Just as Dan is free and loose with his brush strokes, Bryan is as meticulous in his pre-meditation or his preparation for painting an illustration. Bryan is an intense thinker and thinks things through many times before he will commit his brush to paper. He wants to make sure that he knows what he wants and that the brush stroke will be correct. Working in pastels, Bryan is able to get very soft ethereal colors that other illustrators don’t get in their work. Acrylics, airbrush, and mixing mediums also allow him to achieve a wide range of effects in his work. He is the opposite of painterly; he is more controlled because his line work is far more important to the illustration than the painterly approach.
He is noted for his story interpretation and ability to depict action in an illustration directing your eye to the center of the key event. Bryan’s exquisite illustrations are rich with layers of detail that allow you to see forever; his images capture both your imagination and emotions taking you deep into the heart of the story. The illustration that he did for the Paris Disneyland castle is an excellent example of a painting where you believe that you can see forever. Using an unusual perspective, he lets you look down from the top of the castle onto the main floor. Shafts of light beaming through stained glass windows and castle banners lead your eye to the floor below. The unique dramatic perspective gives you a sense of depth and magnitude of the castle.
Approaching his work by first establishing the mood of the story, Bryan then sees how technical requirements fit into the illustration. This can be seen in his illustrations for the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland where he takes great care to capture the action of the vehicle as a story element. You might say that he gives the vehicle a personality that is reacting to story events. His work is characterized by a fine appreciation for the physical form that gives an object life and vibrancy. Bryan further demonstrates this physicality in his own life as a skilled gymnast who can on occasion be found walking on his hands in his office while meditating on an illustration. Before coming to Imagineering, Bryan taught art at the university level and he continues to teach through his illustrations in that they are informative, enlightening, and a clear demonstration of how to convey a visual message. He is a very strong user of the fine arts principles and has the ability to tell story both visually and verbally. This is unusual in that many artists do not have his verbal storytelling skills.
Being fully focused when working, Bryan throws himself into his paintings. This is a literal as well as a figurative statement in that I have seen Bryan painting out of doors, in the cold of a Montana winter when his jacket was covered in paint. There was quite a bit more paint on him than on his canvas. When he noticed it, in the tradition of closing the barn doors after the horses are out, Bryan took his jacket off and continued to paint appearing close to suffering hypothermia. I gave him my new down coat and he gave me a-teeth-chattering thank you. I checked on him thirty minutes later to find my coat equally covered in paint. I am proud to say that I now own a Jowers’ original.