arteMECHANIX: CybErotica Space Girl Art by Jody Bronson
For those who don’t know you yet, who is Jody Bronson?
Oh that’s a great question. I’m not sure I can answer. My first impulse is to say something funny or sarcastic. So here I’ll do my best to portray a respectable adult with moderate fine art expertise.
I see myself as a self taught drawer/painter with some basic fundamentals, some style/technique of my own, albeit the result of salivating over artists works I admire, and the hours I’ve put in trying to emulate them.
I enjoy line drawing and painting. I’ve had some formal training with CG and character concept art, years ago, but I was always more-so a “fan” of artists and animators than an actual full time artist in my own rite. I loved the pre-war Disney film art, 1950’s comic book stylized art, as well as detective paperback and WW2 poster illustration. The 1960s vintage crime, mystery, and thriller novel paperback and poster art by Robert McGinnis was a huge early influence when I was young, and I’d try to draw that style of adult crime novel cover girl art. The “femme fatal with a smoking gun”. Through the years I would dabble with sketches, for friends and family, but really never put in the effort to take it to the next level by painting or developing a line of artworks to officially showcase. I’d always pursued a musical career, and so found little time to devote to illustration or painting. It was just something I’d get to one day.
All your works are collected under a series called arteMECHANIX. How did you come up with the concept of the magazine? Is it published in real life?
arteMECHANIX is a brutally simplified name for the theme I’d been most interested in developing. The ‘femme fatal with a smoking gun’ of the future.
With so much CG and digital art dominating design, film, special FX, and comic book art the past few years, I wanted to create a series of cover art/posters/prints that echo the magazine and pulp covers I cherished.
But rather than digitally, I wanted to create large scale oil paintings, old school, hand-rendered, as the foundation art for the arteMECHANIX pseudo magazine covers, all in this specific “cyber-erotica” theme, merging machine with warrior princess overtones.
So I paint each piece on 32” X 48” board. Each painting is named and numbered chronologically, starting from 1901 on. There are over 80 prints at this time, consisting of over 120 boards. Most are created as 1 board/1 print, but some are multi boards/1 print. For example, arteMECHANIX 1914 BINAIRE ÉLECTRIQUE print consists of 4 painted boards.
1914 BINAIRE ÉLECTRIQUE 64″wX80″h – image © Jody Bronson
I often begin an artwork painting with a title in mind, and mock up a full graphic with fictitious title/graphics/header/byline/tagline/synopsis/etc.) and then just visualize the artwork that should accompany it. I’ve always done this, not unlike writing.
I always begin a story, a song, a poem, an advertisement, etc. etc., with a title. Then I write the article or piece around that. I do the same with the arteMECHANIX paintings.
I’m not a big fan of saturated colors. I prefer a monochromatic pallet, so 90% of my paintings are grayscale.
In developing the digital arteMECHANIX final print layout, there too I often render in only a ghost of color (along with fictitious title and graphics/header/byline/tagline/etc.)
1953 Sister – image © Jody Bronson
You have a very distinct style, merging science-fiction, Cyberpunk, and fantasy. What aspects of these appeal to you?
Well, through all the years I’ve had an active interest in fantasy and science fiction. I truly was “fan”atical about that style of art long before it became main-stream with film and fan expo culture, like it is now.
When I was young I’d collect magazines like Heavy Metal, Epic, Omni, Eclipse, and a myriad of SciFi magazines reflecting current film and fantastical stylized illustrated story layouts. I honed a drawing style influenced by works of Frank Frazetta, Richard Corben, Jeffery Jones and others. Also, advertisement and poster illustrators from turn of the century were a big influence.
I collected prints and books by Maxfield Parrish and Arthur Rackham, also pulps from the 1930s and 40s anywhere I could find them, while traveling and working with music…used book shops, antique stores etc. etc.
I thought if I would ever delve deeper into creating art one day; it would be to develop my own pulp magazine cover art. The Buck Rogers comic book cover art by Frazetta was a huge influence and 90% of my drawings featured a girl in space with a ray gun. Campy style art I know, but that was what I valued aesthetically.
Timelapse of 1952 Stream – video © Jody Bronson
Why always female figures?
The arteMECHANIX series of paintings, I believe, would be best described roughly as “CybErotica Space Girl Art”, if I painted them ALL the way I’d like to paint them… Simply decorative portrait art, keeping in mind the style of the artists that inspired me. The female form still, in motion, always prominent and powerful as I see them, as I expect Frazetta and McGinnis and Mucha saw them, compelling even in distress.
That being said, I also paint other things. Robots.
1948 VENERA48 32″wX48″h – image © Jody Bronson
What do you think is in the future of the artist? How much do you believe the new technologies will affect the course of art?
Hmmm, I may be wrong but I’ll try to answer that one, interpreting “new technologies” as “digital tools and programs as Artist resources tech”, rather than “medicine, environmental, finance & crypto, travel, gadgets tech…“.
I began with an interest in Disney animation, those LP Record books, then pocket book and poster illustration art, and so on. I then emulated that style in my own personal drawings and inks. Later I tampered with digital graphics, game art and design, concept art, and motion graphics and web design, html code, creating content for banners and ad campaigns, band posters, logos and more, (and 3D modeling w/ Maya and Zbrush).
For me, my journey as a visual artist was chaotic and sporadic. Never committing for any solid length of time, due to musical pursuits, work and day to day life with other interests that took up my time. For me, getting a computer in 1999, it was a natural progression to delve into CG, and web design. It was all alien and confusing, and complex, but somehow that tech caught on to change the Artist landscape.
Of course, the tools that Artists will have available in the future will change the rules of the game yet again, such as the digital platform for expression has, but they are just tools. Tools go in and out of vogue and practice. Artists will always revert back to past techniques, such as classical hand rendered art that is tangible, existing in matter rather than binary. Something to touch. But either way, the trick for the Artist is to do artwork that brings personal joy, and pride, and confidence.
Using digital programs, virtual reality and 3D tools, incorporating film and music into decorative and storyline design, promoting online with video editing and building a following with social media, yes all elements of the game now. It wasn’t so 20 years ago. And yet it’s not mandatory to utilize them.
I say just use what you think works as an Artist and discard what you don’t. New technologies will come, and go. Some will cement and change the game, and a new breed of “Artist” will emerge.
1931 Reverie – image © Jody Bronson
For now, my advice to an Artist who cares what I think…Think of an idea, build a consistent brand, do the art as only you can, and keep with it. Do it with sticks and mud if you choose. New technologies always come, and go. Just use what you need to grow. The course of art will develop undeterred and your true fan base won’t care if you’re using or not using a current whatchamacallit.
Oh the future of the artist? Space and Love. (with some Romanticism and some Realism).
Me personally, I try to keep it simple, some variant of a girl in space with a shiny ray gun.
People just want love and to be loved, and not to have to be explained what a picture means.
1934 Red Door Singular- image © Jody Bronson
All images of the artworks belong to artist Jody Bronson.
