Got issues of both PLANADVISOR and PLANSPONSOR in the mail today.
First is “Hot Off the Presses” – one of my favorite pieces of late. The more drawings with vegetables and birds that I can do, the happier I become.
(click the image for a higher res jpg)
Next is a spot for an article “Qualified Success?” The headline I worked with was ‘keeping steady in the midst of chaos’.
Big thanks to SooJin Buzelli. Working with her really brings out the best in illustrators, and it's simply a pleasure going through all the fantastic artwork in PLANSPONSOR & PLANADVISOR.
Here are the initial sketches:
…and a closeup of linework in progress.
Here are a few pieces I did for the Wall Street Journal last week.
This first set was for a column by Gregory Zuckerman titled “How to Play the Bubbles Like the Pros” about the ins and outs of economic bubbles.
I couldn’t have been happier getting such a fun assignment like this. I’ve been looking at a lot of old comic artists recently and I think that gets reflected in these characters.
I find that with assignments that focus on characters it’s really important to explore a lot of sketching. Mostly for myself, just to figure out how they’re going to be stylized. Here are a few sketches that didn’t make it, in various stages of roughness.
Afterwards the AD and I worked out some final concepts, deciding that the bubbles shouldn’t be grounded, and to forgo the money floating in the bubbles.
This next piece was for “Reducing Emissions, and a Guilty Concience” which was a survey of several companies that vend carbon offsets at varying levels of effectiveness. They do a variety of “green investments” including new energy research, reforestation etc. The headline I worked with was “offsetting your carbon footprint”
Here’s one sketch that’s a little unlike me, but I’m still pretty fond of. I definitely can see how it would be a little silly for this article though.
Big thanks to the AD, Mark Tyner, for the commissions. A great guy to work with.
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Here’s a recent illo of mine of the musician Feist. Been doing a lot of experiments lately with printed and drawn media and combining it digitally. It’s an interesting process, allowing me to alter elements on the computer as much as I want, while maintaining the texture of original materials.
I enjoyed how some of these layers came out on their own. This layer’s on a Japanese printing paper.
I went back to using a rapidograph for the line drawing. I approached it much more like a sketchbook page. This was liberating at first, but in hindsight I feel it’s a little busy. Moving forward I want to focus more on really simplifying the design of illustrations at their very inception rather than trying to simplify in later stages.
An interesting feud transgressed this week between the illustration community and a CBS-affiliated blogger who used a copyrighted painting of Chris Buzelli’s (easily one of my favorite RISD professors) without permission. I think it’s a pretty worthwhile issue to link to. You can get a pretty good sense of things from Buzelli’s blog post and the comments. Probably the most troubling thing is that, besides being a little extra stubborn, this sort of issue really isn’t that out of the ordinary. At least one be proud seeing an entire industry rally in support of Chris.
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This was my first large format piece for the Saturday Wall Street Journal and I’m pretty thrilled with how it came out. These quick turnarounds are getting to be quite fun.
The article reviewed three different books on marriage counseling; beyond this common thread all three books were actually pretty different, covering a wide spectrum of marriages. When sketching concepts I tried to focus more on the process of repairing, without necessarily showing an outcome.
Big thanks to the AD, Susan McDermott, who was fantastic to work with. I’m really happy with the direction the piece took and how it looks on the page.
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I’m getting so forgetful with blog posts!
This was a piece I recently completed. It’s a revision of an older concept about the possibility of using of cloned meats in restaurants. The final became an exercise in restraint. At first the colors just weren’t working; really local and over-saturated. Eventually I just started eliminating huge blocks of color, letting the paper show through.
Simplifying my palette, especially where you just see drawn line on paper is so satisfying for me. I think I’m going to try a few pieces where the color is used even more selectively in the near future.
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Last week I got a call from the Wall Street Journal to do an illustration for the Sunday Journal personal finance column. I’ve been a fan of the design and artwork on the WSJ for years and it couldn’t have been better working with them.
So why a black swan? Well, as I’ve recently discovered, black swans are a metaphor used by statisticians for “the existence and occurrence of high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations” such as the recent financial collapse in Greece. Scott Patterson’s column was about learning from the mistakes of “quants” (or quantitative analysts, essentially mathematicians who play the stock market like a game, and we partially have to thank for the 2008 crash).
Some initial sketches:
As evident from the sketches, the piece was going to be a smaller spot, but as a pleasant surprise, got bumped up in scale significantly while working on it.
Big thanks are due to the AD Mark Tyner, who was really great to collaborate with.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Received a pic from the inside of David and Goliath creative agency displaying the “Brave” piece they commissioned in 2009. I’m totally flattered by how fantastic it looks. Simply gorgeous framing. Thanks guys!
I’ve got several projects in their final stages, check back for new posts soon.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Just wrapped up a portfolio piece.
Here’s a close up:
For the full, uncropped image check it out on my portfolio here.
I’m going to be traveling for a bit, showing the portfolio around and visiting some friends. When I return I’ll have a few things to post.
Here’s an upcoming mailer for an article on mosquito mating rituals. Apparently everyone’s favorite blood-suckers sing duets in harmony with one another, and get very romantic. Cute!
Monoprints (monotypes?) are addictingly fun. Very very excited to see what direction this way of working goes in.
here’s an earlier stage of the line work, which was laid over the monoprint digitally.
mosquitos have the prettiest faces
couldn’t find the credit for the artist on this pic… After some more research I found out the pic was even incorrectly labeled as a mosquito. Probably some kind of house fly… I still like the compound eyes.
I spent some time this weekend experimenting with new techniques for layering printed blocks of color with my line work. I managed to streamline the process to surprisingly few steps and I’m pretty happy with the results, excited to see where this process takes future pieces!
This piece I’m posting was a redo of my ’seeds of doom’ piece about the poppy fields and opium black market of Afghanistan and the destabilizing effect it lends to the country.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to think about registering multiple layers, the little accidents from putting layers together are probably my favorite thing about a process like this.
