You may not know John Leonard by his face, which he tends not to post online, or even by his name — as a Google search will find a pro hockey player and a Canadian painter with the same name.
Leonard, who refers to himself on his Twitter account as a “local rando,” is known around Utah for the offbeat cartoons he creates of Salt Lake City landmarks — including the Bonwood Bowl sign, the 9th and 9th whale, the Century 16 theater sign and more. He also creates animated images of some of his drawings.
Leonard is bringing some of those designs together in the “Salt Lake Coloring Book.” He’s launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter, with a goal of raising $5,300 by May 24. (As of May 16, the campaign had received $1,656 in pledges.)
“I love all the places that you see driving around,” Leonard said. “In particular, places that have a lot of character. Everybody sees them, but then you don’t really notice them or you don’t think that other people would notice them.”
It’s that dynamic — how certain buildings around the Salt Lake Valley are so iconic and strange, and everybody has a shared experience with them — that inspires his work.
(John Leonard) A self portrait of the artist.
“When somebody draws them, … you don’t think anyone else would notice it. And then here’s some art that shows it, and then all of a sudden you realize everybody else sees these unique characteristics of the city,” Leonard said. “Sometimes I’ll just see stuff around and I can tell in a little bit it’ll look like a good illustration.”
Leonard’s eye for those common Salt Lake-area details has grown a significant following on and beyond Twitter. His cartoon of the 9th and 9th whale received around 80,000 impressions. Someone took his rendition of Kevin Kirk, owner of The Heavy Metal Shop, and got a tattoo of it.
One of his newest creations, a capture of late artist Ralphael Plescia’s “Christian School” on State Street, will be handed out to people who book tours of the building — after Leonard was asked to create the design by preservation expert Kirk Huffaker.
Despite the love for his creations, Leonard said, he doesn’t have much of a background in illustration. It was his writing that led him to drawing.
“I was mostly just drawing my own scripts that I was writing,” said Leonard, a Philadelphia native and Utah transplant. “That’s when I started drawing, because I was submitting all these scripts but then they weren’t getting made, so then I just started making them.”
He has never done his own cartoon strip or anything similar, he said. For the most part, his art lives on his website and Twitter. Leonard said he learns more as he goes, and the first time he realized he was doing pretty well at it was when he started drawing tan buildings in his own neighborhood.
(John Leonard) A drawing of the Ballpark neighborhood in Salt Lake City.
He lists as his inspirations James Thurber, the beloved satirist whose short stories (most famously “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”) appeared in The New Yorker, and William Steig, whose picture book “Shrek!” inspired the movie franchise.
The coloring book — which he said will be 25 pages, and measure 8 inches by 11 inches — is something Leonard came up with because he wanted to create something he could do well and would also make a good product for other people.
The book, he said, would have new cartoons in it, but he would also redraw some buildings and other images he’s done before so they can fit on the pages. His plan is to take two months to draw the book to his liking, then print the copies. His goal is to “get something that people would really get for Christmas,” he said. (He also has another project in mind: A short story about dogs.)Leonard said his favorite designs include renditions of buildings he’s done along 300 North, and of the Fun Time Kidz Care building on 1300 South (though he acknowledged that the building is owned by a real person and has a particular purpose).
So much of Leonard’s work pays homage to Salt Lake County through witty, wholesome and carefully crafted illustrations. The places he captures are favorites of Salt Lake-area residents, uniquly tied to who they are and what makes Utah special for them.
(John Leonard) A drawing of the whale sculpture in the 9th and 9th neighborhood of Salt Lake City.
So what unusual place makes Utah special for Leonard? It’s not exactly a landmark.
“If you go [west on] 400 South, all the way down by the landfill, there’s a bird refuge,” Leonard said. “But mostly, there’s construction workers working at the landfill and moving all the various debris around, and they’re almost always being attacked by birds.”
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