Welcome back to Minifigure Monday and True North Bricks’ first Fantasy Minifigure Series. This is a weekly column where I share artworks inspired by the LEGO® Minifigure. For this Fantasy Minifigure Series, I am turning some of my favorite music artists into Minifigures. Just like an actual CMF series, I am making twelve custom characters. In previous installments, I shared Build On, #FreeBRICKney, Brick It Up, Hollabrick Girl, S.N.O.T. Criminal, Heart of Brick, Kid Brick, Jagged Little Brick, Weird Al Yankobrick, and Bricks Don’t Lie. For the eleventh drawing, I present “Who Says You Can’t Go Build?”, inspired by Jon Bon Jovi.
I liked Bon Jovi as early as 1992. That year, the band released the song Bed of Roses, and it was a chart topper. I remember the video playing week after week on the Musique Plus countdown. Incidentally, Much Music and MTV were not available with standard cable in Montreal. Consequently, I watched the French Musique Plus instead, but I digress… I became a hardcore Bon Jovi fan in 2000, with the release of It’s My Life on Crush. At the time, Bon Jovi was releasing new material, but was also already had a huge catalog. Even in between new albums, you could go back and discover classics. Subsequently, I ended up seeing Bon Jovi in concert five times. That puts them on par with Aerosmith as one of my all-time favorites.
There was only one preliminary sketch for this character.
I tried to capture Jon Bon Jovi’s on-stage energy with this drawing. I had seen a photo of him wearing a Captain America-style jacket once. That was an easy way to tie this photo into my superhero fandom as well. Incidentally, Jon Bon Jovi has a Superman tattoo and I like DC more than Marvel. However, that would not be as visible on a Minifigure drawing. I drew his arms out because that is often how you see him on stage, in my experience. I did not make many sketches for this. The first and only doodle was on scrap paper, but I had a clear idea of what I wanted this picture to look like from the get-go. However, I did end up changing the name of the piece.
I recycled the background from an earlier artwork.
In terms of naming this piece, you can see from the sketch that my initial idea was Brick Jovi. However, I decided I wanted to send a message instead. Consequently, I made a play on the Bon Jovi hit, Who Says You Can’t Go Home. For me, returning to LEGO® after my dark age was a little like going home after a long time away. I think in that light, the song is relatable to many AFOLs. Many go through a phase where they stop building because society does not perceive it as “cool” to build anymore. So, you try to find a new face (to steal a line from the song). For me, it turned out you can take the home from the boy, but not the boy from his home. I returned to LEGO® and found huge pleasure and stress relief in it.
The background for “Who Says You Can’t Go Build?” was recycled. A number of years ago, I took part in a blogging challenge. Almost everyday for a month, I posted a pop-culture reference reimagined using LEGO® bricks (click here to see them). One of my entries involved redrawing the cover for Bon Jovi’s “What About Now” album cover using LEGO® elements. I took the logo I drew for that cover and pasted it in the background of my current drawing.
Only one Brickstock character left to go!
“Who Says You Can’t Go Build?” marks the second to last entry in my fantasy Minifigures series. It represents not only one of my favorite artists, but also a return to the familiar for me, as the song describes. Be sure to join me again next week as I reveal the final character in my collection. Hopefully you have enjoyed the ride so far. Let me know what you think in the comments below or reach out on social media.
Until next time,
-Tom
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