Jumping into The River with Bruce

Posted on December 8, 2015January 23, 2017 by Sonia Kretschmar

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

Anna Pav

Posted on January 8, 2013March 6, 2014 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/

Dragon Keeper Series

Posted on April 20, 2012March 6, 2014 by Sonia Kretschmar

Here is a sneak preview for the reissued editions of Carole Wilkinson’s Dragonkeeper series which will be out in May. It was an interesting project to work on, as I don’t really see myself as a “fantasy” artist – it was great to work on something that is quite foreign to me – and I think this will probably help find an even broader audience of those who don’t regard themselves as “fantasy” readers. The books, the first of which was originally published in 2003, have been a global success for Carole. I was asked to help redesign the covers late last year, after Walker Books acquired Black Dog Books (the original publisher).