American Artifacts: The Car Hank Died In

I think the quote is "If you draw it, then you know it". I'm not 100% sure that I got the words right, but the spirit of the quote is there. Iain McCaig, a fantastic concept artist and illustrator said this in relation to forming new ideas, and drawings. Basically, it means that nothing grows in a vacuum (except dust-bunnies) and that even the most bizarre creation is based on SOMETHING that already exists. So. Part of our job as artists it to not only draw some fantastical stuff, but also to draw a lot (sorry, I meant A LOT) of regular stuff. This helps limber our arms and hands. It develops our eye. It stretches our minds, and builds a visual vocabulary of parts to pull from.

A few months ago, I did some art for the fine folks over at Hex Games for a supplement called "American Artifacts" (Have you bought your copy yet? It's really good, you should really look into it). I only did one interior illustration for it, but all of the artifacts were so cool that I wanted to do more. In the spirit of adding to my visual Vocabulary, as well as my portfolio, and hopefully to get some rad promo stuff together as well, I started drawing the other 19 artifacts. The first is the car that Hank died in... Referring to the great country singer Hank Williams sr.

From Wikipedia:

On January 1, 1953, Williams was due to play at a New Year's Day concert in Canton, Ohio, but he was unable to fly due to weather problems with snow and ice in Ohio. He hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to the concerts he was to perform during the few final days of 1952 and early 1953. Upon leaving the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville, Tennessee, Williams apparently had injected himself with some pain-killers which included a morphine/Vitamin B-12 combination. Also found in the Cadillac convertible were some empty beer cans and the handwritten lyrics to a song yet to be recorded. According to some, Williams was carried semi-conscious to his automobile by Carr and a hotel employee, who wondered about Williams' condition, and later believed he might have been dead at that point.

In a slightly different version, Carr suspected Williams was moribund at some earlier point, but realized the great singer was dead several miles before entering the town of Oak Hill, West Virginia where he, almost in a panic, pulled up to the gas station to seek help.

My wife tells me it looks like the car's hit him. Admittedly, the whole "Spirit leaving the body" aspect of this illustration is a little shaky. I know what's going on, but that's because I drew it, Ha-ha-ha! At any rate the drawing was more about the car anyway, and I actually am really happy with how that turned out. I think the next one is the the car that won't die. I have an idea for it, and it should be good, but I need to see if they have "The Blues Brothers" at the library.

Until next time, Take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey