Recently I’ve been creating portraits by placing people into the pop culture fandoms they love. Similar to someone donning a costume while celebrating the art of cosplay, I’ve adorned people in costume and abilities that places them perfectly into the worlds they love.
This is the story of how I started creating unique special event portraits.
The Ladies of Jackalope Tattoo by Joe Rheault ©2014
A few years back, my friend Bambi opened up a tattoo shop in Minneapolis called Jackalope Tattoo. She worked her butt off and convinced several of the local female tattoers in the city to start working out of her new business. An all female tattoo shop was just what Minneapolis needed at that time and it quickly turned into one of the best tattoo parlors in town.
Part of Jackalope’s success was in the charisma and constant marketing from Bambi herself, but she knew that the bigger part of Jackalope’s success was from the stellar talent of the lady tattooers she assembled. She saw these incredible artists as a family and came up with an fantastic concept to show how much she cared about each of them. That’s where I came in. Knowing my background in comics and illustration, Bambi asked me to turn each one of the ladies into a post-apocalyptic super-heroine with extraordinary abilities based on their individual personality. I concepted poses and costuming while using facebook and private photos to create their likenesses in the art. The portraits were a complete surprise to every one of the Jackaladies and after the final designs were unveiled, they knew exactly how much they meant to Bambi.
Harry Potter inspired Maid-of-Honor ©Joe Rheault 2018
Star Wars inspired Maid-of-Honor ©Joe Rheault 2018
Earlier this summer one of the tattooers I drew, Emi (the new owner of Jackalope Tattoo), was asked by a client if she had any recommendations for a specific project. Her client was looking for someone who could draw each of her and her fiance's maids of honors as superheroines for bridal gifts. Emi only had one suggestion for her and the future brides reached out to me right away.
When drawing someone as a character, I want to know about who it is that I’m drawing. Not just a name and physical description, but who they are as a person. What are their passions? Interests? Obsessions? After talking with the future brides, I helped them come to a realization that each maid of honor had a more fitting fandom they could be drawn as. Based on the each one’s personality and pop-culture aesthetics, I had drawn one as a Harry Potter styled witch (house Gryffindor) and the other as a lightsaber wielding Jedi styled from the Star Wars universe. Again, the ones being drawn had no idea that I was working on the images until the brides unveiled the artwork to them. The finished portraits were a hit with both maids-of-honor.
Star Wars inspired wedding portrait ©Joe Rheault 2018
Next I was approached by a woman that wanted me to create a wedding portrait. I’ll call her Katie. She asked me if I could draw her brother and his fiance in a similar way as the two maids-of-honor. The future bride and groom have a mutual love for the Star Wars universe and through conversation with Katie, I realized that they were best suited to put on the robes as lightsaber wielding Jedi. Again, I created the likenesses using personal photographs and facebook. The bride and groom haven’t seen the drawings yet, but based on my history of portraits, there might be happy tears shed.
Star Wars inspired wedding portrait ©Joe Rheault 2018