Portrait assignment #1 for Roger Black at TYPE Magazine, Issue No. 1, Fall 2017.
Been working with Roger Black since 1977. First illustration assignment I ever did was twelve Mexican album covers for Promexa Mexicana as an assistant to Philip Harrison Hays. I was an illustration student at the Art Center College of Design. Roger was the Art Director. Very shortly afterwards, I moved to NYC and Roger gave me a New York Magazine Cover about new subways. I totally blew it, but Roger never stopped hiring me. So grateful to the great state of Texas, and the wonderful art directors who gave me a shot.
How To Build an Autocracy, The Atlantic (March 2017)
posted:
The Warm-up Drawings (To see more drawings, please find previous post, The Atlantic, Warm-Up Drawings, on Drawger.
Cover Comps; I submitted a total of 25 cover (photo) comps for this assignment. Through this process, the art director and the editors slowly began to focus their lens. Here are a few.
Cover Art; Initially, I painted the cover art in 3 pieces. 1.) The Sky 2.) Mr. Trump. 3.) The Crowd.
Eventually, several revisions were made to the crowd and thus the necessity to draw several more figures and revise 40 or so heads in the crowd.
The Crowd; Damn good thing I love to draw because this part of the illustration took 9 hours for the first rendition, and then probably 5 more hours of drawing and Photoshop time. The figure of Mr. Trump was fast and easy, and the sky was kind of a process using acrylic ink, watercolor pencil and digital media. All 3 pieces were painted at a different scale for speed and detail.
