An overview of my shark inspired Art for the last 25 years.
Hello fellow associates, This post will cover art that I’ve created through out the last 25 years. every now and then I like to draw sharks, there was a time when I only sculpted and I would feel like sculpting sharks. I really like them, They fascinate and scare me. I know I’m not alone in this as they are extremely popular and even have a whole week nationally dedicated to them. I guess it started with Jaws like it did for so many other people.
My view of the ocean was forever changed with the idea of sharks lurking about waiting in the shallow or deep waters, these thoughts were terrifying! yet I could not stop thinking about them. My shark dedicated art started when I was just a kid, unfortunately all that artwork is lost and the earliest I could trace back was to the age of 18.
In my adult life I’ve become a surfer and I wonder if it has anything to do with my warped curiosity to be in their playground. Though last year I saw a small fin come out of the water. It looked small because I only saw about 5 inches from the tip down. I’ve seen wild dolphins up close and know the difference between their dorsal fins. It was a shark! I told my buddy that I was surfing with about it and we pondered the question wether we should create a panic, we decided to stay quiet about it, there was about 20 other people in the same surf spot. we said nothing and nothing happened.
Immediately out of college I got a job as a production air brusher painting plaster and resin sculptures of animals, safari, dogs, cats birds, north American wildlife and yes sea life, where we produced mass quantities of work a day and were paid on a point system where the quality of every bodies work was accounted for so we had to stamp all our pieces under the sculptures to know who painted them if there was any issues. I think I was WW but this was my ink pad that I airbrushed a great white on.
Around this time one Friday evening hanging out with coworkers drinking beer and stuff I got an idea for a small comic book poster and roughly drew an action page of a shark attack on a surfer couple.
About 2 years later I became a sculptor. A lot of the work I made was cutesy collectible art, the kind you find in Hallmark stores. It allowed me to create a lot of sea life stuff and occasionally sharks.
Some years went by and I stopped working on stuff like this and started sculpting architectural stuff and was so far away from creating anything that looked organic and I started hearing the call again and created this wall relief sculpture.
After this sculpture I would not do any shark stuff for about 7 years. I went ahead and worked on Halloween stuff, Star Wars DC comics and all sorts of cool stuff, but I couldn’t stop thinking about making a new shark. So then, it hit me!
KILLER BREAK!
its time to do the ultimate shark project I thought, a graphic novel based on the idea from so many years back. Steadily I started developing pages and a story while maintaining my day job.
Slowly pages started to come to life, vibrant in colors and the story really started taking shape. The only problem was I could not work fast enough on it, only some weekends all holiday breaks but still not fast enough.
Like a shark circling its prey I started planning my exit from my day job and securing work from home to allow me to finish my Magnum Opus.
I eventually moved on from the job and finished it! 63 pages honoring the fear that is a shark attack. So many panels with a shark in it. I was loving it!
Recently I just finished my second graphic novel named Book of Jonah,As you might know The Book of Jonah is the biblical story of a man swalloed by a great fish. and I saw the opportunity to do a shark once again. The great fish in my story would be a whale shark.
Then, the recent movie THE SHALLOWS inspired me to do my own movie poster, because I liked it so much.
And for now this has been the last shark related illustration I’ve done. I think my fix is good for now but I know it will creep back someday when I least expect it. The images I’ve shown are not all the stuff created. I kept it to the most relevant in the timeline.
I hope you have enjoyed this blog and stay tuned for more content Maybe next I can talk in depth with timelines going back to 1977 as an 8 year old boy about my other creative addiction, STAR WARS!
www.artofjoechez.com
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