Blast From the Past Illustrations

all images, c. Kevin SproulsBecause it's Summertime, this post is a lighthearted issue of past illustrations, never-before posted. This collection of my illustrations is mostly from the early days of my career.A friend of mine and I used to make and record music together. We called our project "Hiss/Hum Studio". I created the above illustration for some Tee-shirts we had printed. It's a play on the old RCA Victor branding image, "His Master's Voice". You can see the discoloration in the type area. That's aging rubber cement bleeding through the paper!I created another graphic illustration that I had printed on a tee-shirt. I had these shirts made for some of my pals who were big fans (as I am) of an obscure offshoot of Jethro Tull, the band called Blodwyn Pig:The black & white format was ideal for screen-printing on cotton tee's. It's a graphic translation of the album cover from their first release. I would later see dressed up pig's heads like this in the shop windows of Irish butchers. Very cheeky!Staying with the musical theme, I created the next illustration for The New Yorker magazine. I worked somewhat steadily for the magazine in the early 1990's...The artist Sylvain Sylvain, a colorful rocker who was playing New York at the time. I used to draw for the 'Goings On About Town' or GOAT section. It was all black & white during this era. The pay was paultry, but it was The New Yorker! How could I say no?The final image for this post is an early self-portrait...I confess, the wing elements were by another illustrator from over a century ago. Can you name the illustrator? I can't! The medusa-like hair is somewhat creepy. This portrait was probably vintage 1980 or so. You can see the WSJ hedcut style emerging here.I hope you enjoyed this brief tour through some early works. More soon...