Penelope Dullaghan + Marietta College
Art Director for Marietta College, Tom Perry, was searching for an artist to help visually express the celebration of their 175 yr. anniversary. He found the perfect fit with Scott Hull Associates, Penelope Dullaghan. Known to be organic in her approach and keen in her ability to tune right in to what the client needs, Penelope was the obvious artist to request. The illustration was to be featured as a special cover on the campus magazine, and needed to be classic, yet still modern and eye-catching.
Penelope notes that, “The campus is brick lined and has lots of trees and a sort of ‘New England’ feel. They wanted to have the image reflect the fall season. So I first sketched a bunch of ideas focusing on the campus trees and bricks. But it felt a little impersonal and this school is, of course, all about the students. So I drew a student reading beneath a tree. I covered part of her face so students could sort of project themselves onto her. And played with perspective to make the composition interesting and engaging.”
Penelope continues her process by elucidating, “I had reasons to leave the sky and ground the same color: It simplified the piece overall, both in composition and in color palette. That way the masthead could be the only strong horizontal. And the background remained simple to again, allow the main focus on the piece to be with the figure. I sent off my reasoning expecting to be asked to change it, but was pleasantly surprised when they came back and said that it all made perfect sense and once they tried it in the layout, they agreed whole-heartedly.”
The college was deeply satisfied with the finished illustration. Tom Perry praises Penelope lavishly, “Wow! That was all we could say when we got that first glimpse of the illustration Penelope did for Marietta College’s fall magazine. It was a pleasure to work with her on this project—from the concept phase to the final product. Penelope took the time to listen to our desires and fears, and made sure to incorporate that into the illustration. We had many concerns because we thought what we wanted would not be easy to illustrate. Our goal was to have an illustration that would be timeless as we tried to represent our 175th anniversary. Penelope hit a home run, and our alumni and friends noticed because we have had many people contact us to express how much they loved the image as the cover on our magazine.”
