Artist of the day: Artist of the day, February 28, 2020: Robert Hunt, an American illustrator and painter (#929)

Friday, February 28, 2020

Artist of the day, February 28, 2020: Robert Hunt, an American illustrator and painter (#929)

Robert Hunt (1952) is an American illustrator and painter. Over the course of his illustration career, Hunt has created works for a wide variety of clients, including Bank of America, CBS Records, Criterion Collection, Dreamworks, Disney, Federal Express, MGM, The New Republic, Paramount, Random House, Rolling Stone, Universal Studios, The Wall Street Journal, Williams Sonoma, and many more.

Robert Hunt was born in Berkeley, California and attended High School at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California. Hunt's grandparents lived a few miles from his family home and he would frequently visit his Grandfather who had suffered a stroke. The stroke left his grandfather with the use of only one arm and during visits, he often emphasized the importance of appreciating the ability to do things with one's hands and to try to make the most of your hands create things that solve problems.

Hunt attended university as an undergraduate at UC Davis, where he initially sought a degree in fine art and film making. With the encouragement of professor Wayne Thiebaud, he later switched his undergraduate major to art history.

In 1978 Hunt went on to attend The Academy of Art in San Francisco where he was one of two students in the graduate illustration program. The director of the illustration program at the Academy of Art when Hunt and Kazu attended was Barbara Bradley, one of the first women to pursue and succeed in commercial illustration. Bradley taught clothed figure drawing and heads and hands, and Hunt attended daily classes with her for one year. Hunt credits her with teaching him to turn off his ego while drawing. Hunt would graduate with an MFA from the Academy of Art in 1980.

Although the majority of work in illustration was coming from magazines and book publishers based in New York City in the early 1980s, delivering art from Hunt's home in San Francisco became a viable option with FedEx going nationwide to 90 cities in 1980. The San Francisco-based illustrator, David Grove had forged a successful career in illustration from the West Coast and Hunt, along with his friend Kazu decided that they could as well.

Hunt's first published work appeared in 1980, at age 28 for Listen Magazine. His first appearance in the Society of Illustrators Annual came in 1983, with a piece titled Hidden Victims for Listen Magazine. His first book cover assignment was with Bantam Books in 1984, under the art direction of Jerry Counihan.

In 1994 Hunt was commissioned by Steven Spielberg to create the DreamWorks logo. Spielberg originally imagined a CGI generated image of a man fishing from the moon. On the recommendation of Senior Visual Effects Supervisor, Dennis Muren that the image instead be an original painting, Hunt was called in to execute the final image on which the motion version was based. The final motion logo took Hunt three months to complete and features a boy fishing from the moon. The model Hunt used for the child was his own son, William Hunt.

Hunt was featured in an 11-year retrospective of New Republic covers by The Society of Publication Designers for his December 2, 2009 cover titled Trial By Fire picturing the back of President Barack Obama's head, art directed by Christine Car and Joseph Heroun.

In addition to Hunt's motion logo for DreamWorks, the artist has created motion logos for Random House Worlds, and Broad Green Pictures

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