"Artin' It Up" Volume #1 by Tommy Lombardozzi

Hello, kids! Well, Mike D.’s got a nice little thing goin’ with this dope-ass blog! The cool thing about it, for me anyway, is that he writes about stuff I may not be interested in. Why’s that cool, you ask? Well, because it’s Mike, and because his writing is witty and entertaining, I read it anyway! That gets me learnin’ about something I normally might not have learned about! So… cool! See? I told ya. Anyway, since the inception of this blog, I’ve wanted to be involved somehow. It’s alotta fun. But, I am generally lazy, so I didn’t wanna get involved with a weekly basis-type thing, like movie reviews and such. Lazy may not be the best description; “not always inspired” is more accurate. Anyway, I didn’t wanna put myself in a position where I’d let Mike down. So, I never brought anything up… though it’s something I’ve been thinking about. Cut to about twenty minutes ago when Mike D. sent me a Facebook message asking if he could post some of my artwork on the blog. I was very flattered, to say the least. I also thought that maybe this was my chance to infiltrate C.C.D. ! Bwaaaahahaha!

We came up with the idea that my contribution would be a few pieces of my artwork posted to the blog, accompanied by what will hopefully be an interesting bit of text by me explaining each piece’s inspiration, history, medium, etc. etc. Most of my art, I feel, is Pop Art… so it’ll fit right in with what Mike is creating here: Pop Culture as Pop Art. And there ya go! Some of this stuff’s been around awhile, and hopefully I will create some new pieces specifically for my contribution to the C.C.D. page. Each entry will be themed, and we’re gonna start the first one off with some of my “MOVIE ART”.

By the way, I try to update my Art folder on my Facebook page often, so if you’re interested, here’s the link to that. Just stop by and peruse, or, become my friend and leave yourself open to my filthy fuckin’ mouth and asinine status posts. Here’s the page's link:

Tommy Lombardozzi's Art Folder On Facebook

Now, on to the art!!!

#1: “Edward Norton in ‘Fight Club’”

Obviously, this is an excellent movie… but that wasn’t why I chose to draw this. I was watching the movie one day, and while looking through the deluxe DVD’s packaging, I became inspired to try and emulate one of the photos in the booklet. It wasn’t an action shot or anything fancy, but it was a cool, moody still from the film of actor Edward Norton is his dilapidated living room, post-fight. I got a piece of paper and a Sharpie and just drew it. No initial sketch, no pencil... I just went for it. It was fun to create something that wasn’t planned or thought out first. It was very “free form”; loose! Exciting! Once I had a nice line drawing, I scanned that shit in and went to town with Photoshop. My idea was to try and emulate the photograph in a stylized way; texturing the clothing and arm chair, creating the out-of-focus background, lighting the scene, and even “painting” the lighter’s flame. I think it came out pretty cool, and I had alotta fun doing it. This sort of style was something I wanted to explore more, and that leads us to the next piece…

#2: “2001: A Space Odyssey”

I wanted to include this one on the C.C.D. blog because master director STANLEY KUBRICK is Mike’s favorite. Plus, I think this came out pretty damned cool!

This was done about two years after the ‘Fight Club’ drawing, and at this point I had done several movie pieces in this “loose” style. Again, no preliminary sketch, no pencil blueprint; just paint marker on plain white 8.5” x 11” paper. Again, this was a photo that was in the DVD booklet (or back packaging… I forget). I was watching alotta Kubrick at this time, and wanted to take one of the iconic scenes from this classic film and replicate it. Dave’s assault of H.A.L. and H.A.L.’s “mental breakdown” at the climax of the movie was always the most interesting part of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ for me. While the whole of the movie is visually stimulating (visually AMAZING, actually!), this segment of the film (and bulk of the book) always seemed like the movie’s anchor; man vs. machine… technology vs. morality. Anyway, enough of me playing armchair Rex Reed! You get the gist.

This one took more time than the Edward Norton piece because I painstakingly wanted to get the lighting right! I liked the idea of marrying this loose line style with antiseptic, realistic spaceship lighting! I put on the film and fast forwarded to this exact scene to see how the lights interacted with Dave’s suit. All the reflections, soft light, buttons… it took me awhile to get it right in Photoshop, but I think I did OK. Then I added that famous quote from the film, in a comicbook-style bubble, and it gave the whole thing a very Pop Art dimension. I’m proud of it, and I hope you enjoy it!

Last but not least…

#3: “Gizmo”

I did this in 2005. It was a gift for my friend Rob, who had gotten me a freelance gig drawing the Fantastic Four at MTV for their FF movie premiere show (they never used the drawings, but they paid me anyway! They used photos of the actors instead… mmmMMm, hot-ass Jessica Alba!). He had mentioned he’d like to see me draw Gizmo… so I did. Well, painted actually. No, wait, I drew it… no… ah, lemme explain…
What I did was this: I painted Gizmo, with watercolor. Then when it dried, I took that painting and put it on a lightbox. I proceeded to do an ink “tracing” of the painting (all the black outlining). I then scanned both the ink outline and the watercolor painting in and using Photoshop, layered them. So the actual artwork came in two pieces! I made a nice print, put that shit in a frame, and gave it to Rob for his birthday. He has in hanging in his office at MTV to this day. (Funny story; one day Samuel L. Jackson was in Rob’s office… he noticed the picture hanging and stopped their conversation to tell Rob he dug it. Nice! Sam Jackson’s the motherfuckin’ Man!)

Well that’s it for now, kids. I hope you enjoyed the article (really, does anyone care what I have to say about my own art?!), but most of all I hoped you enjoyed the art. I wanna thank Mike D. for letting me be a part of this, and I hope to do it again soon! Peace out, ya’ll! SMILE UP!

~TL
4-6-2010