Los Angeles, California Feb 17, 2023 (Issuewire.com) - Randy Glass was still in high school when he became the youngest illustrator ever hired by Hallmark Cards. Originally from Kansas City, he later helped pay for his tuition to Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, and Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles by drawing “Main Street” portraits at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World—a surprisingly valuable education in discipline and patience.
By the mid-1980s, Randy had built a solid reputation as a freelance illustrator, specializing in highly detailed representational drawing and painting—to this day all done by hand. His early work focused on the Entertainment Industry, helping to create several movie posters and campaigns. For several years, Randy was contracted by both CBS and NBC to create “movie-poster style” ads for their programming in TV Guide, which, at the time had the largest circulation of any magazine in the country.
Randy’s showbiz work caught the attention of superstar Michael Jackson, who commissioned him to create several paintings based on his own imagination. This creative collaboration led to Randy creating logo designs for Jackson’s music publishing and film production companies as well as graphics for The Jackson’s Victory Tour.
Around this same time, a greeting card company commissioned Randy to create a series of drawings of animals for a group of products. They decided to render these in an old-fashioned, traditional inking technique known as stipple (or pointillism)—a graphic style that uses a profusion of small dots to build an image. Once these particular drawings were added to Randy’s portfolio they quickly captured the imagination of Art Buyers and Art Directors who felt that the stippling effect might be perfectly suited for product illustrations, which appeared in print media where paper quality could adversely affect the reproduction of an image. Randy became somewhat pigeon-holed as a pen and ink stipple illustrator—at least for a while—a reputation that he rather enjoyed.
Known commercially as a virtuoso in portrait art, Randy has an exceptional aptitude for capturing his subject’s character and essence with carefully nuanced precision. Whether working in watercolor, graphite, charcoal, or pen and ink, Randy’s portraits have been featured on innumerable magazine covers, advertising campaigns, and products as well as private commissions.
Among his more prominent portrait creations was a series of fine art lithographs of Star Trek cast members for Paramount Studio's (since defunct) Viacom Stores.
Randy’s pen and ink rendering of Saint John Paul II is the official marketing image for his National Shrine in Washington, DC. A graphite portrait of George W. Bush is featured as part of his Presidential Center in University Park, Texas. Other museum commissions have included The Tennessee State Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Smithsonian Museum of American History.
Randy’s portraiture talents combined with his expertise in stipple made him a perfect fit for The Wall Street Journal’s iconic portraits known as “hedcuts”. Originally created by fellow illustrator Kevin Sprouls specifically for the Journal back in the late seventies, these finely rendered pen and ink drawings were designed to emulate the look of woodcuts from old-style newspapers and engravings on certificates and currency.
The phonetic spelling of “hed” comes from newspapers’ use of that term for a “headline”. These portraits are recognized and often emulated throughout the world. Randy enjoyed infrequent opportunities to tackle a few of these drawings on a freelance basis early on but being a New York-based daily newspaper with obviously tight deadlines, it was impossible for him, living on the west coast, to become a regular contributor until the advent and regular use of computer scanners and email around the late 90’s. In 2000, Randy was contracted to create celebrity hedcuts to appear “above the fold” on the front page of the Journal’s most widely read section, “The Weekly Journal”. These drawings accompanied Joe Morgenstern’s weekly “Film Review” column which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.
Randy’s Wall Street Journal hedcuts have caught the attention of the entertainment industry through a number of notable gallery exhibits, and many of the original pen and ink drawings are privately owned by his celebrity subjects.
In recent years Randy has focused much of his time spent at the drawing board on corporate portraiture. His byline drawings have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The Street, Book of the Month, and of course, The Wall Street Journal. He also illustrated New York Times bestsellers; “True Prep” by Lisa Birnbach and Chip Kidd, “Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short” by William D. Cohan, and “Thank You Notes” by Jimmy Fallon.
Randy’s definitive artistry has been recognized by such prestigious organizations as The Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, Communication Arts, The Art Director’s Club, Illustration West, and The Ad Council. Several of his portraits are part of the Smithsonian’s permanent collection in Washington D.C.
Media Contact
Randy Glass Studio randy@randyglassstudio.com 8182313776 2351 East Glenoaks Boulevard https://www.randyglassstudio.com/
