At the heart of Payne’s award-winning illustrations is great drawing; his lines are sure and fluid, providing an inspired base for the application of paint and colored pencil in layers, to bring out shadows and highlights.
His iconic work has been featured in a wide range of magazines from Esquire and Rolling Stone to Time, MAD, Forbes and the Atlantic Monthly, among others. He has received a feature article in Communication Arts, as well as having his work appear in many Illustration Annuals over the years; he was a judge for CA’s Illustration Annual this year.
He has received both Gold and Silver awards from the Society of Illustrators of New York and Los Angeles and has received the prestigious Hamilton King Award from the Society of Illustrators of New York. Despite his many accolades, and his long and vibrant career, Chris has remained humble, hard working and completely dedicated to his art and to the future of the industry.
C.F. Payne is not only one of America’s best-known illustrators; he is Chairman of the Illustration Department at Columbus College Of Art And Design, as well as a passionate industry leader and champion for artist’s rights. The veteran illustrator teaches two classes at CCAD, located about an hour and forty minutes from his home in Cincinnati.
“I’m so jazzed about teaching these kids next year,” Chris explains. “Before I was teaching mostly seniors and doing a portfolio class. I really like the idea of teaching juniors where I’m going to be more involved with the beginning idea of process and allow them to find their own voice.
“Regardless of the direction you want your work to take, your personal exploration of art study, how you design an illustration, the function of the illustration, there is still a process,” he says. “When you turn it into something where it’s pure execution, you can create a fresh quality.”
Chris travels often to participate in other illustration activities and also teaches at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, with friends and long-time colleagues Murray Tinkleman, Bunny Carter, and Gary Kelley. In addition, he has taught for nearly 15 years with John English's Illustration Academy, a summer illustration program that will be held this summer in Kansas City, MO and Richmond, VA (www.illustrationacademy.com).
Chris was one of the founding board members of The Illustration Conference, now branded as ICON. When asked how the Illustration Partnership that sprang out of the first Illustration Conference in Santa Fe, in 1999, is doing, Chris answers: “Their efforts continue on reprographic rights and keeping people abreast of the issues on copyright and artists’ rights and the Orphan Works bill.
“Everyone would rather be painting and drawing full time, but these issues come up,” he says. It’s so uncertain. You feel a great responsibility to these kids that you are giving them information that will help them,” he concludes.
In 1999 Payne worked on a mural project for Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. The mural, 14 feet high and 95 feet wide, features many playwrights and actors whose works have been featured at the playhouse. A number of years ago I had the opportunity to attend a design conference in Cincinnati, and Chris and his wife played host for my first visit to their city. After a lovely dinner at a restaurant inside the old Roseville Pottery Factory, Chris took me by the Cincinnati Playhouse to see his mural. That huge, and impressive work of art was actually painted onto the wall, over the course of a year, in between other assignments. For this new mural shown here, he relates, “We’re relatively well known for a type of Greek chili here in Cincinnati.” This mural is 14 feet all, 8 feet wide, painted on canvases that will be reproduced and mounted at the various restaurant outlets.
Q. What motivated you to begin drawing and painting? Were you one of those children who could always be found sketching?
A. As long as I can remember I liked to draw. I remember the pictures I drew before kindergarten. I know one of the first books I liked was “Mike Mulligan”, though I always called it Steam Shovel Mike. I loved to draw dinosaurs. Later, I found comic books and MAD Magazine. I think comic or fantasy books and MAD have inspired more artists than any medium of my generation.
I drew all the time. Much to my parents and teachers frustrations, I drew in class so much in notebooks, textbooks and desk tops, it explains why I got such poor marks. It should be noted, my parents never discouraged my love of drawing. They just wished I showed better discipline, studied better and got higher marks.
Q. Who or what were your influences?
A. My earliest influences were Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Joe Kubert and Norman Rockwell. I do remember going to the Cincinnati Art Museum as a kid and being captivated by the art, but apart from the one painting of David with Goliath’s head with a rock in its forehead, no other paintings really stood out.
It wasn’t until I was in high school, college and beyond that I began to study illustration history and narrative painting in earnest.
After graduating from Miami University, I went to the first Illustration Workshop held in Tarrytown, NY. From the start, I was in over my head. But I did get to study with some of the best illustrators of the day, Mark English, Alan E. Cober, Bernie Fuchs, Fred Otnes, Bob Peak and Bob Heindel. The experience was one of [the] single most important influences of my life. In spite of my lack of experience, artists were all very giving and inspirational, opening my eyes to the notion that I would forever be learning to grow as an artist.
