The teenage synth-goth duo Shell made its debut at Team Gallery in New York in January 1999. Marianne Nowottny (right, in the picture below), who also has her own solo career, performed with her friend and sometime songwriting partner Donna Bailey (left). The pair brought an entourage of their high school friends, who hung out on the periphery of the much older, black-clad art crowd. Shell's concise, minor-key ditties, played on cheap Concertmate keyboards and echoing early-'80s neuromantic pop (with a major dose of goofing around) were a hit with the audience, and the girls went on to play a number of New York area venues, including Tonic and Maxwell's. They're living in separate cities now and future gigs seem unlikely, but fortunately a number of their songs were documented by the Abaton Book Company on the CD Shell is Swell (available through amazon.com). Below is a retroactive design for their CD cover. I did the drawings a couple of years ago with MSPaint as a bit of spontaneous fan art (working freehand from photos by Mark Dagley); they were considered for the CD cover but ultimately rejected by the girls (sob) in favor of a drawing of Marianne's. Abaton came up with the idea of abutting the pictures and centering them on the cover. I added the type recently and suggested the alternate title ("Mausoleum" is one of Shell's more characteristic songs). The package looks a bit indie-corporate for the pair, but the drawings were a true believer's way of conveying his enthusiasm for two swell musicians. 
Here are full frame views of the drawings of Donna and Marianne. At the time I made them, the company where I worked had just upgraded Windows, so I was forced to draw them (entirely on the clock, of course, during "down time") using MSPaint, rather than the older, superior, MSPaintbrush.
you slacker! :)
i missed some nice details in the anatomy of the ears with the smaller pictures, along with donna's earrings. i can see the mspaint style a lot better with the actual sized image. the only thing i wish was different were their eyes. they're so black and cold, and donna's are incongruent.
you should embrace technology. modern art programs don't do art for you. they don't draw portraits...
also i've learned the layer feature in photoshop is good to use when having one picture that you're doing for work in one layer and your own in the next and keep clicking back and forth whenever your boss walks by.
The drawings were meant to be side by side and I wanted the coal-black pupils (among other things) to unify them. To make them like clone girls. Also by that point I had done a lot of swimming pool eyes I was yearning for a change. That's my feeble defense.
I have embraced technology! Thanks to your Photoshop tutorial I can do this! Actually the underpainting (drawn freehand, interpreting an image from a p0rn mag) is a scan of a gouache on cardboard but I used layering to color it.
The MSPaint work wasn't based on resistance to modernity so much as wanting to show off hand skill in a program where it's almost impossible to have finesse. Like doing a detailed landscape on an Etch a Sketch. (Also being stuck in a job with no Photoshop.) It turned out to be a wasted gesture because so many people assumed I was just scanning photos and running them through a pixelating filter. I know I've mentioned that before, but it annoys me.
i can clearly tell you didn't scan a photo and put a filter on it.
i'm glad you learned to color in photoshop and used it! that's a very good portrait.
what are "swimming pool eyes"?
It's a term I read once used to describe anime characters' eyes. Many highlights, like a pool you could dive into.
real people have highlights in their eyes though.
In the source photos that Dagley took of the girls, they had almost no reflection. I made a choice, instead of adding highlights, to intensify the blackness. To make the eyes like black holes. I made them artificial the other direction from anime eyes. Also, I hoped they might be reproduced, and I wanted the black pupils to give them some punch on a small scale. My feeble defense continues.
ok, i understand why you made them how they are. don't change them if you like them! but donna's eyes are still weird. she reminds me of lisa who had one lazy eye *cringe*.
Well, you made me curious, so I dug up the photo. Her eyes are indeed incongruent. Not lazy eye incongruent, though. I exaggerated it drawing it with the mouse but I felt/feel it's within tolerance. I think it makes her face interesting. But thanks for pointing it out, I hadn't thought much about the asymmetry. 
so you consider it an "exaggeration", even though you didn't notice you were making them asymmetrical to begin with and didn't realize it until i pointed it out?
what threw me off about the photo is that her head doesn't appear to be completely right side up. she is ever so slightly tilted to the left (her left), making her eyes appear at different levels (her right eye, the one we see on the left, higher than the other). her pupils are at the level of her off-balanced eyes. you drew one pupil higher than the other, but with the eyelids both level. in the photo her eyes are both looking head on, but in your drawing one eye is facing up and one is forward. that's why.
do you see that? do you want to?
am i being petty?
it's just that i really noticed it immediately in the larger drawing, and if you wanted to make it even bigger and stretch it on a canvas or something (not that you're going to, but hypothetically), she would be the girl with the totally weird eyes.
I absolutely see everything you're saying; I just don't agree that it's a flaw that ruins the drawing, at least for me. I knew the eyes were asymmetrical, then and now, I just hadn't thought about it, in terms of having to defend it. I couldn't remember from 3 years ago how much was actually her eyes and how much was artistic license. I thought the lid on her right eye might have been more prominent but that I had hidden it in shadow for some reason. Turns out it's not.
Sometimes I'm resistant to criticism; when my feelings are hurt it usually means I'm wrong and can't admit it. I promise that's not the case here.
Also, to belabor the point, this wouldn't be a drawing I would print super-large, like the actresses and models I did. It was meant to be a pair, printed pretty much like my "CD cover."
