Marinette man gains fame for his maritime artwork

MARINETTE, Wis. (WBAY) – He is a self-taught artist who specializes in fine pencil drawings of Great Lakes ships and ocean liners.

Over the past decade, he’s become a respected and sought after member of the maritime art community around the world.

This week in Small Towns, we travel to Marinette to see his award-winning artwork.

With a graphite pencil, Tony Strublic is bringing the Daniel J. Morrow back to life on an illustration board.

The ship was caught in a storm and sank in Lake Huron in 1966.

“And this particular ship that I’m working on I haven’t drawn in a number of years,” says Tony.

Growing up in Wautoma, Tony’s parents were both artists.

And while they certainly passed along their artistic talent, Tony’s inspiration to draw can be traced to a famous ship.

“When I was a kid, when I was very little, the Titanic was the ship that started me off with my interest in ships and shipwrecks, as it is with most kids. A lot of kids are fascinated with the story of the Titanic,” explains Tony.

Despite his love for drawing ships, Tony’s passion was bowling.

After high school, he attended a college in southern Indiana to pursue a degree in bowling center management.

“When I graduated from there I actually, my full-time job was in the bowling industry, and I moved up here, Menominee first, and there was a bowling center there that’s actually no longer there, but I moved to working at Center Bowl in Peshtigo,” says Tony.

Around that time in 2005, Tony started to pick up his pencils again.

In 2011, he entered his first show in Marquette, Michigan, where he sold a whopping $60 worth of art.

“It was a tremendous failure,” says Tony, laughing, then adding, “I think trying to price my work was very difficult at first and I think I had priced it a little too high for what I had, so it was very, very tough. I was very discouraged. I have some friends through bowling. I stayed with them and my friend, in fact, he said don’t give up, don’t quit, and my dad was with me for that first show, said the same thing, don’t give up on it. He said it’s going to come, just have to work on it, just have to work hard.”

Tony took their encouragement and went back to the drawing board, trying to improve his talent, build better displays, and to make sure he had unframed prints to sell.

The next year, Tony attended four shows, and they went much better.

It wasn’t until 2014, though, that Tony caught an unexpected break and realized this just might be his new career.

He had just completed a drawing of the Olympic, the Titanic’s sister ship, when an exhibition specialist group out of England reached out to him.

“I did this drawing. I had a message from a gentleman, John White, from this group, White Star Memories, and within three hours of me posting it he said ‘We’re very interested in this, what would you sell it for?’ and they purchased it, and the commissions as far as ocean liners and then even Great Lakes, things like that started to really increase, and I thought, you know I think this is something I could really make work,” recalls Tony.

Jump ahead ten years and today Tony averages around 20 original drawings and 25 shows each year.

He also does around 20 commissions annually.

“Say for instance the Edmund Fitzgerald, they want a drawing of the Edmund Fitzgerald in a storm, so if I don’t have an original of that, if they want to commission it, then I will draw to their specs, so based on the size, what type of angle they want the ship in, the sea conditions, sky, things like that, so that becomes their drawing, they own the original piece,” explains Tony.

Tony says without question, and it’s not even close, his most popular originals and prints are of the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald.

“The challenge for me was to draw the ship in a way that no one has seen before, there’s no photographs of the ship from this particular angle,” says Tony in front of a drawing he did earlier this year.

Before he starts drawing any ship, Tony spends hours researching the vessel’s history and searching online for photos.

He’s also started making his own frames.

And over the years, Tony has come to realize his artwork is unique.

“In 14 years of doing shows I’ve never seen a pencil artist with what I have at a show, with ships,” says Tony.

A pencil artist who says he’s always striving to make his drawings as realistic as possible.

“It’s very cool to know that something that I really love to do is something that other people love too, and they want to put up in their homes, that really means a lot to me,” says Tony with a smile.

You can find a gallery of Tony’s artwork on his website, strublicmaritimedrawings.com.

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