http://www.drawger.com/johnhendrix/ Sat, 25 Sep 2010 12:26:26 EDT FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://drawger.com/_images/drawger_leo_logo.gif http://www.drawger.com/johnhendrix http://www.drawger.com/johnhendrix/index.php?section=articles&article_id=11351

I'm happy to say that my newest book is finally done. It won't be out till January of 2011, but I'd like to give you a quick preview of Nurse, Soldier, Spy: Sarah Edmonds, A Civil War Hero!

For those of you who are not aware of the story of Sarah Edmonds- she was a passionate woman who wanted to fight for the Union in the Civil War. But in order to enlist, dressed up as a man, Frank Thompson. In this book, we tell the tale of her enlistment, her exceptional abilities in the battle field and her adventures as a spy behind the Confederate lines. She went on many clandestine missions, but in this book we depict one where she dressed as a slave. Children's books really rely on a warm and enjoyable main character, like this fellow, for example. In the case of this story, creating a look for the main character was challenging, she had to be both a girl and a boy. She had to look like a passable union soldier, but also feel a bit feminine, so the girl readers could identify with her as well. In some drawings Sarah started to look neither male nor female- just a poorly drawn figure.



  The interior book art was finished in August, but the cover is hot off the press. As you might imagine, the cover is an essential part of branding and marketing a book. Because of the commerce part of this equation, the cover becomes the source of much hand-wringing, by artist, editor, art director and also the sales department.     I completed the first cover way back in July (below) so that it could be included in the catalog. After I finished all the final art for the interior we all decided that it needed to change. The cover was nice but it didn't feel as exciting as the story itself. 



  We were able to salvage the original cover, above, for the title page. Making for certainly the most elaborate title page of my book career. Once again, this is an example of a difficult change brought about by a good art director that resulted in a better final product. It is a hard thing to admit, but with good editing, most of the time your work will improve.    Here is the full wrap of the jacket, the front, back and flaps (without copy on flaps). 



  I've posted a few of the images from the book already, but now I'd like to give you a full sense of the books narrative by posting some of my favorite images from the story, in sequence. 



The following are just the images themselves- obviously without the story text on top of them. Usually I think the images improve when you can see the copy as well, since they appear to have empty space without the text. You'll have to buy the book for that part! 





































  The process of working on a long term project like this is so different than a standard editorial job. Though the bulk of the final art was done between March and August, the entire process takes about a year. So, as I send Sarah out the door, it is time to start my next book, which will be out in January 2012 titled "A Boy Called Dickens" about the childhood of Charles Dickens. Time to start practicing my top-hats and crooked chimneys.



]]> Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:26:01 EDT http://www.drawger.com/johnhendrix/index.php?section=articles&article_id=11191

American Cowboy Magazine, which I confess I'd never heard of before they called, gave me a great assignment last week. They wanted a drawing of the famous "Fill Your Hands" gunfight from the John Wayne classic True Grit. As any illustrator might know, when you get the assignment that aligns with topics or content that you already LOVE, the resulting drawing is most assuredly doomed. You can't get enough distance from your obsession to evaluate it. (Like a surgeon operating on his own wife, or something.) True Grit is one of those movies that my dad taught me to love at a young age... like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters and The Sting.

  Here is a link to the famous scene... 



With the bar set appropriately high- I watched the movie again. If you don't know the scene or haven't seen the film, it offers one of the immortal lines in the Western patheon. Perhaps even more memorable is the way he cocks the rifle one-handed, by spinning it around the cocking bar. Translating this into a drawing gave me an opportunity to goof around and try a few methods that might be more at home in my sketchbook. I've attached a few of the color comps and how my first sketch looked in their layout, which was also in progress.

After a few color comps, I wanted to treat the background like a two color silkscreen, flat shapes in a simple space. Of course, this could be done digitally, very quickly, but I wanted to do it all on the original board- because I think something changes when art is made in space where you can react to real colors and edges. Turned out to be a fun diversion for the week. And I did the whole drawing while wearing an eyepatch.





]]> Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:11:43 EDT http://www.drawger.com/johnhendrix/index.php?section=articles&article_id=11168

The college football season draws near, and this year there is some actual thought that perennial underdog Boise State just might be able to win a national title. This drawing is for the College Football Preview in Sunday's sports section of The New York Times.



Who is that in the basket? It's the TCU horned frog, another one of a sportswriter's favorite outliers with a real change of going all the way. This is one of the rare occasions when the very first sketch I did was the one I couldn't get away from. The chance to do an OZ homage was too alluring for my steel-trap brain to forget. Always nice to see it in print in your local cafe on Sunday morning.







