Drawing Motown the Musical and The Nance

The Broadway theater scene is currently quite a traffic jam of new productions, vying to open before the Tony Award deadline at the end of this month.

My usual workload is one drawing a week for Playbill.com, but this time of year requires double duty, and even at that, I do not get the chance to see and draw all of the Broadway productions.

I started the week with a big drawing of the new musical, Motown. This is a show about the life of record producer/songwriter, Berry Gordy. It is already a big hit, with the winning formula of a score of very popular Motown hits.

Even though Berry Gordy is not performing in the show ( another actor plays his part), I felt it would be a good idea to include a drawing of Gordy in the design.

There were so many characters to choose from for this project, so, I chose the individuals and groups that would be the most fun to capture: Barry Gordy, top, overlooking some of his "discoveries": Little Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, and The Temptations.
Bottom: Brandon Victor Dixon as Barry Gordy and Valiska LeKae as Diana Ross.