Larry Roibal

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

After I graduated from Parsons I started to get book cover work from Simon and Schuster. I loved going there to drop off work. Before the digital age, art departments were filled with racks and racks of original art by all of my heros in the business. But while I loved looking at the work, I also realized I needed to step up my game if I wanted to stick around in this field. So, even though I was keeping busy with commissions during the day, I started lugging my french easel up to the Art Students League at night. Forty years earlier, before he got his break in films, Charlton Heston was an artists model at the League. I’m no fan of the NRA, but you could see why the camera loved him. He had great chiseled features and I would’ve liked to have been around forty years earlier to paint him.

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

When it’s your job to spin, occasionally you spin out of control.

Sunday Morning

I was pleased to learn this week that I had a piece accepted to this years Communication Arts Illustration Competition.

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Julie Borg is a wonderful designer that I’ve been working with for a few years. I enjoy hearing from her because I get to paint in a loose style. This piece was done for a series of CD covers, Sunday Morning Music Series. The songs are inspirational, so I was trying to capture a Sunday morning ritual with an inspirational light. For those of you who know me, you may recognize my dining room. I set up this still life at sunrise to capture the low light sweeping across the table.

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Ball point pen on morning newsprint

Ball point pen on morning newsprint

With Donnie Walsh being hired by the pathetic Knicks as president of basketball operations, some have to be looking over their shoulder.

Ball point pen on morning newsprint

Ball point pen on envelpoe.

While it’s liberating to draw on trash, (see above) occasionally there’s a drawing I wish I had saved. About two months ago I saw an article in the paper about a little known (at least to me) Albany bureaucrat. The article (as I recall) revolved around a wrongful firing suit against said bureaucrat. The plaintiff claimed that he was fired on the basis of race, he was white, the defendant black. The defense was that said bureaucrat is blind and had no idea the plaintiff was white. Sort of interesting…but not so much that I remembered his name. He did have an interesting face. So, I drew him in the news paper and summarily through it in the recycling bin at the end of the day….A few weeks later, then Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer is caught in a prostitution/money laundering scandal. He has to step down and a little known bureaucrat, David Paterson, rises to the position of New York’s Governor…. I drew that guy! I desperately rifle through the recycling bin to add credence to my story… but I was too late. That was one drawing I wish I had back.

Ball point pen on morning newsprint.

Opening day at Yankee stadium was rained out yesterday.

Ball point pen on morning newsprint

Dith Pran passed away at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital In New Jersey this weekend. His story of surviving the Khmer Rouge regime was the inspiration for the movie, The Killing Fields. He was 65.