Jumping into The River with Bruce

soniak_springsteen

A portrait of Bruce Springsteen that I recently completed in currently gracing the pages of Rolling Stone Australia (December 2015 edition). I was asked to imagine him circa the release of his album ‘The River’; and I was surprised to find that it was quite an evocative idea – I guess we all have images of musicians / popular culture icons embedded in our imaginations, even if we can’t call ourselves die hard fans. But of course my appreciation of Bruce has matured as I myself have, almost to the point that I can appreciate ‘Born in the USA’ as a cultural touchstone, even though it is an anthem that I wouldn’t nominate as a desert island disc.

Cameron, the art director, suggested a textural / painterly approach, so I painted directly onto ply with acrylic and added some line work in the shirt etc. after the piece was scanned. As mentioned, the idea and composition came quite easily – after all, you don’t mess with Bruce 🙂

smokey vs. bruce
Smokey enjoys reading the reviews in Rolling Stone
Jumping into The River with Bruce

Look at those Big Eyes!

spectrum-cover

It was a bit strange to walk into the local newsagent this morning to see a pile of papers with my illustration splashed across the cover! I would love to thank Lindy Percival at the Age / Fairfax for trying something a bit different in conjunction with the Australian release of Tim Burton’s ‘Big Eyes’. In keeping with the ‘Keane theme’, it also has been the first time in a long time that I have used no Photoshop for a published artwork… and I also got a bit of editorial coverage as well 🙂

Can’t wait to see the film…

Tim Burton Big Eyes cover for Saturday Age Spectrum

Look at those Big Eyes!

Anna Pav

Anna Pavlova by Sonia Kretschmar

 

Reader’s Digest Australia has a great issue out at the moment featuring ’90 Years of Reader’s Digest Stories’. Better still, they’re ALL illustrated! I was chosen to do an image for a story on Anna Pavlova, the famous Ballerina… the story was a personal account of the unexpected sides of her personality (and I was quite taken by the idea that she toured Australia with a travelling menagerie of birds). The other illustrators featured in the issue can be seen here: http://jackywinter.com/peter-peter/post/reader-s-digest-classic-reads/