Whenever I get a request for a cover from Lauren Draper at the New York Observer, I know it will end up being a good time. The schedule is tight, and sometimes the concept is too broad to work visually, but I always end up with the kind of final piece that reflects my admittedly adolescent aesthetic.
I've enjoyed Charlie Rangel's performance art in politics the same way I used to appreciate Tip O'Neill's back in the old days of All Politics Is Local. I'm not a New Yorker, so I can't say whether I'm sympatico with Charlie politically or not, but any guy who can survive being photographed catching a nap on the beach in full drool mode with the man wedgie front and center must be made of some good stuff. Here, we have him in Willy Loman mode, bags packed for possibly one last road trip.
It was raining the whole time I was working on this and I was listening to Tom Waits. Sure fire gloomy picture recipe.
One of the great faces in Washington today. That alone should get him reelected.
I was fortunate to have a couple of pieces accepted into this year's CA Illustration Annual. This one above is a portrait of Ted Hoff, who invented the microprocesser in 1968, ushering us from a world of relative black and white to one of maybe too many colors. Steve Sauer of Network World had me create about 10 portraits of these "Fathers Of...". I was pretty blown away at the idea that the creators of the networked worlds that we live in and around are for the most part anonymous.
This one was for aTim Luddy at Mother Jones. The story was about Washington fat cats. For whatever reason, there are certain art directors for whom you reach a little deeper. Tim's at the top of that list.
I'm always grateful whenever I make it into any of these competitions. A huge thanks to those judges that liked my work enough to put it in the mix.
Michael Hogue from the Dallas Morning News called a while back to ask if I was available to do a portrait of president Obama for a story on the administration's increasing reliance on unmanned drones to fight the War On Terror (I always think there should be an exclamation point at the end of that). At the time I was working on a fun, silly caricature of Obama, and the thought of doing a straight portrait simultaneously sounded like fun. I had the great propaganda posters from China and the Soviet Union in mind while I was working on this. Not because I feel Obama in any way resembles those godless commie bastards, but because those images were so powerful. Those drones look like deadly mechanical mosquitos flying in formation under a bloody sky to me.
Here's the New York Observer front page that I did last week. As many of you have no doubt discovered, the best way to secure an almost overwhelming volume of fun, interesting work is to schedule an expensive vacation. A mere weekend getaway won't do the trick, it must be an event that requires a multi hour voyage above 30,000 feet, passports, and most importantly, children who have been looking forward to the trip and programmed daily "Days Left Until" alarms into their gadgets. Lauren Draper called just as I was clawing my way to the end zone in a game of You Won't Make The Deadline for several other jobs, and I told her that I couldn't fit her in. She said the issue was Obama's straddling the line on the gay marriage issue. Too much fun. So, just to prove that you can do just about anything with enough caffiene, I accepted the job and hit the gas.
Vacation was fun too.
I sought out the handsomest guy in the house and told him to give me a good talking to. As you can see, I've been lifting quite a bit.
