274 and also, for those without iPods, iPads and the like, can be played on the Dave the Painting Guy website, here, http://www.DaveThePaintingGuy.com/podcast/

To commission a portrait, visit http://www.DarrowArt.com/commission/ and he’ll do his best to ‘capture the personality of the subject you want painted.’ To have your email address added to Darrow’s free newsletter mailing list for occasional updates and Art-In-Your-Inbox, go to http://DarrowArt.com/list/

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Security by David Darrow

My Funny Valentine by David Darrow

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