The Georgia Highlands College Lakeview Art Gallery in Rome is currently showing art from GHC Professor of Art Brian Barr\u2019s drawings for a children\u2019s book series called \u201cMartin the Guitar.\u201d The gallery is free and open to the public and will be available Monday (Feb. 18) through Friday (Feb. 22).<\/p>\n
The collection of artwork was produced for the second and third book in the illustrated book series: \u201cMartin the Guitar on the Road\u201d published in 2017 and \u201cMartin the Guitar in the Big City\u201d published early 2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The story follows Little Martin the Guitar, who once lived in Mr. Beninato\u2019s Music Store in New York City, before he was picked up by his new owner, the famous folk singer Robert. Now, the two have been invited to perform at the most famous concert hall in the world.<\/p>\n
Along with the book and illustrations are links to audio, featuring music to accompany the story.<\/p>\n
Barr has been working alongside author Harry Musselwhite for several years throughout the production of the series. Barr said he approached the project with a careful eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the style of children\u2019s books illustrations is very different than my normal style of drawing and painting, the process is not that dissimilar,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce I had the script, I tried to figure out what parts of the story would best be represented visually. Then I worked on several sketches for each illustration until I found the composition that I thought worked the best.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Barr chose to bring the fictional world to life with color pencils so that he \u201ccould get a strong color saturation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI started working up the main objects and backgrounds in strong, flat colors, then I modeled the forms by adding cooler colors to bring out greater structure,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the most difficult aspects was trying to design each illustration so that it could be cropped easily, depending upon how the designer would need to fit them into the overall layout.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barr has always had a passion for art and decided early on to pursue it as a career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took classes wherever I could up until college, where I focused on studying drawing at the University of Central Florida. After that, I finished my education with an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. Over the years, I\u2019ve been lucky to have several exhibitions of my work, but, lately, I have focused on doing illustrations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barr is no stranger to drawing for publications. He has worked with fellow artist Kelly Shane to create a graphic novel called \u201cJackdaw\u201d and has even dabbled in non-fiction with artwork for a Civil War biography. He has been teaching at GHC since 2002.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cPerhaps the thing that I love most about GHC is that, for so many, it represents a true opportunity for a new direction, a new life,\u201d he said. \u201cI have had many students in my classes that have never been able to have any art training at all, so we are providing a true beginning for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The Georgia Highlands College Lakeview Art Gallery in Rome is currently showing art from GHC Professor of Art Brian Barr\u2019s drawings for a children\u2019s book series called \u201cMartin the Guitar.\u201d The gallery is free and open to the public and will be available Monday (Feb. 18) through Friday (Feb. 22). The collection of artwork was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8028,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026\/revisions\/8028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}