Axl Rose for REVOLVER Magazine

OK, I can share the rest of this piece with you all now. This is a full page illustration that I did before Christmas for REVOLVER Magazine. The idea for this piece was to show Axl on his throne with his Yoda near his side as a guide of sorts. I guess Axl had this weird little oracle woman with him at all times and the rest of the band made fun of her and called her Yoda, which may help explain why Yoda is in this illustration? You'll have to buy the magazine and read the article.

My first idea for this piece was to do a Norman Rockwell-ish painting, sort of like a Saturday Evening Post cover, I had a cleaner design behind Axl, a small circle with flames. It's a fun idea, Axl in nothing but a kilt and shoes with Yoda and all that painted in a warm and totally ideal American family setting, totally backwards of something Rockwell would have painted. Long story short, last minute and I mean the very last, the idea was changed dramatically and I had to trash that idea and paint flames everywhere in the background all in under three hours. This means that I had to also re-work a lot of what I had finished painting on Axl and Yoda, having to add warmer color, reflective light from the flames, and so forth so that they would feel like they were really within this surrounding.

* UPDATE * New addition to this post on 1-17-08. A few of you have requested to see the Rockwell version, so I've added the artwork to this post. This was the direction I was heading, it wasn't quite finished, the next step was to add some items to the ground around Axl, like bottled water and bowls of fruit and energy bars . . .