You may have noticed our new tagline at the top of the page: “Infotainment for Creatives”. The Jailbreak is evolving and expanding in scope. More and more, we’ve come to realize that the glue that holds the Jailbreak community together is not just “art” or “products.” It’s “creativity,” which, of course, comes in various forms. Our intention is to focus on professional creativity – in particular, those industries and niches where the Creatives typically go uncelebrated and remain behind the scenes.

In our real lives, here in Brooklyn, we have the good fortune of being surrounded by an enormous and vital community filled with Creatives of all stripes. Some write, some draw, some make costumes , some animate, some teach… The list goes on and on and on. Even though we all do different things and work in different fields, we all find ourselves in the same larger scene, which often leads to unexpected thoughts, ideas and inspirations coming our way. Just by being exposed to each other we make each other better.

Our aim with the blog is to try to replicate that community’s energy here. We’ll be experimenting over the coming months as we try to figure out how to best achieve that goal but one thing we know we’ll be doing is looking all around for examples of professional Creatives with top-notch skills so we can feature their work and their stories on our pages because it seems like a good way for us to start getting to know each other. So here goes…

The illustration above is by Mark Summers, a Canadian illustrator who specializes in a style called scratchboard which is feels instantly familiar because of its use on money and in newspapers.  Summers is obviously a master of the technique. He’s done covers for Time, corporate work for Eddie Bauer and Parker brothers, and book covers for classics by Dickens, among other things.

We discovered Mark’s work on Behance.  In addition to a fairly extensive gallery of his work, there is contact info and a brief bio that are all worth checking out. After the jump, we’ve posted a selection of his works from that site as well as a little “How To” explaining his scratchboard technique. It seems that Mr. Summers shares our love of caricaturing historical personalities …

He also does pop culture…

Summers’ scratchboard process in 4 steps:

Step 1: A quick sketch to block out the final composition.

Step 2: The preliminary sketch

“I don’t always go to this extreme for a rough sketch-only if the piece is fairly complex or if the client needs to see some indication of where the exact light and darks will fall. I’m not  sure how I wound up doing sketches in such a Byzantine fashion, but it is a quick way to determine the overall tone. This is a simple line drawing, done with a felt tip pen. On tracing paper- I then spray mount it onto a light toned paper. The highlights are acrylic paint. Even after this step I will still tend to “fiddle.” If I feel a hand is too small, or a figure too large I photocopy it to the proper size and just paste it in.”

Step 3: The finished black and white.

“Each drawing begins as a black square. After this, using a knife, I scratch white lines into the surface. I try to discourage clients from asking to see “the work in progress,” as at any time there will be an entirely finished head here, a hand there, all floating in a sea of black. I tend to work size-as (this drawing is 12” high- each face being approximately 2” high.) In a drawing such as this, I find it takes a full day to finish each figure. I then have the finished work scanned and printed onto photographic paper.”

Step 4: Finished color.

“A fast process, as the black and white drawing already defines the modeling. Simple flat tones of color are all that are really needed. I paint details with watercolor and then everything else with oil glazes. Sometimes I go in and smooth things out with airbrush. The final step is to paint in highlights with acrylic. The coloring of this piece took about three hours.”