]]> Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:57:52 EDT http://www.drawger.com/johnhendrix/index.php?section=articles&article_id=10783

Friday at 5pm, I got the biggest call of my editorial career- the cover of Sports Illustrated. Most of us certainly think of the cover of Time and the New Yorker as the crowning jewels of our industry- but Sport Illustrated hasn't had an illustrated cover in a long long time- according to their Design Director. Of course, with Sports Illustrated, a weekly magazine, you don't have much time. Final art due by Monday, they close the issue at 2pm. For the high honor of an SI cover I'd have to chain myself to my desk for the next three days- but it would be worth it if I could pose the following question to my friends at parties for years to come, "What do I have in common with LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Jacque Vaughn and Brooklyn Decker?"



With Colorado leaving the Big 12 conference for the PAC-10, and Nebraska leaving for the BIG TEN- the fate of the athletic college landscape rested with the University of Texas. They dramatically announced last week that they were leaving for the PAC-10 and taking four other with them. Goodbye Big 12. The concept for the cover was to illustrate the PAC-10 as a golden paradise- drawing all the great teams into the beautiful Rose Bowl.

I sent the first sketch on Saturday and we were revising the mascot placement every few hours as news broke about which teams were going where. I should have seen where this was going. Saturday at 2pm 

Saturday 6pm

Sunday at 1pm

Sunday after 2pm was quiet and I spent most of the 24 hours drawing and painting on the final art- just hoping that Texas didn't get cold feet before the closing of the magazine on Monday. I sent in the final art, exhausted, right on time. Just as the email leaves, I see this story on ESPN. Texas is going to stay. Story over. The PAC-10 isn't the promise land, it is just another conference. The cover is dead.

This is the point in the post where I write with great eloquence about the nature of our industry. Perhaps I will even evoke terms of poetry to describe how the tight deadlines and pressure-cooker editorial changes creates the very fiber of our business, which at the core, is thrilling to be a part of on a daily basis. This is the point in the post when I can say that pouring three days into something like this to have it flushed by a 3pm press-release just stinks. Now, if you'll, excuse me, I need to get back to the drawing board.



]]> Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:09:43 EDT http://www.drawger.com/johnhendrix/index.php?section=articles&article_id=10390

  I'm happy to introduce the official ICON 6 poster by Heads of State. This limited, special-edition poster produced in two different versions, will be available free at the conference. It drops tuesday, but I wanted to make sure the folks at Drawger got a peek a few hours ahead of time.  If anyone has any questions about the conference, head on over the our website for more info- http://theillustrationconference.org/



Hope to see you in California this summer... 



]]> Tue, 04 May 2010 04:13:03 EDT http://www.drawger.com/johnhendrix/index.php?section=articles&article_id=10281



Just got the tearsheets of a drawing I did for ESPN The Magazine about the astonishingly pervasive practice of gambling in professional athletic locker rooms. A recent gambling altercation that lead to Washington Wizards superstar Gilbert Arenas bringing multiple guns into the locker room to frighten a third-stringer indicate the extreme stakes of these wagers. Superstars have been known to lose hundreds and even tens of thousands of dollars on a single game of dominos, pool and the bet-inducing card games like "Hit the Post." In this insidious betting game, when you lose, you don't just pay in your share but match the whole pot on the table.  Perhaps this visual idea seems obvious (or inevitable), but using the look and palate of Vegas was an exciting solution to explore in my sketches. I barely had 5 days for this, so I didn't have much time to look around for other ideas. The scope of the drawing would take a majority of the time. So I was eager to get started on something. 





I sent a super rough idea for a quick "you're on the right track" approval. I wouldn't want to spend 6 hours solving this drawing if they hated the idea of a vegas locker-room. 



Once they signed off on the concept, I had to add some new player likenesses and adjust the layout accordingly. And they took out my favorite part, that the devil was dealing the cards. All the players are specific likenesses, though none anyone would really recognize. 



The final art was executed in about 36 hours (not ideal)- which did allow time for a rough color study, above (which I ended up mostly ignoring). I rarely get a chance to use a garish high-saturation palate- so I went all out. Perhaps too far out. The drawing will run across the top of a magazine spread, and their format is a big larger than most magazine- a full 10 inches wide. The full drawing will be seen at about 20 inches long. A few details below. 







Here is how it looked in print, thanks to Dragos for the great assignment! 

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