Scott McKowen is an American illustrator, art director, and graphic designer. He was born and raised in Michigan, and his studio is in Stratford, Ontario. He designs posters for theaters and other performing arts companies across North America, and he creates illustration for books and magazines. He is known for his drawings on
scratchboard
Scratchboard (North America and Australia) or scraperboard (Great Britain), is a form of direct engraving where the artist scratches off dark ink to reveal a white or colored layer beneath. Scratchboard refers to both a fine-art medium, and ...
, a process in which he uses a knife blade to carve white lines onto a black board.
[ ] It is somewhat similar to engraving or woodcutting, in the sense that images are formed by carving white lines. In the last stages, color is often added to the illustrations.
Posters
He has designed theatre posters for the
Shaw Festival
The Shaw Festival is a not-for-profit theatre festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. It is the second largest repertory theatre company in North America. The Shaw Festival was founded in 1962. Originally, it only featured production ...
in Niagara-on-the-Lake, New York’s
Roundabout Theatre
The Roundabout Theatre Company is a leading non-profit theatre company based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, affiliated with the League of Resident Theatres.
History
The company was founded in 1965 by Gene Feist, Michael Fried and Elizab ...
,
Pearl Theatre (New York City)
The Pearl Theatre Company, commonly referred to as the Pearl Theatre, was a theatre in New York City. It was established in Chelsea by Shepard Sobel in 1984, with David Hyde Pierce part of the company's first season. The company focused on produci ...
,
Great Lakes Theater
Great Lakes Theater, originally known as the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, is a professional classic theater company in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1962, Great Lakes is the second-largest regional theater in Northeast Ohio. ...
,
Denver Center Theatre Company
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) is an organization in Denver, Colorado which provides a showcase for live theatre, a nurturing ground for new plays, a preferred stop on the Broadway touring circuit, acting classes for the communi ...
,
The Acting Company
The Acting Company is a professional theater company that tours the United States annually, staging and performing one or two plays in as many as fifty cities, often with runs of only one or two nights. Drama critic Mel Gussow has called it "the ma ...
,
Arena Stage
Arena Stage is a not-for-profit regional theater based in Southwest, Washington, D.C. Established in 1950, it was the first racially integrated theater in Washington, D.C. and its founders helped start the U.S. regional theater movement. It is ...
,
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Repertory Theatre (familiarly known as "The Rep") is a major regional theatre located in Seattle, Washington, at the Seattle Center. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound[The Goodman Theatre
Goodman Theatre is a professional theater company located in Chicago's Loop. A major part of the Chicago theatre scene, it is the city's oldest currently active nonprofit theater organization. Part of its present theater complex occupies the la ...]
in Chicago,
Center Theatre Group
Center Theatre Group is a non-profit arts organization located in Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest theatre companies in the nation, programming subscription seasons year-round at the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre and th ...
in Los Angeles, and regional theaters in major cities in the United States and Canada. He has done extensive work for
The National Ballet of Canada
The National Ballet of Canada is a Canadian ballet company that was founded in 1951 in Toronto, Ontario, with Celia Franca as the first artistic director. A company of 70 dancers with its own orchestra, the National Ballet has been led since 2022 ...
,
National Arts Centre
The National Arts Centre (NAC) (french: Centre national des Arts) is a Arts centre, performing arts organisation in Ottawa, Ontario, along the Rideau Canal. It is based in the eponymous National Arts Centre (building), National Arts Centre build ...
,
The Canadian Stage Company
Canadian Stage is a non-profit contemporary performance arts company based in Toronto, Ontario, ''Canada''.
About Canadian Stage
Canadian Stage is one of Canada's largest not-for-profit contemporary theatre companies, based in Toronto, Ontari ...
, and
Theatre Calgary
Theatre Calgary, is a theatre company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, established as a professional company in 1968. It was preceded by Workshop 14, a theatre study group founded in 1944 by Betty Mitchell. Calgary's ''Betty Mitchell'' awards are ...
.
Describing his technique for creating theatre posters he has said, “I think of the play as a road map for any graphic design assignment. The first page of a script usually indicates the time and place in which the story occurs. I read the text to get the story in my head, but at the same time I’m watching for clues from the playwright about the world of the play.”
Book illustration
He has created illustrations for a variety of projects including book covers. He has illustrated the covers of over thirty books, including ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', ''Alice in Wonderland'', ''Oliver Twist'', ''Peter Pan'', ''Around the World in Eighty Days'', ''Anne of Avonlea'', as well as
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...
’s comic book series ''
Marvel 1602
''Marvel 1602'' is an eight-issue comic book limited series published in 2003 by Marvel Comics. The limited series was written by Neil Gaiman, penciled by Andy Kubert, and digitally painted by Richard Isanove; Scott McKowen illustrated the distin ...
''.
[McKowen, Scott. ''A Fine Line: Scratchboard Illustrations.'' Firefly Books. September 2009. ] A recent project is to illustrate a series of children’s classics for Sterling Publishing.
Biography
McKowen was born in 1957 in Lansing, Michigan. He attended Elmhurst Elementary School in Lansing, then Dwight Rich Junior High School and then Sexton High School. His father taught at Sexton, and directed musicals. McKowen says, “I think that’s where I got the theater bug”. McKowen's first graphics assignment for which he was paid was the creation of a theatre poster for a high school production of the musical comedy ''Once upon a Mattress''. His mother was a professional sign painter, and he credits her for giving him an appreciation for typography and how it can be used.
As a freshman in college, he and another art student,
Sam Viviano
Sam Viviano (born March 13, 1953 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American caricature artist and art director. Viviano’s caricatures are known for their wide jaws, which Viviano has explained is a result of his incorporation of side views as well a ...
, turned out silk screened posters for the theater department. Viviano went on to work as the art director at ''
Mad Magazine
Mad, mad, or MAD may refer to:
Geography
* Mad (village), a village in the Dunajská Streda District of Slovakia
* Mád, a village in Hungary
* Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, by IATA airport code
* Mad River (disambiguation), several r ...
'' in New York City. McKowen graduated from the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
School of Art in Ann Arbor, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, magna cum laude.
After college, and while living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he would travel 200 miles north to see theatre in Stratford, Ontario. One year he brought his portfolio along and was offered a job designing theatre posters. This was his break into the world of professional graphic illustration.
McKowen is known to create images that “capture the essence” of plays by authors that include Shakespeare, Shaw, Chekhov, and Molière. He has described that while working with pen and ink in the 1980s, he began to feel frustrated that his lines were too delicate for the graphic strength that he wanted, and so he took up scratchboard. Noted illustrator,
Milton Glaser
Milton Glaser (June 26, 1929June 26, 2020) was an American graphic designer. His most notable designs include the I Love New York logo, a 1966 poster for Bob Dylan, and the logos for DC Comics, Stony Brook University and Brooklyn Brewery. In 1954 ...
, has said that “Scott McKowen is one of the great illustrators of our time”
In 2002, McKowen curated ''Worth a Thousand Words'', an exhibition of international theatre posters at Gallery Stratford, the Design Exchange in downtown Toronto, and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He was commissioned by the Royal Canadian Mint to design Canada’s 2001 silver dollar, commemorating The National Ballet of Canada’s fiftieth Anniversary.
McKowen's wife, Christina Poddubiuk, is a theatre set and costume designer and has an honors English degree. Together they have a design studio, Punch & Judy.
A selection of McKowen's works is featured in ''A Fine Line: Scratchboard Illustrations.''.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:McKowen, Scott
American illustrators
Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design alumni
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)