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Mark Ulriksen
The old In-Out
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Ah, editorial. Last Thursday I got an email to illustrate a movie review for the New Yorker. The film, The Tree of Life, is by Terrence Malick and stars Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as parents in the 1950s raising three sons. The eldest is played by Sean Penn who looks back on his troubled relationship with his dad. The trailer looks fantastic, surreal and poetic. The sketch was due yesterday and a finish today. 
I've fooled around with various ways to do b/w assignments over the years and for this one I opted to use pen and pencil and was really happy with the results. I wanted the mom and son to be loosely rendered in line only, so as to invoke Penn's memories.
Here's my other sketch, focusing on Pitt as he marvels over one of his babies. The image of an infant's foot being cradled is part of the films marketing campaign.
Late yesterday I was told that the magazine would now like the b/w 1/2 page illo to be reconfigured as a full page and done in color.  Great! The finish would be due Thursday morning. So last night I rearranged the composition.
And this morning the magazine decided to run a photo instead. As one of my favorite  fictional characters Kilgore Trout might say...  so it goes.
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