For some reason I can’t explain, Alan Cober seemed to take a shine to me and took me under his wing giving me some very personal advice and guidance. Also, in the years that have followed, Mark English has continued to inspire me with his amazing pursuit for new expression. Over the years we have become good friends while teaching at the Illustration Academy developed by his son John English.
Q. How did you evolve your style?
A. I believe style is something that comes to you naturally when you begin to trust the way you draw. Techniques in painting or color applications do have dramatic effects on style and how people perceive your images. Painting has always been my real weakness. There are painters who draw and drawers who paint. I am the latter. I use a mix of acrylics, ink, watercolor, colored pencils and oils to make my pictures. It’s a process I developed over many years of just trying to deal with the nutty deadlines illustrators face. Illustration is art done under the circumstances.
Q. What is your favorite type of assignment? (I bet it involves baseball!)
A. I do have a lot of fun doing portraits. It appears that is what people feel I do best. And, because of my love for baseball, I do enjoy those projects. But, I really like to do pictures that people don’t expect from me. It would be fun to do something darker in tone, or a fantasy or science fiction piece. Unfortunately, our business fosters more and more repetition in assignments. For the most part, I have been very lucky to work with very good people who share my interest in making good work.
Q. You are a master at nuances of expression that capture classic stereotype personalities. How do you come up with these “characters”? Do you use photographs as reference? (Do you ever sneak your friends and family into your large-scale murals?)
A. To help me capture expression, YES, I use photographic reference. Most every artist I know understands the value of quality reference. There are two wonderful books that illustrate that point, “Imaginative Realism”, by James Gurney and Ron Schick’s, “Norman Rockwell, Behind the Camera”.
Because so many of the deadlines are so tight, it means my family and friends have been dragooned, on very short notice, into modeling for me. Understanding the nature of the illustration business, it would be very hard for me to do the pictures I do without the support and generosity of the models I call upon. For many, they enjoy the experience of modeling and seeing what added character I bring to them in my pictures.
Q. What are some of the considerations that come into play when you are working on a large-scale installation like a public mural?
A. When I do a picture that is going to be used for a mural installment, it is still very hard for me not to be overwhelmed by the scale of the final image. The idea that any glitch in my art will be magnified when it’s enlarged constantly concerns me to the point where I can over think the image. It can be hard not overworking the image to a point where it looses the freshness you want to express.
Q. What are your concerns about the future of illustration?
A. At Columbus College of Art and Design, I serve as the Chair of the Illustration Department and teach illustration. I am very lucky to be associated with such a fine art college. The administration and faculty at the college are very dedicated to the work they do in teaching and inspiring young people to be our future creative artists.
I continue to have the good fortune of exciting art projects while having 30 wonderful years in illustration behind me. I hope for many more. But with my students, each year a new crop of graduates are looking for their 50+ year careers.
I am concerned about the value our culture is putting on the original creative art that is to be used in the applied arts markets. I am concerned and wonder if we in the applied arts field (Designers, Art Directors, Photographers, 3-D Designers and Illustrators) share the mutual respect for each other’s discipline. Over the not so many years, it appears to me that we have become even more “Balkanized” than ever. The only communications between art directors and designers with illustrators is on the current assignments at hand.
The fact is that visual content is everywhere, stock imagery is its own firmly rooted industry, recent efforts to push through an “Orphaned Works Bill” may soon rears its ugly head and illustrators want to talk about being comic book or fine artists (nothing wrong with that, I love them too) and designers talk about whatever is the latest at the AIGA.
What I don’t see is the varied disciplines within the applied arts sharing mutual desires. In this age of instant communications with the Internet, I see little communication. Local and regional art director and designer associations have dwindled while boards of national professional associations of all disciplines share little mutual communications. Artist Advocacy groups are suing artists, while others are not following through on agreements.
Maybe it will take shared concerns to bring about shared interests. Or maybe it will be an art world where we grow so insolatedly apart we can only care about our own individual business ability and artistic talent for survival.
Either way, I see my responsibilities to those young artists who want to follow. Yes, I am still excited about making art, trying to be better today than I was yesterday and more relevant to the desires of the new breed of art buyers. But, I really take this challenge of teaching very seriously. I see so much hope and so much talent. Yes, there are new markets and new opportunities opening up for artists, but the challenges are real. I just want this next generation to have the educational experience to build lifetime careers in the arts.
To see more of Chris Payne’s work, visit www.cfpayne.com, www.directoryofillustration.com, or www.richardsolomon.com
