# Bill Westerman, Artist ![[dad-studio.jpg]] ↑ Dad taking a selfie into a convex mirror in his studio in the 70s ## My father, Bill Westerman, is a retired graphic artist based in the Midwest ## Watching Dad work When I was young, my father worked as a freelance commercial artist for clients including André's Confiserie Suisse, Stuart Hall, and Hallmark. He worked out of a small second-floor rented office in an eclectic 60s office building that also housed a florist and, eventually, a video rental shop. I spent a lot of time at my Dad's studio, either after school or during the summers, and was always fascinated with the variety of things that he used in his work: the angled drafting table, the [french curves](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=french+curves&t=newext&atb=v449-1&iax=images&ia=images), the [X-Acto](https://www.xacto.com/) knives, the sheets of [Letraset](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=letraset&atb=v449-1&iax=images&ia=images) with all their typefaces, the drawer full of blank paper, his [[on favorite pens|favorite pens]], his Bakelite desk phone (I still remember the phone number to this day) and so forth. And Dad was never precious about his things. He let me look at anything I wanted, pull things out, handle them, explore how they worked. And I understood these were the tools of his trade, so I took care of them and put them back when done. All of that imprinted deeply on my brain, to where to this day whenever I'm in a store with art supplies or paper goods, I wander the aisles for the dash of nostalgia and pop of dopamine. Besides his tools, I was also fascinated with the breadth of his work. From one week to the next, he might be working on packaging for high-end chocolates, or a hand-carved sign, or thumbnails of dozens of notebooks for the back-to-school sales, or the layout of an annual report, or flat-packed endcaps for retail store displays, or anything else under the sun. He wasn't afraid of tackling something he hadn't done before - if anything, he got excited about the possibilities. ## People Dad has a deft hand for capturing the essence of someone with just a few lines: ![[dad-man.jpg]] ↑  Drawing of George Cheety, a friend from the Kansas City Art Institute ![[dad-woman.jpg]] ↑ Drawing of Irlene Gordon ![[dad-san-miguel.jpg]] ↑ Stranger sitting in el Jardín de Allende in San Miguel de Allende, México ## Characters Something I've only recently remembered is that my Dad also did some character drawings with a solid 60s/70s vibe. The funny thing is that it seems that I picked up the same use of minimal colors and thick outlines in my [[black and white series]]. ![[dad-artist.jpg]] ![[dad-shoes.jpg]] ![[dad-cat.jpg]] ![[dad-thinker.jpg]] ↑ A self-portrait of the artist ![[dad-leaner.jpg]] ![[dad-car 1.jpg]] ## Places He's done quite a few renderings of houses and buildings, and I've always admired how they hit a nice balance between enough detail to convey the scene, but not so much as to overwhelm it. ![[dad-house.jpg]] ![[dad-karnes.jpg]] ↑ One of the houses that I grew up in ![[dad-canal.jpg]] ![[dad-field.jpg]] ↑ I didn't realize that this was his until I was creating this page ## Things Dad has drawn hundreds and hundreds of things for newspaper advertisements and other print media. When reducing a product down to a thumbnail image, he has a deft eye for knowing which parts to include and which to leave out. And what I've always admired is that his lettering is immaculate - even when shrunken down to just a few mm in height. ![[dad-instruments.jpg]] ![[dad-car.jpg]] ![[dad-pixels.png|700]] ↑ My (former) 1968 Ford Custom, rendered by Dad on a Commodore 64 and a [KoalaPad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KoalaPad) ## Logos and packaging I've also always admired Dad's work on logos: bold, clean, with a pop. I particularly like three of them: The Polygon (a retail art gallery he and my mother ran), Westerman (his personal brand), and the Wash Systems semi truck. ![[dad-logos.jpg]] ![[dad-nightclub.jpg]] ↑ Can you get any more 70s? Man, I'd love to have this on my wall today. Dad did the logo, and Mom did the interior design. ![[dad-africa.jpg]] ↑ Logo and branding work. Dad created the custom font by hand. ![[dad-chocolate.jpg]] ↑ Some of the various chocolate packages he designed. The Engadiner Nut Torte is to die for. ![[dad-carving.png]] ↑ A great example of his carving work. There's no plastic in here, just wood. ## Large-scale art But Dad doesn't confine himself just to the studio. He also does a lot of larger-than-life work. I've always wanted to follow in his footsteps on this, and someday just might. ![[dad-mona-lamina.jpg]] ↑ Mona Lisa, made out of Formica sample tiles ![[dad-banner.jpg]] ↑ A massive banner for when Mom and I came home from my birth. I have a photo of her and me standing next to this very same sign, 50 years later. ## Painting ![[dad-bridge.jpg]] ↑ A bridge in San Miguel Allende, Mexico ![[dad-woman 1.jpg]] ## Photography & filmmaking Dad has been a prolific photographer throughout his life, with a collection of nearly 10,000 x 35mm film slides under his belt. His photos have appeared in annual reports, books, brochures, and art fairs over the years. I'm working on pulling some of them onto this page. Dad also directed an indie film called Windflower (published by Little Red Filmhouse) about a young boy who makes a model hot-air balloon and imagines himself floating across the fields in it. The boy (the son of a family friend) sadly has since passed, but he is immortalized in that story. I hand-wrote the credits that appear on the film. ## Sculpture As long as I can remember, Dad has always been creating one or another three-dimensional thing, whether a found piece of metal beautifully mounted on a solid wood base, fish made from plexiglas, or more substantial pieces like this bust: ![[dad-bust.jpg]] ∎