Dave DeVries - Amazon Warrior

2015.09.20 Clifton, NJ

Dave DeVries is an award winning illustrator with 20 years of experience visualizing high impact, high drama images. Dave has worked for many ad agencies over his 20 year plus career but specifically was instrumental in creating marketing strategies and campaigns for Mediasauce. Dave has shown nationally at many galleries.

DeVries is the author-illustrator of The Monster Engine, a book, a demonstration, lecture and a gallery exhibition. The premise for all three came from one single question: What would a child's drawing look like if it were painted realistically?

It began at the Jersey Shore in 1998, where my niece Jessica often filled my sketchbook with doodles. While I stared at them, I wondered if color, texture and shading could be applied for a 3D effect. As a painter, I made cartoons look three dimensional every day for the likes of Marvel and DC comics, so why couldn't I apply those same techniques to a kid's drawing? That was it... no research, no years of toil, just the curiosity of seeing Jessica's drawings come to life. “

Amazon Warrior – Lorenz Hart FDC. Hart composed the score, with Richard Rodgers, for the 1942 musical By Jupiter, the story of a war between the Greeks and Amazons, where the greeks search for the Sacred Girdle of Diana..

The musical was based on the play The Warrior's Husband by Julian F. Thompson, set in the land of the Amazons...

While looking through DeVries sketch work, I noticed a sketch of Xena, and decided to request an amazon warrior, to reflect the musical play By Jupiter...

By Jupiter, 1943,  from the New York Public Library digital collection - Nanette Fabray (Antiope) Ralph Dumke (Hercules) and Ronald Graham ( Theseus).. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library

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