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The teenage synth-goth duo Shell made its debut at Team Gallery in New York in January 1999. Marianne Nowottny (right, in the picture below), who also has her own solo career, performed with her friend and sometime songwriting partner Donna Bailey (left). The pair brought an entourage of their high school friends, who hung out on the periphery of the much older, black-clad art crowd. Shell's concise, minor-key ditties, played on cheap Concertmate keyboards and echoing early-'80s neuromantic pop (with a major dose of goofing around) were a hit with the audience, and the girls went on to play a number of New York area venues, including Tonic and Maxwell's. They're living in separate cities now and future gigs seem unlikely, but fortunately a number of their songs were documented by the Abaton Book Company on the CD Shell is Swell (available through amazon.com).
Below is a retroactive design for their CD cover. I did the drawings a couple of years ago with MSPaint as a bit of spontaneous fan art (working freehand from photos by Mark Dagley); they were considered for the CD cover but ultimately rejected by the girls (sob) in favor of a drawing of Marianne's. Abaton came up with the idea of abutting the pictures and centering them on the cover. I added the type recently and suggested the alternate title ("Mausoleum" is one of Shell's more characteristic songs). The package looks a bit indie-corporate for the pair, but the drawings were a true believer's way of conveying his enthusiasm for two swell musicians.
- tom moody 2-09-2002 9:34 pm
Here are full frame views of the drawings of Donna and Marianne. At the time I made them, the company where I worked had just upgraded Windows, so I was forced to draw them (entirely on the clock, of course, during "down time") using MSPaint, rather than the older, superior, MSPaintbrush.
- tom moody 1-12-2003 6:12 am
you slacker! :)
i missed some nice details in the anatomy of the ears with the smaller pictures, along with donna's earrings. i can see the mspaint style a lot better with the actual sized image. the only thing i wish was different were their eyes. they're so black and cold, and donna's are incongruent.
you should embrace technology. modern art programs don't do art for you. they don't draw portraits...
also i've learned the layer feature in photoshop is good to use when having one picture that you're doing for work in one layer and your own in the next and keep clicking back and forth whenever your boss walks by.
- pamela 1-12-2003 7:03 am
The drawings were meant to be side by side and I wanted the coal-black pupils (among other things) to unify them. To make them like clone girls. Also by that point I had done a lot of swimming pool eyes I was yearning for a change. That's my feeble defense.
I have embraced technology! Thanks to your Photoshop tutorial I can do this! Actually the underpainting (drawn freehand, interpreting an image from a p0rn mag) is a scan of a gouache on cardboard but I used layering to color it.
The MSPaint work wasn't based on resistance to modernity so much as wanting to show off hand skill in a program where it's almost impossible to have finesse. Like doing a detailed landscape on an Etch a Sketch. (Also being stuck in a job with no Photoshop.) It turned out to be a wasted gesture because so many people assumed I was just scanning photos and running them through a pixelating filter. I know I've mentioned that before, but it annoys me.
- tom moody 1-12-2003 7:33 am
i can clearly tell you didn't scan a photo and put a filter on it.
i'm glad you learned to color in photoshop and used it! that's a very good portrait.
what are "swimming pool eyes"?
- pamela 1-12-2003 7:46 am
It's a term I read once used to describe anime characters' eyes. Many highlights, like a pool you could dive into.
- tom moody 1-12-2003 7:52 am
real people have highlights in their eyes though.
- pamela 1-12-2003 7:57 am
In the source photos that Dagley took of the girls, they had almost no reflection. I made a choice, instead of adding highlights, to intensify the blackness. To make the eyes like black holes. I made them artificial the other direction from anime eyes. Also, I hoped they might be reproduced, and I wanted the black pupils to give them some punch on a small scale. My feeble defense continues.
- tom moody 1-12-2003 8:10 am
ok, i understand why you made them how they are. don't change them if you like them! but donna's eyes are still weird. she reminds me of lisa who had one lazy eye *cringe*.
- pamela 1-12-2003 8:17 am
Well, you made me curious, so I dug up the photo. Her eyes are indeed incongruent. Not lazy eye incongruent, though. I exaggerated it drawing it with the mouse but I felt/feel it's within tolerance. I think it makes her face interesting. But thanks for pointing it out, I hadn't thought much about the asymmetry.
- tom moody 1-12-2003 8:55 am
so you consider it an "exaggeration", even though you didn't notice you were making them asymmetrical to begin with and didn't realize it until i pointed it out?
what threw me off about the photo is that her head doesn't appear to be completely right side up. she is ever so slightly tilted to the left (her left), making her eyes appear at different levels (her right eye, the one we see on the left, higher than the other). her pupils are at the level of her off-balanced eyes. you drew one pupil higher than the other, but with the eyelids both level. in the photo her eyes are both looking head on, but in your drawing one eye is facing up and one is forward. that's why.
do you see that? do you want to?
am i being petty?
- pamela 1-12-2003 9:40 am
it's just that i really noticed it immediately in the larger drawing, and if you wanted to make it even bigger and stretch it on a canvas or something (not that you're going to, but hypothetically), she would be the girl with the totally weird eyes.
- pamela 1-12-2003 9:42 am
I absolutely see everything you're saying; I just don't agree that it's a flaw that ruins the drawing, at least for me. I knew the eyes were asymmetrical, then and now, I just hadn't thought about it, in terms of having to defend it. I couldn't remember from 3 years ago how much was actually her eyes and how much was artistic license. I thought the lid on her right eye might have been more prominent but that I had hidden it in shadow for some reason. Turns out it's not.
Sometimes I'm resistant to criticism; when my feelings are hurt it usually means I'm wrong and can't admit it. I promise that's not the case here.
Also, to belabor the point, this wouldn't be a drawing I would print super-large, like the actresses and models I did. It was meant to be a pair, printed pretty much like my "CD cover."
- tom moody 1-12-2003 10:35 am