Tiny Little Portraits
I've been producing the calendars for the Birchmere (America's Legendary Music Hall, located in Alexandria, VA) since about 1990. If you've ever been to the club and seen the 8 1/2" x 11" black & white calendars on the tables advertising the acts for the current month - I'm the guy that creates the artwork. I put all the information together and then on the days where there are no acts I add cartoons or images related to music or holidays, etc. Forunately for me, Gary had always granted me much liberty in the process.

I used to letter the calendar entirely by hand until I got a computer back in 1997. I also occasionally drew little pen & ink portraits of certain people on the day of their birthday. The actual size of the original drawings was approximately 1.25" square. Homages, I suppose, although the choice of characters is completely subjective and random, due to the fact that on that particular day no act was scheduled to play.

You can identify the early pen & ink portraits by the more sparse, heavier lines. I drew them onto illustration board with a technical pen at 1.25" square. Since I started using a wacom tablet in 2012, I've been drawing them digitally, and you can identify these by the finer lines (the scale is larger) and gray tones. I've drawn about 150 of them over the years, see if you can name them all!

To see the current Birchmere calendar click here and scroll down: www.birchmere.com