LA Reaction Illo

When I was touring SoCal with the Illustration folks from Hartford, I couldn't help noticing the perfectly manicured lawns, everywhere... and somewhere on those lawns was a person with a Spanish last name. They seemed to be everywhere, but nowhere at the same time. The Anglos were sashaying around with their Benz keys in their pockets, while the poor working stiff was raking the husks falling from the palm trees in the yard.

a total underclass - upholding the facade that is LA.

However, at night, down Hollywood way, I came across a very cool 1940 Ford, all polished and lowered, with some Bato touches. I thought, this is the other side of the coin. Meanwhile, across the street from our hotel in Pasadena was an old-tyme hardware store, renting Ancient lawn maintenance equipment. Much of the mowers, rollers, sod-nibblers... whatever they were... were from the 1950s, and showed it. I love the industrial design and functionality of them all, so I had an idea to merge the mower with the car as part of my reaction piece.

When I remember back to my earliest memories of a place called "Los Angeles", I think of the Beach Boys and Big Daddy Roth (Rat Fink) T-shirts.

I tried to merge all of the above into one illustration called CaliMower. The piece stems from two drawings in my sketchbook, but I executed the final within Photoshop, while working with my new Cintiq tablet. I'm not fully pleased with some of the textural results, but I have a few weeks before it needs to be printed, rolled and taken to Ft. Worth for critique. Working with a limited pallet.

Click the pic to enlarge the idiocy.