R.I.P. Bruce Stark 1933-2012

If you were a teenager in the early '90s, you undoubtedly are familiar with the work of Bruce Stark. He is the artist responsible for crafting those memorable sports caricature shirts that everyone seemed to own when cruising the halls of their respective high school.

(above: Stark's caricature of hockey great Mario Lemieux)

And when your favorite sports team won a championship, you'd hope that Bruce Stark would pen a team drawing with every player holding their pointy index fingers high in the sky.

New Yorkers are also quite familiar with Stark's work; he was an artist for the Daily News from 1960-1982. Stark's illustrations also appeared in various national publications.

I recently discovered that Stark died of emphysema on December 29, 2012. He was 79 years old.

Years ago I e-mailed Stark asking him how he crafted his drawings, and here's how he responded:

"Those jobs are generally done with black india ink with water or black acrylics with water on 5 ply Strathmore board.  The varying degrees of black medium is preceeded by a pencil drawing on the Strathmore.  I do the same procedure when I'm doing color.  Hope this is helpful to you."

Best,

Bruce

That was Stark's technical approach to things, but for anyone who has tried to emulate his work (like myself), you know that the talent portion of his process came from a higher power.