The art of Lucas Chute

This page is to show some of the pieces and projects that I have been commissioned for over the years. Most of these pieces are not my ideas or designs, but are done by request. Usually these are image reproduction projects, however some are loose assignments that I get to customize and have more fun with.

Needing a new mascot for their summer season, Clubbed Thumb picked me! Here’s the final product.

One of the most recent and open-ended commissions I was hired for was a small painting on a 10 x 17″ panel. I was hired by the Naked Angels Theater Company to do a painting for the birthday of their artistic director, Mr. Geoffry Nauffts. I was told of his favorite colors and did an interpretation of their logo:

Here’s the final piece, and a couple of detail pics.

One of my editor friends over at Ugly hired me to paint a skateboard deck for the other editor’s birthday.

I guess when you can’t find enough strange and crazy stuff on-line, might as well make some of your own!

This is probably the strangest thing I’ve ever created, it could be an inside joke, or maybe a joke one me… Cute, cuddly, and unnerving all at once, the eyes cut through me like a knife. Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!!

In the last year, I’ve been hired to transfer images onto the doors of the Ohio Theater four times

The first was last June, the Clubbed Thumb theater company hired me to paint their logo for the 2007 Summerworks season.

Here’s the Ohio Theatre in Soho. The doors are approx. 8ft x 5ft each.

This design worked really well. Clean, bold, and it looked great from a distance.

The Play Company came calling after seeing the doors above. They had a show going up in the Ohio in the fall, and gave me a logo designed by Noah Scalin, who runs Another Limited Rebellion designs, to put up on the doors.

This one was a bit more complicated. The original design was a photograph of the kitty and puppy snuggling. I didn’t have the time or resources to do a photo-realistic transfer, so I broke the shadows down into two values. This photo was also taken at night, you can see the glare of the flash off of the glossy paint in the center.

The third transfer was for Clubbed Thumb again. Their favorite show of the previous summerworks, Amazons and Their Men, was picked up for an off-broadway run.

This design was very similar to the summerworks 2007 one. I was tasked with converting the show logo into a good door design. Unfortunately, I can’t find my pictures of the finished doors. Here is the logo.

I painted one big eagle on the left door, its wing extending into the right, with film strips on either side, and the show title in stencil-style lettering. This was my least-favorite because it was early January and there was a smaller window of time to do the painting. I had to work outside at night for most of the process in less-than-desirable conditions. The paint was cold and gloopy, and fingers would freeze after about 20 minutes. If it wasn’t for assistance from my awesome girlfriend I may have died of exposure. Hopefully I can find those pics soon.

My next Clubbed Thumb job was to paint their mascot onto a 5-foot cutout thumb so people could take pictures with it at a party. Here’s the classic logo:

I did a Terry Gilliamesqe interpretation, highlighting the ouchiness of a badly clubbed and swollen thumb.

The most recent project has been the new Clubbed Thumb Summerworks design, also done by Noah Scalin.

This one came out nicely, I like the green a lot.

This is a drawing I did for my Aunt’s Western-themed living room. She picked out the portrait and I did the drawing with charcoal, conte crayons, and colored pencils.

Here’s a close-up.

This is a piece I did for my aunt’s friend Joann. It was a gift to her husband. Wolves, like some people, tend to have mates for life and are very loyal. The medium is charcoal, conte crayons, colored pencils, and soft pastels on canson paper.